The Letter 2 of the Collège de

N°2 Academic year 2006-2007

Editorial

The Collège de France’s new Scientific and Strategic Orientation Committee (COSS) by Pierre Corvol Administrator ‘Today’s world is seeking references, reasons to marvel, of the Collège de France ambitious motivating projects. With the sole objective of Professor, furthering knowledge, basic research – that essentially holder of the Chair of Experimental Medicine disinterested research which demands real collaboration at international level – is one of the paths on that quest. Science is and will always remain a factor of emancipation for humans the university world through the PhD schools, increasing and it is important today to emphasize that obvious fact. In this relations with foreign universities, and developing research at the context, the Collège de France has a unique position in France Collège itself. Today a progress report is indispensable. The and in Europe but also in the world.’ These are the introductory Collège will be attentive to the COSS’s opinions on these points, lines of the Annual Report of the International Scientific and as these will enable it to focus its strategy on the objectives that Strategic Orientation Committee (COSS) submitted to the the Committee has reviewed and revised. President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Collège de France’s supervisory ministries in May 2004. The COSS meeting in March 2007 enabled it to make contact with the members of the extended executive of the The creation of the COSS in 2003, on the Collège’s Collège and certain professors at the Cardinal Lemoine and initiative, stemmed from the wish to benefit from eminent Ulm sites. A preliminary study found that the advice and colleagues’ attentive and critical view of the Collège’s main recommendations put forward by the COSS in 2004 had scientific and strategic orientations and the conditions in been followed. Additional details and figures, in a document which they are implemented. It is not the COSS’s role to “The Collège in Figures”, will shortly be submitted to the evaluate the Chairs’ scientific activities; this is the COSS so that it has all the necessary information to draw responsibility of research organizations and of the Ministry up a draft report during its next meeting in November 2007 of National Education, Higher Education and Research. at the Collège. The final report will be presented to the President of the Republic, the supervisory authorities, and The COSS report in May 2004 was a highlight in the finally the Assembly of the Professors in March 2008. Collège de France’s life. This report, the fruit of several meetings, analysed the Collège’s particular characteristics, The COSS’s role is extremely valuable to enlighten the Collège its assets and its weaknesses. It also put forward suggestions de France in its scientific choices and its long-term strategic and opinions. For instance, it proposed that the Collège vision. To fulfil its mission today, the Collège defines enhance its communication policy and define a future- orientations and takes new initiatives, some of which are oriented policy for its libraries. It expressed the wish for the entirely novel in the history of the Institution. If they are to be human resources policy to be optimized and the Collège de carried out fully, these will require more human and financial France’s financial situation to be improved. resources. It is therefore essential that medium- and long-term objectives and the means required to meet them be subjected Four years later, as provided for in the statutes, half the member to the COSS’s critically illuminating scrutiny. of the COSS have been renewed. The Committee currently Professor Pierre Corvol comprises twelve scientific personalities from abroad. It is Administrator of the Collège de France chaired by Professor Detlev Ganten and co-chaired by Professor Peter Mc Cormick. The secretary is Professor Jacques Reisse. Members of the COSS in March 2007 : The view from outside that the COSS has, with its opinions, Anthony Atkinson (UK), economist critiques and proposals, still appears to be essential for the Robert Darnton (US), historian Collège’s life. While the Institution is aware of the strengths Denis Duboule (Switzerland), biologist that have made it famous – its universality, multi-disciplinarity Detlev Ganten, chairman (Germany), biologist and independence – it is nevertheless convinced that it has to Peter Mac Cormick, vice-chairman (), philosopher Paolo Matthiae (Italy), orientalist, archaeologist develop and adapt to a fast-changing world. Jürgen Mlynek (Germany), physicist Jacob Palis (Brazil), mathematician Over the past few years the Collège has taken a series of initiatives David Parkin (UK), anthropologist which largely correspond to the wishes expressed by the COSS Jacques Reisse, secretary (Belgium), chemist in 2004: efforts to increase the dissemination of knowledge, Barbara Romanowicz (US), geophysicist opening up towards society and economic life, moving closer to Karlheinz Stierle (Germany), romanist TABLE OF CONTENTS

Selected papers pages The papers published in this issue of the Letter of the Collège de France in English were originally published in the Letters n° 18, 19 and 20 (academic year 2006-2007).

INAUGURAL LECTURE - ANTOINE COMPAGNON, chair of Modern and Contemporary : History, Criticism and Theory (Letter 18) 6 - DANIELE VITALI, International Chair 2006-2007 (Letter 19) 7 - JEAN-PAUL CLOZEL, Chair of Technological Innovation - Liliane Bettencourt (Letter 19) 8 - PASCAL DUSAPIN, Chair of Artistic Creation 2006-2007 (Letter 19) 10 - GUY ORBAN, European Chair 2006-2007 (Letter 20) 11 - MICHEL DEVORET, Chair of Mesoscopic Physics (Letter 20) 12 NEWS OF THE CHAIRS - ÉDOUARD BARD, chair of Climate and Ocean Evolution (Letter 20) 13 - PIERRE BRIANT, chair of History and Civilization of the Achaemenid World and of the Empire of Alexander (Letter 18) 15 - SERGE HAROCHE, chair of Quantum Physics (Letter 20) 17 GUEST LECTURERS - KATHINKA EVERS (Letter 19) 19 - PAOLO MANCOSU (Letter 20) 21 - ADELHEID OTTO (Letter 20) 22 REOPENING SYMPOSIUM 2006: ARTIFICIAL MAN IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIETY (Letter 18) 23 SYMPOSIUM FOR THE COMMEMORATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF LUDWIG BOLTZMANN - JACQUES BOUVERESSE (Letter 19) 26

COLLOQUIUM IN BERLIN : THE NEW WORLD OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND PREVENTION (Letter 20) 29 PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SCIENCES AND THE SECRETS OF NATURE - IAN HACKING (Letter 20) 33 DANGER! MUSEUMS ADRIFT - ROLAND RECHT (Letter 20) 37 THE ORIGINS OF THE INSTITUT MAREYOFTHECOLLÈGE DE FRANCE - JOHN MCKENZIE (Letter 19) 38 OBITUARY: PIERRE-GILLES DE GENNES, JEAN-PIERRE VERNANT (Letter 19) 42

Institutional Data

COLLÈGE DE FRANCE ORGANIZATION CHART 44

LECTURES GIVEN BY THE PROFESSORS ABROAD 46

LECTURES AND LECTURE SERIES BY FOREIGN PROFESSORS 49

EVENTS AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE – 2006-2007 51

RESEARCH TEAMS RECEIVED 52

MAÎTRES DE CONFÉRENCES AND ATER AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE – 2006-2007 52

THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE INSTITUTES 53

COLLÈGE DE FRANCE WEBSITES – PODCASTS 56

PUBLICATIONS – 2006-2007 57

COLLÈGE DE FRANCE AUTUMN SYMPOSIUM – 2007-2008 59 S ELECTED PAPERS INAUGURAL LECTURE

CHAIR OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY FRENCH LITERATURE: HISTORY, CRITICISM AND THEORY

Antoine Compagnon had attended in the meantime at the Hautes Études. A colleague has reminded me that together, at Claude Lévi-Strauss’ seminar, we listened to Julia Kristeva who subsequently supervised my PhD. The Collège de France thus precipitated my late conversion to the literary sciences.

Guez de Balzac warned against the opposite gave his inaugural lecture on conversion: ‘Leaving eloquence for mathematics’, 30 November 2006. His course entitled he commented in 1628, ‘means being tired of an ‘Proust, memory of the literature’ began 18-year-old mistress and falling in love with an on 5 December 2006. old woman’. Old, mathematics? Balzac was wrong, but for me literature has remained ‘an Professor, Extract from the inaugural lecture: 18-year-old mistress’. Moreover, one of my University of professors was also wrong when he warned me “Speaking in this place, I am overcome by a against taking that step: ‘Would it not be better IV-Sorbonne feeling of turmoil, for it seems like yesterday to remain a humanist engineer?’ Member of the that I entered the gates of this institution – to meet giants. I had just started at a neighbouring Forgive me for mentioning these old memories; Academia Europaea school; it was around 1970, I was twenty, and they explain the doubt that I am experiencing Paris was a celebration of the intellect. A friend’s here before you. You cannot imagine everything Member of the mother advised me to visit the Collège de that is lacking in my literary training, everything Haut Conseil de France. I came here and consulted the that I have not read and everything that I do l’Éducation (2006) programme, as astounded as the narrator of La not know since, in the discipline in which you Recherche du temps perdu looking at the elected me, I am virtually an autodidact. I have Morris column announcing Berma in Phèdre. nonetheless been teaching literature for over And then one morning, not without thirty years and have made it my profession. apprehension, I entered a lecture room, up Yet, as I will carry on doing here, I have always there, I can’t remember where exactly because taught what I did not know, and taken my everything’s been changed since then. I kept to lectures as a pretext to read what I had not yet the back and there I listened to a small man read and thus to learn what I did not know. who looked like a bird. He was explaining a Du Bellay sonnet, admirably and in great detail, Unsure as to whether you would agree to my as I had never heard anyone do nor imagined project for a Chair, and my candidature, I would it possible to do. I learned the name of this man ask myself: ‘Will they not see their mistake?’ who had been invited by Claude Lévi-Strauss: Then I would stop myself by thinking that in it was Roman Jakobson, a great linguist who fact a real impostor would be a professor who had traversed the 20th century, from Moscow was sure of himself, who knew before seeking. to Prague, then New York to Harvard. Yet the names of those who have brought fame to modern French literature at the Collège de Unlike the narrator in Phèdre, that first time did not France for over half a century came to mind, leave me disappointed. Have I ever got over that from Paul Valéry to Roland Barthes, from Jean first visit? Does one not become a professor when Pommier to Georges Blin, and then those of the one has been unable to leave school? I had found eminent professors, present here today, who This inaugural lecture is the road to the Collège, and it led me all the way accepted me in their midst, Marc Fumaroli and available shortly from here. Although I was studying engineering, I Yves Bonnefoy, as well as the members of the Editions Fayard and on DVD (coproduction attended other lectures within these walls: that of Institute of Literary Studies who introduced me Collège de France/ Michel Foucault, the year he gave Surveiller et to you, Carlo Ossola and Michel Zink, to whom CNED/Doriane Films). punir; that of Roland Barthes, whose seminar I I am grateful…”

