Gabriel Marcel is, deliberately and professedly, the most unsystematic of philosophers. The chemin sinueux of his thought is not an easy one to follow; and the attempt would involve an acquaintance with M Marcel’s considerable literary and artistic output of half a century. As a practical measure some introduction to his thought is necessary; and in the case of this book one is reassured by M Marcel’s blessing on the venture. It is, perhaps, slightly disturbing that Mr Gallagher should, on (...) at least one point, disagree with the interpretation proposed by Père Troisfontaines. But in general one can be confident that, in so far as Marcel’s thought can be summarised at all, the summary here offered is as little misleading as possible. (shrink)

This paper publishes for the first time 132 conjectures by Nicolaus Heinsius on Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1‒4. The value and possible motivations of each proposal are briefly assessed.

Nous publions dans ce volume les dits d'une journee d'etude en hommage de Claude Troisfontaines intitulee La Raison par quatre chemins. Apres une introduction, le lecteur trouvera une premiere figuration de ce que sont les quatre chemins de la Raison. En effet, dans son parcours academique comme dans sa vie intellectuelle, il nous semble que le travail philosophique de Claude Troisfontaines s'est deploye en quatre directions significatives: la reflexion epistemologique, les recherches en theologie naturelle ou philosophique, les etudes (...) sur les rapports entre la philosophie et les differents arts, et les etudes blondeliennes. Dans les contributions, toutes remarquables par leur vivacite, bien que provenant d'horizons differents, les auteurs ont choisi d'emprunter un de ces quatre chemins de la Raison, en signe de compagnonnage envers Claude Troisfontaines, afin d'evoquer chacun a sa maniere une meme Histoire, vecue ou partagee. Enfin le livre contient une bibliographie complete des travaux d'edition et des publications de Claude Troisfontaines. (shrink)

This book presents three of Blondel's important turn of the century articles. These are The Idealist Illusion, The Elementary Principle of a Logic of the Moral Life and in two parts, The Starting Point of Philosophy. These essays uncover a certain pragmatism in Blondel's thought while Fiachra Long's introduction argues that Blondel veered away from idealism and towards a logic of the concrete life which allied him closely if unwittingly with the Scottish common sense school of Thomas Reid.

After Lavoisier's execution, the leading French chemists were Antoine-François Fourcroy , Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau and Claude-Louis Berthollet . At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Berthollet introduced a new conception of chemical change that challenged the theory of elective affinities which had dominated chemistry for nearly a hundred years. Berthollet's new affinities raised controversy among chemists and had to coexist with the firmly established theory of elective affinities. Apart from the public debate in research articles, Berthollet's affinities also had (...) to compete with the influence of Fourcroy and his school in the textbook market. This paper seeks to assess the extent to which French textbooks published at the beginning of the nineteenth century were committed to Berthollet's innovation, and how they contributed to its marginalization. (shrink)

La publication du Journal du Concile de l’ambassadeur P. Poswick est l’occasion de rappeler quelques questions majeures de Vatican II dans le traitement desquelles trois évêques belges se sont particulièrement illustrés. Ce rapide parcours permet de dépasser les oppositions émises récemment à propos du Concile entre « l’événement et le texte » de même qu’entre « la discontinuité et la continuité ». On constate en effet que le témoignage des acteurs est indispensable pour la compréhension des textes et que les (...) avancées du Concile permettent une meilleure compréhension de la tradition. (shrink)

La publication du Journal du Concile de l’ambassadeur P. Poswick est l’occasion de rappeler quelques questions majeures de Vatican II dans le traitement desquelles trois évêques belges se sont particulièrement illustrés. Ce rapide parcours permet de dépasser les oppositions émises récemment à propos du Concile entre « l’événement et le texte » de même qu’entre « la discontinuité et la continuité ». On constate en effet que le témoignage des acteurs est indispensable pour la compréhension des textes et que les (...) avancées du Concile permettent une meilleure compréhension de la tradition. (shrink)

The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox (1935) is reexamined in the light of Shannon’s information theory (1984). The EPR argument did not take into account that the observer’s information was localized, like any other physical object.

Bell inequalities are derived for any number of observers, any number of alternative setups for each one of them and any number of distinct outcomes for each experiment. It is shown that if a physical system consists of several distant subsystems, and if the results of tests performed on the latter are determined by local variables with objective values, then the joint probabilities for triggering any given set of distant detectors are convex combinations of a finite number of Boolean arrays, (...) whose components are either 0 or 1 according to a simple rule. This convexity property is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of local objective variables. It leads to a simple graphical method which produces a large number of generalized Clauser-Horne inequalities corresponding to the faces of a convex polytope. It is plausible that quantum systems whose density matrix has a positive partial transposition satisfy all these inequalities, and therefore are compatible with local objective variables, even if their quantum properties are essentially non-local. (shrink)