6 THE LETTER - N° 2 INTERNATIONAL CHAIR 2006-2007

Daniele Vitali Cornelius Nepos situates the great invasion at the time of the fall of Melpum and of Veii (396 BC), whereas Diodorus of Sicily establishes a synchronism between the descent of the Celts into Italy and the siege of Rhegion by Denis 1st of Syracuse (386 BC). Appien proposes an intermediate date, so that this descent into Italy coincided with the gave his inaugural lecture on 97th Olympiad (392-388 BC). He indicates, 14 December 2006. His course entitled moreover, that these Celts came from the ‘The Celts of Italy’ began on regions of the Rhine. No synchronization for 12 January 2007. the siege of Clusium and the taking of Rome is proposed by Tite-Live. On the contrary, Professor of Extract from the inaugural lecture: he situates the oldest Celtic migrations in archaeology, Northern Italy during the reign of Tarquin “The discovery of the Celts of Italy: from the Old (616-578 BC) and the establishment University of intuition to scientific findings. of Marseilles (600 BC), and indicates that Bologna (Italy) these peoples came from . It is above all ancient literary sources that attest to the presence and action of Celtic These movements, in the form of more or populations in Northern Italy, from the Alps to less contemporaneous migratory waves, also the foothills of the Apennines and the shores had a significant impact on the population of the Adriatic. Whereas all ancient authors characteristics and the territorial and political agree to situate the arrival of the Celts in Italy balances of the peoples of Italy, whether they at the beginning of the 4th century BC, Tite- were directly affected by the passage, arrival Live, in an account that has generated and settlement of these foreign tribes, numerous controversies, suggests a more families and individuals or not. extensive antiquity and situates the first Celtic migrations some two hundred years earlier. The history of the Celtic peoples of Italy was of interest to ancient authors only in so far as This excursus – that one commentator it concerned the history of Rome itself. This considered, with what logic we do not know, history therefore amounts to a series of wars, as ‘una specie di Kamasutra della storia dei military operations, diplomatic actions, Celti’ (‘a sort of Kamasutra of the history of periods of peace, resumption of conflicts and the Celts’) – had the advantage of provoking resistance, betrayals, defeats and losses of a great deal of debate, for and against, but territories. In these accounts, internecine always with arguments, among historians struggles also have their place. In all cases, and archaeologists from the birth of Celtic and despite their recent arrival, literary archaeology in the 19th century: M. d’Arbois sources treated these intruders as populations de Jubainville, Karl Müllenhoff, Otto that were part of the mosaic of Italic peoples Hirschfeld and Salomon Reinach, to who were there to stay. mention but a few from the end of the century. Historians, who had only these literary sources to go by until the mid-19th century, were unable At the very beginning of the 4th century to draw a picture of the organization and BC, Rome, which was already clearly culture of the various Celtic peoples. advertising its hegemonic ambitions, was Consequently, for a long time questions most unexpectedly defeated by these concerning the Celts of Italy were considered strangers from the north. It was exclusively through the deforming prism of the This inaugural lecture is conquered, occupied for seven months, history of Rome. But the archaeological available from Editions Fayard. The video can be and had to pay a heavy tribute to the testimonies that were lacking at the time soon downloaded from the barbarians. This was an episode which left appeared and became the sources of a less Collège de France website. a lasting imprint on Roman minds. Roman and more global history.”

N° 2 - THE LETTER 7 CHAIR OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION - LILIANE BETTENCOURT 2006-2007

Jean-Paul Clozel also linked to the improved technologies that allow medication obtainment.

Scientific innovation is obviously the essential motor that will define biotechnology’s success. More often than not, this innovatory element starts with a discovery made at a university or gave his inaugural lesson on in an academic institution. After that, either the 18 January 2007. scientist who made the discovery decides to His course entitled ‘Biotechnology: from found his own company or he decides to science to medicine’ began on collaborate with a company that will try to 25 January 2007. develop his discovery (…)

Researcher, CEO, Extract from the inaugural lesson: In fact, as far as I know, no great Member of the biotechnology discovery has been made within “Biotechnology, which I would define as the a company itself. They are all the consequences Board and Founder application of all living sciences towards of so-called academic discoveries made by of Actelion Ltd. improving health, is in the process of university groups. But in all cases, these revolutionizing our daily life. university groups had very specific characteristics. They were integrated in the Some figures should give us cause for reflection. heart of universities of a standard superior to Every four years life expectation in the occident most European universities. The number of increases by one year. In France, by the year people working in these laboratories was well 2050, there will be three times more people over above the average size of the European groups. the age of eighty-five than today. A little girl Moreover, their projects were very long term born in 2006 will have a one in two chance of and their financing allowed a significant level becoming a centenarian. The ageing of the of risk-taking. This is the reason why I believe population explains why the rapid rise in the it to be much more important to have very prevalence of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer large universities with a small number of and cardiovascular diseases can be seen. New multifunctional teams and with financing that infectious diseases have recently surfaced and allows the realization of projects that can run others threaten us every day (…) as long as ten years rather than a multitude of small teams without the critical size needed or The problem is immense and it is easy to sufficient financing capabilities (…) understand why occidental countries dedicate between nine and fifteen per cent of brut Some figures give an idea of process and pricing national production to the area of health. difficulty. The research phase for a biotechnology project calculates a minimum of To address these problems, a new industry three to four years, the development phase six was created about thirty years ago. years and the registration phase one year. This Scientists, mainly in the US, decided to makes a total of at least ten years. To select a leave their university laboratories to create product, an average of two to ten million industrial enterprises dedicated entirely to products must be synthesized. One molecule in applying their scientific discoveries (…) two will not pass the toxicology tests. Only one molecule in ten entered into man will finish all Biotechnology represents a considerable clinical trials. The average cost of such a project This inaugural lecture is section of the economy with market is between two and three hundred million Euros available from Editions Fayard. The video can be capitalization of 360 billion Euros and an for a drug intended for hospital use. This cost downloaded from the average growth rate of 20% per year, double could reach six or eight hundred million Euros Collège de France website. the growth of the classical pharmaceutical for a drug aimed at the general public. It is at this industry. This growth is evidently directly price that we can foresee saving lives and Translation: Billy Gilbert related to population increase and ageing. It is treating otherwise incurable diseases.”

8 THE LETTER - N° 2 2007 CREATION OF THE CHAIR OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION - LILIANE BETTENCOURT

and seminars. The development of It aims to encourage basic research, molecular biology and, more its teaching and its practical precisely, the birth of genetic applications, the building blocks of engineering thirty years ago gave the tomorrow’s new technologies. biotechnologies that extraordinary thrust which changed the therapeutic This partnership between the approach so radically that it can be Collège de France and the called a revolution in the life sciences. Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation is This new technology has combined a first of its kind and is designed to expertise in the field of chemical last. molecules with new processes, to produce human proteins for medical The Collège intends to continue this purposes. openness to the economic world, convinced that it is possible to The Collège de France Assembly of achieve synergy and at the same Professors has appointed Mr Jean- time preserve each party’s identities, Paul Clozel to present the latest interests and ways of functioning. developments in biotechnological The institution hopes to cement Mrs Bettencourt, Prof. Corvol, Prof. Clozel, first holder of the Chair of research. In both public research new, similar partnerships in the near Technological Innovation and the private sector, he has future. and Mr Bettencourt. contributed to the discovery of new molecules and to the development The creation of this new Chair in of new treatments. His work partnership with the Bettencourt- characterizing the actions of many Schueller Foundation concretizes a cardiovascular drugs such as rennin common will to focus on inhibitors or calcium antagonists is technological innovation, and to recognized world-wide. highlight the importance of work in this field and of the effort that needs Mr Clozel is currently the CEO of to be put into it. Europe’s leading biotechnology firm, which he founded in 1997 Technological innovation concerns with three other researchers. many sectors that contribute towards growth and progress, thus The Assembly of Professors transforming human life. unreservedly supported this partnership project with a private The holder of the Liliane foundation as it enables the Collège Bettencourt Chair of Technological de France to increase its research Innovation will be renewed every and teaching potential without year in order to promote teaching disregarding one of the main rules at the cutting edge of research in governing the institution since highly innovative sectors such as 1530: the idea of free research. the nanotechnologies, computing, communication networks, data Through this partnership the transfer and encryption, and the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation life sciences. will be pursuing one of its key objectives: supporting and The biotechnologies are inaugurating promoting the development of Prof. Jacques Livage, Prof. Pierre Corvol the Chair’s annual cycle of courses scientific research at its highest level. and Mrs Bettencourt.

N° 2 - THE LETTER 9 CHAIR OF ARTISTIC CREATION 2006-2007

Pascal Dusapin perhaps even to run away from meaning, at least from such meaning as has flooded our world. Music is a different meaning, a different rationale, which is why it is so relentlessly paradoxical. My statements as a composer will often (I fear) be similarly paradoxical. gave his inaugural lecture on 1 February 2007. Such wandering listening is the experience His course entitled of a time scale we believe to be real, but is ‘Composition, Music, Paradoxes and nothing more than mere intention. Flows’ began on 9 February 2007. Corresponding with the time of a work, Composer Extract from the inaugural lesson: grasping its existence, is a path to nowhere. It Cino del Duca Prize is easy to see that music is elusive, beyond any “Music is what never recurs” said Roland tangible realm. Yes, music leaves no trace, 2006, Barthes. We could perhaps add to this, appearance merging with disappearance. Dan David Prize saying that it is ever before. Basically, it is Music fades so quickly, its boundaries are 2007. always already over. Listening to music indefinable. By its nature, it is designed to be could be seen as a menace, the threat of it performed; it has escaped the realm of Commander of already being over, yet again. So we persist. concrete definitions and returned to a state of Arts et Lettres We listen once more. And again it is not pure intention. Listening takes us to the there any more. Or even less than before. gateway of a world of infinite subtlety – the And it starts all over again. Before music, world of the emotions. There is no need to be there is silence. And all that is left wary of this term, emotion being an inherently immediately afterwards is a recollection, a human state of mind; what we get from music recollection of the silence before. All the is emotion. Emotions obviously combine and ambiguity of listening is contained in these amalgamate, forming muddled collections, but scraps of moments, moments which no they transform us. Emotion is a movement, longer exist. Anyone listening may claim to and it is through emotions that the mind and apprehend time. And yet, time is not. But body recompose themselves. Listening means we are still aware that it does mean being aware of an experience occurring something. So we succumb to temptation somewhere between a mental event and a once more. We listen again. And it starts all physical event. Where does the experience over again. How can we express such time originate? Or first, where does music which constantly defies expression? originate? A work of music may not have a clearly defined source, coming from We can note that the essence of time spent somewhere buried in the past and lost in a listening is chiefly devoted to “topographical” multitude of performances. Listening means detection. Listening deploys itself of its own retrieving this loss of meaning. Listening to accord, unbeknownst to us, as it were. music means inventing the demands of this Something leads our brain to move swiftly, to desertion. But composing is not listening. A analyze links and signposts articulated in the person composing hears, but does not listen. flow. Listening means detecting the As a teenager, I believed that everything boundaries of a shape. It is in fact a emerged from the same force and impetus, and mechanism for recognizing edges rather than for years I confused composing with listening. any real limits, for we are not yet capable of I was afraid to compose because I knew grasping the time/form of the music. Once it absolutely nothing about it. (According to This inaugural lecture is is over, we believe we have had access to a Nietzsche, the ear is the organ of fear.) I didn’t available from Editions whole, to a demonstration of that time. I like have the faintest idea about composing. Fayard and on DVD (coproduction to believe that we are mistaken. In my Listening was the only way I had of making Collège de France/ opinion, every work of music beckons us this unthinkable transgression. Listening was CNED/Doriane Films). along a path, to wander along the path, like a shadow. The shadow of composing..”

10 THE LETTER - N° 2 EUROPEAN CHAIR 2006-2007

Guy Orban shortest connections; this enables them to gain valuable space since the skull cannot change shape. Neurons establish dense connections with their closest neighbours; this generates a first level of integration beyond the neurones, that of local networks, of which the cortical column, dear to Vernon Mountcastle, is the gave his inaugural lecture on prototype. 22 March 2007. His course entitled ‘Visual These columns interact via horizontal treatment and perception of form and connections linking columns of the same movement’ began on 30 March 2007. nature. This creates the following level, that of the cortical area, of which the Extract from his inaugural lecture: primary visual cortex is the prototype. Doctor, Professor of “The brain is a very particular organ of the Almost all the pyramidal neurons have axons Neurophysiology human body. According to one of my first which leave the grey matter and produce their intellectual guides, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, terminal arborisation in another region of the at the Catholic it is also the most complex system in the cortex. These longer connections form the University of biosphere. There is therefore no reason to framework of the next level, that of cerebral Leuven and consider the study of the brain as any less systems, such as the visual system which Visiting Professor important than that of the other infinites, comprises several dozen cortical areas. Finally, at the École elementary particles and the cosmos – on the all these systems – motor, visual, auditory, limbic contrary, considering its medical and human – are linked together and form the brain. The Normale Supérieure implications. The brain’s particularity stems product of the brain is not a hormone or a from the fact that its components, neural cells metabolite but the behaviour and control of the or neurones, have extensions, dendrites and internal milieu. axons, through which they are linked to one another and exchange information in the The brain underlies mental life but cannot be synapses – as Ramón y Cajal postulated over a reduced to it. At the other extremity, it cannot hundred years ago. A brain is an anatomically be detached from its embodiment in the human organized collection of cells. The human brain body. The levels of integration show that its consists of tens of billions of neurons, each of study cannot be reduced to genetics – which which has several thousand connections. Such explores the simplest level, that of the coding of is the complexity of our brain in its raw state. molecules – or to cerebral imagery which simply This complexity explains scans the most integrated levels. Study of the the gap between the brain brain requires a multi-disciplinary effort, that and the neuron. Perfect of the neurosciences, which include not only knowledge of the neuron is genetics and imagery but also and above all indeed important, but it is neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and totally insufficient for neuropharmacology, as well as the understanding the brain, contributions of the behavioural and cognitive whose function depends sciences and of mathematical modelling. To on anatomy. As Semir Zeki meet this challenge in the 21st century, the said, ‘anatomy first’! neurosciences have to cover all the levels of integration, including that of neurons, which Connections in the brain give us a clue as to are still the cornerstone of the brain. The aim of how to go about apprehending its complexity. my lecture, today, is to demonstrate the They determine the levels of integration of the important role that vision has played in the past brain beyond the neurons, since the lower levels and still plays today in the development of the This inaugural lecture is have more similarities with those of the other integrative neurosciences in general and the available from Editions Fayard. The video can be types of cell. These levels of integration express cognitive neurosciences in particular. downloaded from the a fundamental law: the neurons that have to Collège de France website. exchange the most information form the

N° 2 - THE LETTER 11 CHAIR OF MESOSCOPIC PHYSICS

Michel DEVORET mechanical system, unlike the classical system, can remain ordered, if the average energy of the noise is substantially lower than the gap between its first two discrete levels. This regularity manifests itself for example in the indiscernability of atoms, an essential property on which chemistry gave his inaugural lecture on and materials science are based. Better 31 May 2007. His course, entitled still, if we take adequate precautions, the ‘Introduction to mesoscopic physics: quantum-mechanical system can reveal electrons and photons’ began which of its states it is occupying, without on 7 June 2007. making any transition to another one, the associated disturbance being then rejected Summary of his inaugural lecture: in a variable without any influence on the Professor of Physics occupation of the levels of energy. Is it at Yale University “Can complex machines function possible to achieve the best of both (USA) quantum-mechanically? worlds? Can one take advantage of the accessibility and manipulability of Since the discovery of the atom, we have complex objects of the macroscopic divided nature into two worlds. One tends world, while benefiting from the subtle towards the infinitely big: that is the quantum-mechanical order that reigns in macroscopic world of objects with a very the microscopic world? Owing to progress large number of atoms. The other tends in the techniques of miniaturization, towards the infinitely small: that is the cooling and treatment of rapid signals, it microscopic world of particles, such as has now become possible to create systems electrons and nuclei. The movement of which participate in both the macroscopic macroscopic objects, directly accessible to and the microscopic. These systems, our measuring and control instruments, is known as ‘mesoscopic’, function dictated by the laws of classical mechanics quantum-mechanically but since they which, at any moment, allow for the consist of a large number of atoms, they analysis and correction of this movement have the necessary complexity to interact to the finest degree. By contrast, directly with our measuring instruments microscopic particles obey the laws of and be assembled easily from a set of quantum mechanics, which associate any standard parts, forming a sort of input of information on their trajectory construction kit, comparable to the game with a minimum uncontrollable of Lego. They thus prefigure what full- perturbation of that trajectory. Hence, the blown quantum machines could be, such problem of the observation and control of as quantum computers. Such machines microscopic systems. could for example push back the limits of data processing to the level required by What makes quantum mechanics fascinating fundamental laws, using a minimum of is the fact that the chaotic and disorderly time and energy, and pursue the character that seems to emerge from the miniaturization of transistors up to the uncertainty principle is more than molecular stage. Perhaps they could even compensated by the order created by another make use of certain phenomena specific to quantum principle: interference. According quantum mechanics, such as to this principle, a confined system can adopt entanglement, in order to perform only discrete states of energy (in the sense operations inaccessible to regular that they are not connected continuously) machines. Or maybe, beyond a certain This inaugural lecture will and this introduces a natural digitization into threshold of complexity, they will show shortly be available from mechanics. anomalies in quantum laws, which up to Editions Fayard. The video can be downloaded from now have never been proved wrong.” the Collège de France Consequently, when it is plunged into a website. noisy environment, the quantum-

12 THE LETTER - N° 2 NEWS OF THE CHAIRS

CLIMATE AND OCEAN EVOLUTION

Panama and the deep Atlantic circulation

Study published in the 22 February A key region of this system is Central 2007 issue of Nature. America, a narrow continental strip separating the Atlantic and Pacific The likelihood of ocean currents Oceans. On the Atlantic side the surface slowing down in the Atlantic due to the waters are characterized by intense present-day sea surface temperature evaporation, which increases their increases is no longer disputed, even if salinity. The water vapour is then uncertainties remain as to the extent carried by trade winds to the Pacific and speed of future changes (see box where it falls as rain, thus reducing the Prof. Édouard Bard page 14). By contrast, the inter-tropical salinity of surface water there. This zone’s response to such rapid variations exchange of water vapour between the of the ocean-atmosphere couple and the two basins is equivalent to several impact of that response on ocean hundred thousand cubic metres per currents are still largely unknown. second. This huge transfer of fresh water maintains a constant contrast of The paleoclimatic approach is the only salinity between the two oceans. The one that makes it possible to document surface waters of the tropical Atlantic this type of environmental variation, are then transported, via the Gulf especially since it is now recognized that Stream, towards high latitudes where such abrupt events were frequent during they warm the atmosphere, before the last glaciation. In particular, cold sinking to the abyss in convection zones climate phases, called Heinrich events, situated in the Greenland, Iceland, which occurred during that period were Norwegian, and Labrador Seas. The characterized by the collapse of deep deep waters thus formed then flow into Atlantic currents due to an influx of the world’s oceans, purging the North fresh water following the destabilization Atlantic of some of its excess of salt. of ice sheets. Based on many geochemical indicators Climate archives such as marine or measured in marine sediments extracted lacustrine sedimentation, polar ice and in 2002 West of the Isthmus of Panama stalagmites clearly show that these by the French oceanographic vessel the changes of the deep ocean currents are Marion Dufresne, a team from the Aix- concomitant with large-scale climatic en-Provence CEREGE(1) reconstructed variations. While the most extensive the salinity variations of surface waters, temperature variations are observed in in the zone where water vapour the North Atlantic region, recent evaporated in the Atlantic is deposited. research has shown that these rapid This original study shows that the climatic changes have an influence on a Heinrich cold periods correspond to planetary scale, in particular by salinity increases in the East Pacific affecting the water cycle. It seems that zone, fingerprint of a reduction in the they are accompanied by a shift in the water vapour transport. latitude (towards the south during cold events and towards the north during hot By comparing their results with other events) of the climatic equator studies in the Atlantic sector and in separating the trade wind systems of the South America, researchers have two hemispheres (inter-tropical zone of proposed a new positive feedback on convergence). climate dynamics, that is, a mechanism

1. Centre européen de recherche et d’enseignement des géosciences de l’environnement (CNRS, Universités Aix-Marseille 3 et 1, IRD et Collège de France).

N° 2 - THE LETTER 13 which amplifies climate change. During Atlantic basin (especially in Europe). climate crises, the humid trade winds This new climate feedback can be migrate southwards. Blocked by the studied by means of numerical models Andean cordillera, some of the rain combining the atmosphere and oceans. which normally reduces the salinity of Available simulations suggest that this the Eastern Pacific falls into the Amazon phenomenon does indeed exist. Further drainage basin (see figure). This calculations would be required to feedback involving the ocean, air quantify this feedback by means of currents, the topography and the models with a high enough spatial network of rivers has the effect of re- resolution to adequately represent the injecting rainwater into the Atlantic, of topography of the mountain ranges of thus reducing its salinity, and finally of the tropical zone. slowing down its deep circulation.

This new study therefore shows that a close relationship exists between tropical hydrology and the North Atlantic currents, which impacts on the climate above and around the North

Further readings: Leduc, G., Vidal, L., Tachikawa, K., Rostek, F., Sonzogni, C., Beaufort, L, Bard, E., ‘Moisture transport across Central America as a positive feedback on abrupt climatic changes’, Nature vol. 445, 908-911. Research contacts: Legend: Annual mean rainfall anomaly simulated by models after a collapse of deep ocean circula- Guillaume Leduc (PhD at the CEREGE): tion (increase in blue, decrease in red; from [email protected] Stouffer et al., 2006). Edouard Bard (Professor at the Collège de The arrow with the broken line represents the France, Head of the Geochemistry and current flow of water vapour. The arrows with bold lines indicate water transport (trade winds -> Paleoceanography team at the CEREGE): rivers -> ocean currents) during the climatic event. [email protected] The crosses show the sites of paleoclimatic studies. http://www.cerege.fr/tracorga/

What future for deep Atlantic currents?

Simulations to establish predictions for the next century, based on various scenarios of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, generally show a progressive reduction in the intensity of deep ocean currents in the North Atlantic. In some cases these currents could even end up collapsing - i.e. exceeding a threshold beyond which a return to the former state would become very difficult - and reaching a new stable state in which they were even weaker. In parallel, oceanographic data from the past fifty years suggest that hydrographic changes (temperature and salinity), as well as a reduction of water flows transported by certain marine currents, both at the surface and at great depths, have already occurred in the North Atlantic. In addition, satellite data show a recent acceleration in the melting of Greenland ice. Even if there are still many uncertainties, it seems that the risk of a slowdown and/or a collapse of the deep ocean circulation by the end of the century or the beginning of the next century has to be taken seriously and actively studied.

14 THE LETTER - N° 2 HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION OF THE ACHAEMENID WORLD AND OF THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER

Launch of MAVI, the Virtual Achaemenid Museum

From 1999 onwards a main focus of the project in the right direction, we asked newly created chair has been to contribute to Philippe Bertin, a computer consultant, site the development of an encompassing developer and graphic designer, to join the Internet platform. The project aims to be, on team. In addition, Pierre Briant was backed the one hand, a crossroads of by an international steering committee communications and exchanges between charged with the task of negotiating with the specialists based at a whole range of different world’s largest museums and institutions, countries, and, on the other hand, a which are also the richest in terms of repertory of existing documentation, which Achaemenid objects. Among these are the Prof. Pierre Briant can be accessed and handled by newly- British Museum, the Musée du Louvre, the developed tools. It is against this background Bibliothèque Nationale de France, but also that, in the summer of 2000, American, Dutch, German, Swiss and www.achemenet.com was created. The site, Iranian museums. All these have welcomed re-developed in 2005, will soon celebrate its our project with great enthusiasm. By sixth anniversary. Throughout the global consequence, we have been able, in the academic community it is nowadays course of the subsequent years, to collect considered to be the central locus for almost 8,000 objects of which we now Achaemenid Studies. Another branch of the possess about ten thousand images in a very aforementioned project had hitherto not yet high resolution, stored on a server donated to been developed, however, as a result of the project. At the same time, thanks to the technical difficulties: the gathering and data provided to us by the cooperating rendering accessible of tens of thousands of institutions, but also thanks to the work of Achaemenid objects, originating from the Marie-Françoise Clergeau, Salima Larabi vast expanses between the Indus and the and part-time aides, every object is Mediterranean, created during the period of accompanied by a file containing a highly the Great Kings’ supremacy over these detailed description that meets academic regions (550-330 BC), and since then standards. Thanks to fine-tuned technical dispersed over a dozens of different museum innovations, the Internet user can visit a and institutions all over the world. given collection, but can also create his own personal archive (which he may save and The first contacts and reflections on the reuse during a subsequent session), submit project between Pierre Briant and José queries (thanks to the powerful Sinequa® Paumard (Maître de conférences de Génie search engine), and has access to an on-line informatique at Paris-XIII), at the end of help function (which gives him instructions 2001, quickly led to the conclusion that a by means of animations). Simultaneously, custom-made site would be a necessity, that the project also aims at a wider public and this site would require functions that were for this purpose internal navigation has been not yet fully developed at that point, and expedited. In addition, an animated that these functions would be embedded in introduction (using Warmseason® software) software that had to be specifically written for the site, which would take the shape of an immense on-line data-base. Once the scientific part of the project had been precisely delineated and approved, José Paumard invested all his research time to developing specific software and building the electronic architecture of the nascent Chariot from the Oxus treasure “musée achéménide virtuel et interactif” Seal impression © Badisches Landesmuseum © British Museum (MAVI). In order to help us conduct the Karlsruhe

N° 2 - THE LETTER 15 on the Achaemenid empire, written by narrow sense (historians, archaeologists, P. Briant and created by Ph. Bertin, as well as museum keepers), but also of those from the several modes to visualise the contents of the humanities at large, from social sciences, and site have been put in place. from computer sciences. This, in short, is the philosophy of a project that has by now been Fundamentally, the MAVI program enables partially realised, that has been, and will its staff to accomplish a task of prime continue to be, a generator of technological importance for both the present and the innovation, and that embraces the ideal of future. In fact, the cataloguing, archiving and being applicable to other academic forums as consulting of data on cultural patrimony well. Though we are well aware that there have become decisive concerns in current remains much to be done, the response in Vase handle, © Louvre thinking about cultural and scientific affairs. the daily and weekly press, in France and in The start of the 21st century marks a Europe (September-October 2006), has moment particularly well-conditioned for shown that the choices we have made are creating technical solutions for problems that considered to be the right solutions. cannot be solved by the existence of ‘real’ Simultaneously, a considerable number of museums alone: preserving cultural the world’s museums have now declared patrimony and rendering it accessible. The their willingness to join our adventure. joint progress achieved in digitalisation, in Briefly, launched in September 2006 after data-basing, and in Internet data- five years of intense preparation, MAVI transferring, render possible what seemed remains a project for the future, a project in impossible only yesterday. Today it is continuous development. therefore the solemn responsibility of researchers and academic institutions to set themselves to the task of gathering data, archive it, and provide an access to those immensely rich artistic, archaeological and cultural archives – now still dispersed over hundreds of locations and publications, museums and their reserves, catalogues, excavation reports, articles and studies – by engendering a vast international cooperation, not only of specialists of the discipline in Cilician coinage © Bibliothèque Nationale

http://www.museum-achemenet.college-de-france.fr

A brochure in .pdf format can be downloaded at http://www.museum-achemenet.college-de-france.fr/doc/plaquette-MAVI-EN.pdfnt. n

16 THE LETTER - N° 2 QUANTUM PHYSICS

Life and death of a photon: a new way to look

The photon is the ubiquitous particle of light 2.7 centimetre (see photo). The photons (which which carries nearly all information we get from have a wavelength of about 6 millimetre) bounce the outside world. It usually disappears while more than a billion times between these mirrors being detected. The retina, for instance, absorbs before escaping through scattering on mirror’s light, changing it into an electrical current which imperfections or absorption in the bulk of the triggers the optical nerve. A similar phenomenon metal. Such a high reflectivity, thousands of times occurs on the photo-sensitive surface of usual light larger than that of the best optical mirrors, is detectors, so that information carried by the obtained by coating the mirrors with a layer of photons is generally destroyed in the very process superconducting metal, cooled down to an Prof. Serge Haroche which records it. We certainly can see a absolute temperature below one degree. The macroscopic object as many times as we wish, mirrors substrate is polished with a roughness of but the photons which bring its image to our eye a few nanometers only. A photon travels in this are at each time new ones. cavity over an average distance equal to the Earth circumference before vanishing. The appearance To die while delivering its message is however not of a photon in the box is due to the radiation of the ineluctable photon’s fate. Quantum theory, its walls. Even at the very low temperature of the which describes the behaviour of Nature at the mirrors, their atoms have a residual thermal microscopic scale, tells us that it is indeed possible excitation which produces from time to time the to count light quanta without absorbing them, by emission of a light quantum. The laws of this so- realizing what is known as a quantum non- called blackbody radiation have been first demolition measurement (QND for short). Non- described by Planck and Einstein at the beginning destructive QND procedures have been successively of the last century. Their seminal papers have been applied to light beams containing large photon the starting point of the quantum revolution. numbers, but it had not been possible so far to reach a sensitivity high enough to record repeatedly The long lifetime of our photons is by itself not and non-destructively single light particles. exceptional. In free space, a photon lives forever. The light that we receive from the outskirts of the This is precisely what we have achieved recently, Universe, which has travelled through empty by implementing a QND method that we had space during billions of years is a direct evidence proposed back in 1990. We have been able to of the longevity of light quanta. To store for a observe hundreds of times the same photon long time a trapped photon is however very trapped in a box. After a perceptible delay which difficult. We must then have it interact with a can reach half a second, the light particle finally material medium such as the reflecting walls of a disappears, in a sudden process occurring at a cavity, or the transparent medium of an optical random time. We have witnessed in this way the fibre. Under such conditions, the photon gets story of single photons and recorded the times of easily absorbed and becomes very fragile. The their birth and death. This experiment, whose light quanta stored in our superconducting box results have recently been published in Nature, set a world record for the longevity of light has required two conditions that were not fulfilled trapped in a small volume. at the time of our early proposal. We had to trap light in a box for a tenth of a second on average, In order to observe our photons, we send one in order to have the time to perform repeated by one across the cavity rubidium atoms observations. We had also to develop a new kind prepared in a very excited state known as a of atomic detector able to record the imprint of a Rydberg state. One of the atomic electrons is single photon without absorbing its energy. It has promoted by laser excitation in an orbit of large taken us several years of strenuous efforts to meet size, whose radius is more than a thousand © D.R. © these challenges. times larger than that of the electronic orbital in The photon box the atom’s ground state. This very excited atom Our microwave photon box is made of two acts as a giant antenna, very sensitive to metallic mirrors facing each other at a distance of microwave radiation. An obvious way to use

N° 2 - THE LETTER 17 these atoms for caesium or rubidium atom is induced by a double detecting a photon is to microwave pulse, generating a signal used to lock have them absorb a the microwave to the atomic frequency. In this light quantum while way, a very precise time standard is realized. In our undergoing a resonant experiment, each Rydberg atom is like a transition from an initial microscopic clock whose ticking is slightly delayed Rydberg state (called g) by the field of a photon. The perturbation of the Birth and death of a photon observed by the sudden to a more excited level clock’s rate is measured by the atomic signal (atom changes of the atomic signal over time: the vertical bars represent an atom detected in e (red) or in g e. By measuring the final detected in ewhen the clock has been delayed by (blue). In this figure, whose size is reduced with atomic energy, we see a photon, in g otherwise). respect to the original, bars are separated by a the photon, but by the distance smaller than their width, giving the feeling same process, it is The figure shows a two and a half second-long of a continuous signal, blue for vacuum and red for one photon. Red bars on top of blue background absorbed and thus sequence during which 2500 atoms are detected and blue on top of red background are due to destroyed. A new either in e(red bars) or in g(blue bars). During the measurement errors. measurement will then first second, the atoms, mostly detected in g, (Reproduction with the permission of Macmillan tell us, with certainty, indicate that the cavity is empty (a few atoms Publishers Ltd : Nature, S.Gleyzes et al, 2007.) that the cavity is empty. found in eare due to imperfections of the set-up). The signal then suddenly changes, with a majority For the measurement to be QND, the photon of atoms detected in e. A photon from the thermal must leave on the atom a subtler imprint. To radiation background has appeared between the achieve this, we render different the frequency of mirrors. In this particular sequence, the photon the photon and that of the atomic transition survives for about half a second, i.e. more than between states e and g. By adjusting the mirrors’ three times the average lifetime of the photons in separation, we slightly detune the photon from the cavity. It then disappears as suddenly as it the atom. Energy conservation then prevents the appeared, leaving the cavity empty. The sudden atom from absorbing the light. The photon appearances and vanishings of light occur as fast slightly changes however the frequency of the quantum jumps, at random times. Only their atomic transition. This light shift effect is well probability can be predicted. By recording known in atomic physics when it is produced by thousands of such jumps over many hours, we intense fields. In the unusual situation which we have directly checked all the statistical properties are dealing with here, the field of a single photon of thermal radiation. shifts by a detectable amount the rotation frequency of the Rydberg electron around the This novel non-destructive way to look illustrates atomic nucleus. a fundamental quantum process never observed so far on light, and opens fascinating perspectives. This shift is detected by a very sensitive method of For the first time, information carried by a photon atomic spectroscopy, involving auxiliary can be shared by a large number of atoms microwave fields. We subject the atom to two interacting one at a time with the field. It is microwave pulses, the first before it enters the possible to realize a situation where the cavity is cavity, the second immediately after it leaves it. in a superposition of two states, one in which it References : These pulses have their frequency and amplitude is empty, the other in which it contains a photon. 1. S. Gleyzes, S. Kuhr, C. Guerlin, J. Bernu, tuned so that their combined effect is to bring the To achieve this, we can send across it a first S. Deléglise, U. Busk Hoff, atom from gto eprovided its frequency has been resonant atom, adjusting its interaction time with M. Brune, J.-M. Raimond and shifted by a single photon in the cavity. If there is the field so that it has a 50% probability for S. Haroche, « Quantum no photon, the pulses cannot induce the transition emitting a photon. Subsequent atoms will then be Jumps of light recording the birth and death of a photon in and the atom remains instead in state g. The detuned in order to realize a QND detection. a cavity », Nature, 446, 297 energy absorbed by the atom in the former case They will finally end up in a superposition of two (2007). is borrowed from the auxiliary pulses and not states, one in which they are all in e, the other in 2. S. Kuhr, S. Gleyzes, from the cavity field. The photon is still there after which they are all in g. This strange superposition C. Guerlin, J. Bernu, U. Busk Hoff, S. Deléglise, S. Osnaghi, having been observed and it is ready to be seen exhibits a quantum ambiguity analogous to that M. Brune, J.-M. Raimond, again by another atom. of the famous Schrödinger cat which, after S. Haroche, E. Jacques, interacting with a single atom, ends up being at P. Bosland and B. Visentin, This time resolved spectroscopy procedure, the same time alive and dead. The study of these « Ultrahigh finesse Fabry-Pérot superconducting invented by the physicist Norman Ramsey, is states will help us understand better the nature resonator », Applied Physics currently used in all atomic clocks. In these of the fuzzy boundary between the quantum and Letters, 90, 164101 (2007). devices, the transition between two states of a the classical worlds.

18 THE LETTER - N° 2 GUEST LECTURERS

Kathinka EVERS Professor, Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institutet & invited by the Assembly of the Professors on the proposition of Profs Anne Fagot-Largeault and Jean-Pierre Changeux She has given 7, 14, 22 et 28 november 2006 four lectures entitled: 1. When Matter Awakens. The open mind and its enemies 2. The Responsible Brain. Free will and personal responsibility in the wake of neuroscience 3. The Neural Basis of Morality. The naturalistic fallacy revisited

4. Helping the Brain Forget. Perspectives on therapeutic forgetting D.R. ©

When Matter Awakens observations and measurements into act of will can be “free” in the sense The open mind and its enemies account; and (3) depicts the brain as of being “voluntary” even though it a consciously and unconsciously is a brain construct that is causally The 21st century has seen autonomously active, plastic, determined and influenced by non- neuroscience develop rapidly and a projective and narrative organ conscious neuronal processes. new academic discipline emerge: evolved in socio-cultural-biological Contingent causation is compatible neuroethics, the attempt to explain symbiosis; and (4) posits emotion as with free choice, a model for which moral judgment in partly the hallmark of consciousness. the neuroscientific variability neurobiological terms. Neuroethics Emotions made matter awaken and theorem offers empirical support. inspires hope as well as enabled it to produce a dynamic, Behaviour that is contingently caused apprehension, and historic awareness flexible and open mind. As depicted by non-conscious neuronal processes is essential in order to determine the by informed materialism, the can qualify as “voluntary” on the nature and raison d’être of this young neuronal person is truly awake, in the assumption of mutual influence research area. The aim in this lecture deepest sense of the word. between conscious and non- is to present neuroethics together conscious volitional neuronal with a dynamic model of the human The Responsible Brain processes. Both conscious and non- brain and mind upon which Free will and personal conscious volition can be voluntarily neuroethics can fruitfully be responsibility in the wake of influenced; accordingly, both can constructed. Scientific theories about neuroscience entail responsibility: we may carry human nature and mind in the 19th personal responsibility for the and 20th centuries were occasionally The ideas of free will and personal influence we exert both over caught in two major traps: responsibility function as social conscious and over non-conscious ideological hijacking and fundaments. All human societies neural states and processes and are, psychophobia, notably in the form of presume that adult, healthy in that sense, responsible for some of naïve eliminativism, and naïve individuals are morally, socially and the things that our non-conscious cognitivism. To avoid them, legally responsible for their actions, makes us do. In this account, non- neuroethics needs to build on the provided that they have acted freely conscious volition is not in principle sound scientific and philosophical and not under constraints. Free will is exempt from moral responsibility. foundations of informed materialism, also a fundamental structure of Given a certain level of maturity and that (1) adopts an evolutionary view human experience, a transcendental health, the volitional human brain of consciousness as an irreducible neuronal structure, like space, time embedded in its cultural, social and part of biological reality, an evolved and causality. The experience of free historical context is a responsible function of the brain and a suitable will has been considered “illusory”, organ. object of scientific study; e.g., by virtue of being (1) a brain (2) acknowledges that adequate construct, (2) causally determined, or The Neural Basis of Morality understanding of conscious, (3) non-consciously initiated. In line The naturalistic fallacy subjective experience must take both with the informed materialism revisited subjective information obtained by presented in the previous lecture, and self-reflection and objective as an extension thereof, a The explanatory relevance of information obtained from neurophilosophical model of free will neuroscience to moral thought anatomical and physiological shall here be suggested in which an presupposes an informed materialist

N° 2 - THE LETTER 19 model of the mind and the brain of our brains determines our social suffering from disorders is laudable, that takes variability, emotions and behaviour including our moral and from an ethical point of view creative thinking into account. dispositions, which influences the there is no intrinsic problem with According to informed materialism types of society that we create, and, the development of methods to the brain is a variable, selectional vice versa, our socio-cultural induce therapeutic forgetting. If system in which values are structures influence the controlled use of propranolol can incorporated as necessary development of our brains. This is cure people from, or help prevent constraints. Biologically speaking, compatible with the position that PTSD that is laudatory. In contrast, no creature with a brain is born norms cannot logically be derived it may encounter extrinsic problems value-free; it is neurobiologically from facts on pain of committing if the techniques are misused or predisposed to develop these the naturalistic fallacy, which is an inadequately justified scientifically. complex and varied systems of irrelevant objection to informed Whether the benefits are sufficient values that enable it to function in materialism. to counterbalance the possible risks its physical and social of (civilian or military) misuse is an environments. In this model, the Helping the Brain Forget essentially socio-political question human propensity for passing moral Perspectives on therapeutic that natural and social scientists, judgment and capacity to perform forgetting philosophers and policy-makers free and responsible moral choices must answer by joint efforts. do not only make logical and Human beings strive to use their practical sense but are biologically advancing knowledge about brain unavoidable for adult, healthy architecture to achieve increasing individuals. Four innate closely control over their brain’s design and related preferential tendencies have functions. One of the most desired evolved in the human species: self- goals of human brain design is to interest, desire for control and gain mastery of our own memories: security, dissociation from what is enhancing our capacity to considered disagreeable or remember as well as our ability to threatening (e.g., our own body, or forget. The human brain needs to nature), and selective sympathy maintain equilibrium between versus antipathy towards others, memory and oblivion and naturally both of which presuppose empathy rejects irrelevant or disruptive (understanding) of others. Empathy memories. However, extensive is directed to far larger groups than amounts of stress hormones sympathy: by nature, humans are released at the time of a traumatic empathetic xenophobes typically event can give rise to such powerful dissociating themselves from most memory formation that traumatic other creatures. The neurobiology memories cannot be rejected and do of sympathy and antipathy, and our not vanish or diminish with time: numerous ‘we-they’ distinctions, as post-traumatic stress disorder may expressed, e.g., in racial or ethnic then develop. Recent pilot studies in attitudes, are increasingly being the field suggest that it is possible to studied. It is an important task for help the brain forget disturbing neuroscience to diagnose the human memories and induce so-called predicament in neurobiological “therapeutic forgetting”. Beta- terms, knowledge that can be useful, blockers stopping the action of these e.g., in the development of stress hormones are suggested to educational structures, or in the reduce the emotional impact of assessment of methods to remedy disturbing memories or prevent social problems. The theoretical and their consolidation. Such methodological relevance of intervention could in principle help neuroscience to ethics is strong and people who suffer from post- fast developing. According to the traumatic stress disorder, but the theory of neuronal epigenesis, socio- idea of doing so is both scientifically cultural and neuronal structures and ethically controversial. The aim develop symbiotically with mutual to gain control over memory causal relevance. The architecture functions in order to help people

20 THE LETTER - N° 2 Paolo MANCOSU Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) invited by the Assembly of the Professors on the proposition of Prof. Jacques Bouveresse. He has given 29 march 2007, one lecture entitled: Mathematical explanation: Why it matters

The topic of mathematical in recent discussions on the philosophical reflection but it explanation has recently been the indispensability argument. In particular, confronts us as a data from subject of much interest. Although a recent article by Baker (Mind, 2005) mathematical practice. A mathe- attention to mathematical explanation proposes a new version of the matician (or a community of goes back to the Greeks, the recent indispensability argument that, unlike mathematicians) might find a proof of revival in the analytic literature is a the traditional one, does not depend on a certain result absolutely convincing welcome addition to the philosophy holism. The idea is that we ought to be but nonetheless he (they) might be of mathematics. In this talk I have set committed not to any part of unsatisfied with it for it does not myself two goals. The first is that of mathematics that gets applied in science provide an explanation of the fact in giving a survey of the literature on but only to those parts of mathematics question. After providing evidence mathematical explanation and of how that play an essential role in the from several mathematicians, the different contributions in this area explanation of scientific facts. This is an including Mordell and Brumfiel, I are connected. Secondly, I would like interesting line of thought but we still discuss the two major accounts of to show that mathematical badly need case studies of mathematical mathematical explanation available in explanation is a topic that has far- explanations of scientific facts that will the literature, those of Steiner and reaching ramifications for many areas allow us to obtain a better conceptual Kitcher, and point out their short- of philosophy including, in addition understanding of this type of comings using some of my recent to philosophy of mathematics, explanatory activity. work and other literature in the area. epistemology, metaphysics, and The last section of the talk relates the philosophy of science. After pointing out that similar problem of mathematical explanation indispensability arguments can also be to that of abstraction and generality I begin by clarifying two possible developed within pure mathematics in mathematics. meanings of mathematical explanation. and that it is unlikely that an account In the first sense ‘mathematical of mathematical explanation of I conclude by summarizing why the explanation’ refers to explanations in scientific facts will be independent of problem of mathematical explanation the natural or social sciences where an account of explanation within pure matters to epistemology, ontology, and various mathematical facts play an mathematics, I proceed to discuss philosophy of science. essential role in the explanation explanations in pure mathematics. provided. The second sense is that of The history of the philosophy of explanation within mathematics itself. mathematics shows that a major The interest of mathematical conceptual role has been played by the explanations of scientific facts consists, opposition between proofs that from the point of view of theories of convince but do not explain and explanation, in the challenge they pose proofs that in addition to provide the to the causal theory of explanation. required conviction that the result is However, until recently very little true also show why it is true. attention has been devoted to them. Philosophically, as I have shown in Accounting for such explanations is not previous work, this tradition begins an easy task as it requires an account with Aristotle’s distinction between to of how mathematics hooks on to oti and to dioti proofs and has a rich reality, e.g. an account of the history passing through, among applicability of mathematics to reality. others, the Logic of Port Royal written And this opens the Pandora box of by Arnauld and Nicole, Bolzano, and models, idealization, etc. In addition, Cournot. The opposition between mathematical explanations of scientific explanatory and non-explanatory facts have also played an important role proofs is not only a product of

N° 2 - THE LETTER 21 Adelheid OTTO Professor at the University Ludwig-Maximilian of Munich (Germany) invited by the Assembly of the Professors on the proposition of Prof. Jean-Marie Durand She has given 16 and 19 march 2007, two lectures entitled: 1. Tall Bazi, fortress in the Euphrates valley from the IIIrd millennium BC until Roman times 2. Tuttul/Tell Bica, a Syrian metropolis in the Bronze Age.

Tall Bazi is situated in Northern ressembling a palace can be founded during the following periods until Syria at the upper Syrian Euphrates in any of the investigated settlements. Roman times, when the border within the Tishrin dam salvage area. Only houses and temples are attested between the province ‚Syria’ and the Rescue excavations were conducted for Tell Hadidi (Azu), Meskene Parthian Empire was situated here by the German Archaeological (Emar), Munbaqa (Ekalte) and Tall in the Euphrates valley. Institute Damascus (1993-1998), Fray. since 1999 by the Ludwig- The ancient name of the site may be Maximilians-University Munich Our excavations at the fortified deduced from an inscription of the and financed by the DFG. They are Citadel of Bazi revealed the same Akkadian king Narâm-Sin (appr. directed by Berthold Einwag and situation: on its plateau their is no 2250 BC). His description of the Adelheid Otto. residence, but a temple with two Citadel of ‚Armanum’ fits quite well rooms. 38 m long and 16 m wide the archaeological remains at Tall The site consists of three parts: the with 3m broad walls, it is one of the Bazi. Armanum equals Armi/ Citadel, the Northern Lower Town largest temples in Syria during the Armium of the Ebla-texts, the city and the Western Lower Town. Bronze age. Two cuneiform tablets, which is after Mari et Emar most While most of the lower town has found on the floor of the temple, are often mentioned in the texts. The been flooded, the Citadel, situated royal documents of the Mitannian Ebla texts concerning Armi/Armium on a 60m high, natural mountain kings Saushtatar and Artatama (end confirm our identification, as well as spur, now borders the Tishrin lake. of XV and early XIV cent. BC). the etymology of the name Armi, derived from cRM, “steep height”. The „Weststadt“ is an enlargement of The entrance of the temple, the ancient settlement, that is a ‚new excavated in 2006, was flanked by The Citadel represents the highest town’ of the Late Bronze age (XIV- two lion orthostats, of which only part of the Early Bronze age town. XII cent. BC). The houses still the paws are preserved. Nevertheless, In total, the ancient town covered contained most of the inventories, they take an important place within an area of 39 ha and thus because the settlement was violently the corpus of lion orthostats (a constitutes one of the largest Syrian destroyed and burned. This allows to common decoration in the following towns during Early Bronze age IV. reconstruct the function of the single Iron age): only the orthostats at Ebla The elaborated fortification of the rooms and the houses on a whole. The (XVIII cent. BC) are definitely older. citadel supposes that there stood striking uniformity of the 50 important buildings ontop. Indeed, excavated houses as well as the The defense of the Citadel was in all the trenches we uncovered BA relatively similar size of the plots speak effected by an elaborated system of IV levels on top of the rock. We in favor of a little stratified society. walls, which ran around the steep hope to have the opportunity to Although 10,000 m2 have been flanks of the hill, and by an artificial investigate the nature of these excavated, no buildings other than ditch which separated the Citadel of structures in the future. domestic structures came to light. the mountain ridge. In 2004 building 2 was discovered, a highly The contemporary texts from the fortified entrance of the Early neighbouring cities Emar, Ekalte and Bronze Age IV, close to the artificial Azu show that the ‚Elders with the city ditch. It clearly demonstrates that god’ guided the fate of the cities and all the Citadel dates to the IIIrd the ‚Brothers’ decided in private law millennium – one of the most affairs. This little stratified society is intriguing results. For the moment mirrored not only in the architecture this is the most ancient fortress on a of Tall Bazi, but also of other sites of hill which exists in the Near East. Euphrates valley: no building Apparently it continued to be used

22 THE LETTER - N° 2 A RTIFICIAL MAN IN THE SERVICE OF SOCIETY C OLLÈGE DE F RANCE REOPENING SYMPOSIUM 12 AND 13 OCTOBER 2006

The title of this symposium may Medicine, by contrast, appears as a seem disturbing or provocative. technique of reparation and care, ‘Artificial man’ conjures up the aimed at combating death and spectre of Golem, Frankenstein or disease, at overcoming deficits, at the many other frightening creatures helping those suffering from in myths and other fruits of the disabilities. It invites us to imagination. It was therefore reconsider the common tendency to interesting to go back over this discredit the artificial and to mythology of the artificial man and celebrate the natural. We need to be robots that has haunted human reminded that death is natural, that imagination and culture at least plants are often toxic, that since Hephaestus, Vulcan and venomous animals do exist, that Daedalus. disease is natural too and that we are overwhelmed by epidemics. This The idea that one can actually is enough to have some reservations Profs. Jean-Pierre Changeux and Pierre Corvol replace humans by machines is on the hypothesis of an ‘intelligent’ nothing new. The Greek gods were plan that supposedly organized precursors in this respect. The Iliad nature rationally, contrary to neo- the doctor cannot heal us, it is suggests that Hephaestus was one Darwinian evolutionary theories. because science is too slow. Among of the first to produce artificial our contemporaries a demand is creatures, with his golden Let us praise the artificial. Medicine is developing for artificiality. maidservants and animated tripods a human invention to fight against the carrying the products of his forge suffering and all the evils plaguing Without lapsing into technophile to Olympia. King Minos’ Crete humanity in the natural world. It is and scientistic optimism, we can was guarded by Talus, a brazen above all artificial. We actually live in consider that, on the whole, robot which, when incandescent, an increasingly artificial world. Our technological developments have clasped the king’s enemies in a food has been artificial for a long time. contributed towards the welfare of fatally warm embrace. Plants used for food have been selected most people in industrialized genetically since the Neolithic, through societies. Technophobic mistrust A series of myths and legends relate a slow transformation of natural may be fashionable nowadays, but attempts to create artificial beings. varieties. It took tens, even hundreds of it is not all that unjustified to have Some, like Pygmalion’s statue, are thousands of years to select varieties confidence in science and to place appealing; most are frightening. The for human consumption. reasonable hopes in it. Renaissance mechanics and the Technological developments and automats and machines of the 17th artificiality have thus been introduced To be sure, this invasion of the and 18th centuries gave a touch of not only into medicine but also into technological for the good of technical and optimistic reality to food. Very often the artificial frightens, humanity is not devoid of problems. these early dreams from Greek when food is concerned; we In medicine, finance and all the antiquity. Finally, with the cognitive disapprove of everything that seems to domains that rely on increasingly sciences and neurosciences, debates be ‘chemical’ or ‘genetic’ in food. But powerful technologies, those same arose on the conception of the mind that means forgetting that an apple technologies expose us to failures as a machine and even on the consists of nothing but chemical and errors, and can be diverted from conception of virtual human beings. elements, like our bodies and brains. their initial purposes. There is thus a long cultural tradition concerning machines, Praising the artificial requires us to The universalism of technology sometimes constructive, sometimes remember that in this world of warrants closer examination. Most destructive and conveying a more or techniques and artefacts in which we important, probably, is to ensure less veiled threat of destruction of live, we expect machines to function that these techniques and artificial humanity. more and more efficiently. When the facilities made available to telephone is down we feel helpless. If humanity are equally distributed on

N° 2 - THE LETTER 23 a global scale. The symposium humanity as a whole, without any new ways of thinking and living. hardly addressed this question, as distinction of cultural or ethnic Instead, it is probably necessary for the scientific committee chose to groups, its results and the benefits everyone to agree to alter their own focus on certain concrete aspects of that can be expected from it as identity a little, to the benefit of a scientific and technical progress and regards living conditions and truly collective and universal of living conditions, and to quality of life – a concept that is common good. We must guard postpone the examination of social difficult to define. In parallel, we against communautariste ideas that aspects to a later symposium. Yet an note that human groups are emphasize cultural differences and equal distribution of the benefits of withdrawing into themselves and claim that they are immutable. In science and technology on a global engaging in serious wars. A the spirit of human rights and by level should be a priority, in the profound disharmony is therefore means of education, we should, on name of justice and human rights. appearing between scientific the contrary, develop our thinking We are still very far from that goal. evolution and the life of individuals and agree to change, even if it This is one of the problems, for in society. This has crucial means giving up a part of our example, with medical and implications for education. identity. Education is the crucial pharmaceutical research which Education takes place during the point here. Yet the accent is put on concentrates primarily on diseases period in which our brain is the potential developments of prevalent in developed countries. developing and the synapses are science and technology, and too Fortunately certain forces are formed. This cultural epigenesis is a little attention is paid to children’s striving to solve these problems: slow, gradual process which education and the cultural organizations such as INSERM, the impregnates the brain, in a sense, environment in which they live, so Pasteur Institute and private for the rest of the person’s life. It is often saturated with violence foundations are endeavouring to difficult to teach a new language to through the media and games. ensure that the benefits of scientific someone who has already learned a Parents need to become aware of progress are spread more evenly native tongue; it seems that a child’s the power of the image and learn across the world. This is a political mind is imbibed with cultural, not to leave their children to watch problem; policy-makers and philosophic and religious traditions television without any adult control. decision-makers need to be made in much the same way. Paul Ricoeur This is the responsibility of parents aware of these issues. compared the establishment of and educators, not of techniques. symbolic systems with the These issues are too often absent We also need to ensure that acquisition of a language. For a from reflection on science and everyone is granted equal protection neurobiologist, acquiring a technology. against risks. Scientific and technical language is the result of physical development demands the most interaction between the signals of basic precautions and risk the outside world and the management. There has to be organization of the brain. We can control by the law courts and equal refer in the same way to the creation protection against possible risks and of ‘cultural circuits’ in the brain. misappropriation, along with compensation, for instance in the Science and techniques are evolving case of disabilities. at an extraordinary pace, in the course of one lifetime, especially These concerns are our responsibility, with the lengthening of life as is stated in the universal expectancy. Most biological declaration of human rights which knowledge has been acquired over invokes the concepts of fraternity and the past twenty to thirty years. This solidarity. These secular and common very rapid evolution of the scientific virtues are bound to no cultural world can clash with the cultural tradition, but simply to a universal imprints that we received during our human nature. childhood.

Another subject of concern, in the The solution depends on our mental context of this contemporary flexibility and the possibility of evolution of science and techniques, changing our views. It is not enough pertains to the future of humanity. to try to find things in common with Science universalizes. It offers others, to seek compromises with

24 THE LETTER - N° 2 The Collège de France has a role to doubts are and should be present in scientific and technical progress play in this reflection. The large scientists, above all. Major cultural which enables humans to live in multi-disciplinary symposiums that conflicts such as those that we are increasingly artificial conditions. it organizes are opportunities for currently experiencing could be This artificiality must be managed encounters between scientific fields avoided if we agreed to submit to a to the benefit of society as a whole. and between differing points of discipline of dialogue and critical We need to conceive of the ethics of view. These encounters are examination like the one found in the future in a more and more conducive to the construction of the sciences. This collective artificial world, and to find critical approaches and changes of construction and universalism of harmony and balance between what opinion. From a political and ethical knowledge is consistent with the we are now and what we are likely point of view, it is important for the spirit of the universal declaration of to be in the future. different scientific disciplines to human rights. The aim of this Jean-Pierre Changeux engage in open and fruitful symposium is therefore to make it (closing address, transcription MK) dialogue, both with one another clear that scientific and technical and with the human sciences. progress is not against humans’ During this symposium the issue of interests; it is in their service. The jurists’ doubts was discussed. Such intention is to take stock of the

TITLES OF THE PAPERS This symposium to launch the “ Around Hephaestus’ golden maidservants ”, the ancient myth of artificial humans John Scheid and Jesper Svendro new academic year, organized Stem cells and therapeutic cloning, Nicole Le Douarin by a scientific committee of Genetic therapy?, Alain Fischer Collège de France professors Chimaera, artifice and imagination, Françoise Héritier under the presidency of Jean- Automats and man-machines: from the Renaissance until today, Bruno Jacomy From symplectic biology to synthetic biology: are we able to construct a living Pierre Changeux, is part of a organism?, Antoine Danchin series of multi-disciplinary The artificial hand, Maria Chiara Carrozza symposiums on major social Blood: replace or copy nature?, Luc Douay issues. The artificial kidney in France, Pierre Corvol The electronic doctor, Patrice Degoulet Mental tools and objects of thought: mathematics, Jean-Pierre Kahane The proceedings of these Is the human brain a Turing machine?, Stanislas Dehaene symposiums are published by From artificial sensors to auditory perception, Christine Petit Odile Jacob. Artificial vision: between myth and reality, José-Alain Sahel Numeric simulations and medicine, Pierre-Louis Lions The symposiums organized at Virtual man, Alain Berthoz the beginning of the academic Children and the electronic virtual, Aldo Naouri Is there a (non-electronic) trader in the hall?, Jean-Michel Lasry year are funded by the Hugot Living with a disability and prostheses, Anne Fagot-Largeault Foundation. Justice between the robot and the reed, Mireille Delmas-Marty Of Machines and Men, Erich Spitz Future humans and human rights, Jean-Pierre Changeux

N° 2 - THE LETTER 25 M ATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND P HILOSOPHY SYMPOSIUM FOR THE COMMEMORATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF LUDWIG BOLTZMANN (1844-1906)

Organized by Prof. Jacques of the structure of matter to be point of view, was the first equation Bouveresse (Collège de France) recognized as valid by everyone’. Of to describe the evolution of a 22 November 2006 course this is even truer a half- probability in time. This equation is century later. Few people are still used today in a multitude of fields, Ludwig Boltzmann, who was born able today to imagine the battle that seemingly very different and distant in 1844 in Vienna, committed Boltzmann had to wage for his ideas from that of the kinetic theory of suicide on 5 September 1906, the to prevail, and the fact that he gases. There is no longer any doubt day before the start of the new eventually could have had the that, as Felix Klein put it, ‘it was academic year, during what was feeling to be completely defeated. Boltzmann, and not Maxwell or supposed to be a period of rest and From an historical point of view this Gibbs, who defined exactly how the relaxation with his family in Duino. is a tragic irony since, in the years second law [of thermodynamics] Predictably, a great deal has been immediately following his death, the relates to probability, thus creating written, speculated and invented ideas for which he had fought and the topic of statistical mechanics’. concerning the real reasons for his which he had not succeeded in suicide. Many myths are still imposing himself, gradually gained Boltzmann has the noteworthy circulating, intended to present him currency almost everywhere. particularity of having been both as a sort of hero and martyr of the one of the last great representatives truth, the victim of Boltzmann was one of the physicists of classical physics, and one of the misunderstanding and persecution who played a decisive part in the pioneers of modern physics. ‘The by a hostile scientific community. evolution and final triumph of the God by the grace of whom the kings Yet, although it is true that his ideas kinetic-molecular theory of heat and reign, is the basic law of mechanics’, were not readily accepted, and even of matter. His name will forever be he said in 1900. He thus continued encountered strong resistance, at the associated with two contributions to affirm the fundamental role of time when he decided to take his that immortalized him: the mechanics in theoretical physics at a own life few physicists in Europe definition of entropy as a well- time when novelty and the future enjoyed a reputation and authority defined mathematical measure of were supposed to be represented by comparable to his. what can be called the ‘disorder’ of energetism, and when he had the atoms – a definition expressed in the feeling of being one of the last to Thus, as well as being the centenary famous formula engraved on his dare to openly defend the point of of the birth of Gödel, another one of tombstone at the Vienna Central view of the Ancients. But his work the most eminent scientists and Cemetery – and Boltzmann’s also had a considerable influence on thinkers that Austria has produced, equation which, from an historical modern physics in a multitude of the year 2006 was the centenary of Boltzmann’s tragic death. It was a centenary that was unfortunately likely to be overshadowed by that of the discovery of the theory of relativity, only one year earlier. In his book Ludwig Boltzmann, Mensch, Physiker, Philosoph, published in 1955, Engelbert Broda commented that ‘at a time when the word “atom” is before the readers’ eyes daily, the layman can hardly conceive of the difficulty that the pioneers of atomic physics had to overcome barely a half-century earlier, for the atomistic conception

26 THE LETTER - N° 2 physicist only because he also had supporter, as well as certain aspects an interest and remarkable skills in of Kuhn’s theory of scientific mathematics (he lectured in pure revolutions.) We now know, mainly mathematics at the University of from manuscripts and letters Vienna from 1873 to 1876). This published recently, that during the was a decisive advantage for him in last years of his life he even tried to the confrontation with the work seriously on philosophy itself representatives of the energetist and to write a philosophical book school, such as Mach, Ostwald and in due form. (There was at that time Helm. He had highly interesting a very interesting correspondence ideas, from today’s point of view, on between him and Brentano, whom what mathematics and physics he, in some sense, took as an adviser could and should learn from each for the philosophical beginner he Prof. Alain Connes other. Boltzmann was for instance had the impression to be.) That particularly concerned about gives us a more precise idea of the ways, especially through Planck’s knowing whether his famous H- reasons why he can be considered work on light quanta and Einstein’s curve – which during the last years as a representative not only of on Brownian motion. Austrian physics, but also of what we have become accustomed to To be sure, the ‘atomic hypothesis’ calling the Austrian philosophical for which Boltzmann relentlessly tradition, and of the way in which fought throughout his life has his ideas influenced a philosopher changed most significantly, like Wittgenstein or the members of especially since the advent of the Vienna Circle, and anticipated quantum physics to which his own certain theses of ‘analytical’ or ideas contributed substantially; and ‘linguistic’ philosophy. He may well of course quantum particles are very have been a pioneer in this field too. Nadine de Courtenay different from classical particles, not If Frege can be seen as the father of to mention the entities which – as analytical philosophy, it is not he himself was able to envisage and of his life, in moments of completely absurd to suggest that explicitly suggested – could depression, he thought was perhaps Boltzmann might have been eventually, in the evolution of meaningless from a physical point somehow one of its grandfathers. physics, take the place of particles of view – had any strictly some day. But, as Roger Penrose mathematical value or not. In a Boltzmann’s contribution to points out, it is precisely letter dated 15 March 1898 to Felix theoretical physics was indeed ‘noteworthy that Boltzmann’s Klein, he wrote: ‘I am delighted that exceptionally important, and the “classical” atomic image functions mathematicians are showing some final acknowledgement of the place so extraordinarily well in normal interest in the H-curve. Something of theoretical physics and theory in conditions’. Despite the fact that he of this kind only gains substance general in science was largely owing considered himself more as a when it is freed by mathematics to the battle that he waged for them representative and defender of from the special physical need’. ancient physics, and that his mode of thinking gives the impression of There has also been some being essentially of the 19th century, awareness, for quite a few years Boltzmann was actually at the now, that Boltzmann made a centre of a major scientific significant contribution to the revolution. It is no exaggeration to philosophy of science, even if for a say that, while the classical physics long time it was far less known and era closed around 1900, and a new influential than that of Mach. (It is era started at that point for physics, generally acknowledged that he it was his work that effectively anticipated certain basic ideas in bridged the gap between 19th and Popper’s epistemology, especially 20th century physics. the evolutionary conception of the theory of knowledge and of Yet Boltzmann was able to be such epistemology, based on Darwin’s a brilliant and revolutionary theory, of which he was a fervent Prof. Pierre-Louis Lions

N° 2 - THE LETTER 27 modestly, we have wanted to show through a few key examples just how wrong the physicist was when, at the end of his life, he feared seeing an era of ‘energetic barbarianism’ destroy the influence of his life’s work for a long time. Today the future of that work seems Prof. Jacques Bouveresse more sure and brilliant than ever. Prof. Jacques Bouveresse

under difficult conditions (as David Lindley noted in a recent book, in a sense he ‘left his intellectual imprint On the occasion of this commemoration, the following talks were on the very idea of modern delivered: theoretical physics’). But he was - Pierre-Louis Lions (Collège de France), Boltzmann et la modélisation also an exceptionally talented and mathématique inventive experimental physicist, - Bernard Derrida (ENS), Le rôle des fluctuations en physique statistique and an advocate for new techniques - Olivier Darrigol (CNRS – REHSEIS), Le va-et-vient entre les points de and technology in general, with vue global et moléculaire dans les recherches thermo-statistiques de respect to which he thought that Boltzmann ‘pure’ science would be wrong to - Alain Connes (Collège de France), Temps et thermodynamique manifest a somewhat contemptuous quantique feeling of superiority. There is - Nadine de Courtenay (CNAM and REHSEIS), La philosophie des nothing more practical than theory, sciences de Ludwig Boltzmann : une ‘aventure technique’ he said, but there is also nothing to - Jacques Bouveresse (Collège de France), Ludwig Boltzmann et le which the origin of science owes problème de l’explication dans les sciences. more than purely practical needs. Therefore, no one would have been These talks can be downloaded from the Collège de France website happier than he to see, for instance, (Prof. Bouveresse’s page, section ‘colloquiums’). that his famous equation is still both an important object of research and discovery in pure mathematics, and a tool used to solve the most technical problems.

On this day of commemoration, which has brought together representatives of mathematics, physics, the history and philosophy of science, and philosophy itself, we have tried to do justice to some of the most important aspects of Boltzmann’s work and to the considerable heritage that he left, in a multitude of fields where his presence is often barely suspected and even less recognized, going from science in its most technical fields and developments to some of the most significant aspects of the general knowledge and culture of our time. A complete overview of the successes of his ideas throughout the 20th century and still today is obviously impossible. More Profs Jacques Bouveresse and Pierre-Louis Lions

28 THE LETTER - N° 2 C OLLÈGE DE F RANCE COLLOQUIUM IN B ERLIN THE NEW WORLD OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND PREVENTION

The second Collège de France The colloquium was opened by colloquium abroad was held in S.E. Claude Martin, Ambassador of Berlin on 11 and 12 May 2007. It France, Professor Günter Stock, was organized in cooperation with President of the Berlin the Berlin-Brandenburg Science Brandenburgischen Akademie der Academy (Berlin-Brandenburgische Wissenschaften, Prof. Detlev Akademie der Wissenschaften) and Ganten, President of Charité, and the Charité Medical University of Prof. Pierre Corvol, Administrator Prof. Pierre Corvol Berlin. The French Embassy’s of the Collège de France. support allowed for simultaneous translation into French and German.

Prof. Detlev Ganten

As Pierre Corvol, Administrator of The first session of the colloquium of citizenship and the ideals of the the Collège de France, explained, was devoted to lessons from history. Enlightenment after the French this colloquium was intended to It was opened by Anne Fagot- Revolution, as well as the initiate multi-disciplinary dialogue Largeault (Collège de France) who importance of intellectual interaction with a view to furthering our presented the first steps in the between 19th century scholars, which understanding of the importance development of modern hygiene largely explains the simultaneity and and complexity of the issues (gradual appearance of social similitude of public health policies in encompassed in the term ‘public statistics from the 16th century, Northern Europe at the time. Paul health’, as well as the challenges, public health councils in 18th century Unschuld has related the acme of both present and future. This highly cities, and the teaching of hygiene in public health policies to the topical subject is a particularly the medical curriculum in the 19th expectation, from the late 18th sensitive issue in Germany. The term century); then its peak in the mid- century, of a strong and therefore ‘public health’ has no equivalent in 19th century (the administration, healthy state (men in good health for German (the English term is used), through laws and institutions, was the factories and the army). He and similar German expressions still aiming to act as the instrument of a shows that they subsequently have strong connotations relating to scientific hygiene policy); and finally declined in the period when these Nazism. This colloquium was its decline from the early 20th constraints were less prevalent and therefore an opportunity to reopen century, due to hygienists’ excesses, when health, which had become the the debate on public health problems the exclusion of doctors to scientists’ affair of individuals, was taken care in Germany in new terms. It marked benefit, and insufficient attention of primarily by individual medicine. a turning point in the German paid to the conflicts of interest Yet, as Anne Fagot-Largeault has approach to these concerns, as it inherent in a veritable public hygiene argued in her conclusion, modern coincided with the announcement of policy. This periodization largely hygiene has not disappeared: many the creation in 2007 at the Charity overlaps that proposed by Patrice signs today attest to a revival of Medical University of Berlin – a Bourdelais (Paris, EHESS) and Paul public health concerns and a partner in the colloquium – of a new Unschuld (Berlin, Charité). rehabilitation of prevention, multi-disciplinary school of public Bourdelais has emphasized the neglected for a long time when an health (the Berlin School of Public coincidence of public health essentially curative approach was Health). preoccupations with the emergence favoured instead.

N° 2 - THE LETTER 29 This necessity to grant more populations concerned the most are it concerns the community and importance to prevention (to ‘public also the poorest, at a national as well benefits everyone by benefiting each medicine’ on the one hand, alongside as at a global level. There is far too individual. This is true at a national ‘individual medicine’, as Paul little interest among pharmaceutical level but also on a global scale, on Unschuld put it), appeared clearly laboratories in research on the three which one has to reason today. There through the four case studies that main epidemics world-wide is still a long way to go to bridge the comprised the second session: cardio- – malaria, Aids and tuberculosis – ‘90/10 gap’, i.e. the fact that 90% of vascular diseases; infectious diseases and the production of vaccines, the world’s financial resources for (especially tuberculosis which, with which should be a priority. medical research benefit 10% of the 15,000 new cases per day, causes two population. million deaths annually), Aids, and The third session of the colloquium obesity. The latter example was used examined comparative studies of The speakers also stressed the need by Arnaud Basdevant (University public health policies and of the to renew approaches concerning Paris VI) to emphasize the institutions responsible for them prevention, especially in developing complexity of prevention which (between European countries or countries. Philippe Kourilsky, for cannot rely only on individual between Europe and other counties), instance, argued for an evaluation responsibility (a healthy diet and and the way of addressing the new and reform of regulations concerning physical activity in the case of challenges that have appeared in new drugs, and for the establishment obesity); it also needs to concern the recent years. Didier Tabuteau (Paris, of a real field science in which social, economic and living IEP) spoke about the problem of experience and knowledge acquired environment (via the construction of sanitary security which reappeared in the field could be applied. Pierre public sports equipment and bicycle in the 1990s during the Rosanvallon (Collège de France), lanes, for instance, or the struggle contaminated blood affairs, and the scientific organizer of the against social discriminations role of the agencies (re)created at the colloquium, clearly emphasized in his highlighted by several surveys). This time of that crisis. Françoise Forette conclusion that issues of prevention second, more indirect aspect of (Assistance publique des hôpitaux de and public health involve complex preventive measures does not seem Paris) considered the question of balances (between individual and to be taken into account sufficiently longevity and the challenge of collective responsibility, long-term in the prevention policies developing and restructuring efficiency and short-term implemented today, even though it geriatric services to ensure that the profitability, respect for individual has been shown that economic cost of caring for the dependent aged freedoms and restrictive aspects of factors play a crucial role in the case does not increase in proportion with the measures to adopt), which of obesity. For instance, access to their (constantly growing) numbers. demand a multi-disciplinary food with a healthy calorie level is approach – like that of the impossible for people who live on Health, a global public good? The colloquium. Health is not simply a less than €2.40 per day – a situation last speakers endeavoured to answer question of physiology; as Pierre that concerns over two million of our this question from various points of Rosanvallon put it, it has ‘a total fellow citizens. Michel Kazatchkine view: political (Bernhard Badura, social phenomenon dimension’. (Executive Director of the World Bielefeld), economic (Roger Céline Vautrin Fund to combat Aids, tuberculosis Guesnerie, Collège de France), and malaria) and Stefan Kaufmann biological (Philippe Kourilsy, Collège The talks given during this (Max-Plank Institute, Berlin), de France) and methodological colloquium can be listened to on the amongst others, have emphasized the problems (Karl Wegscheider, Collège de France website crucial importance of the economic Hamburg). Although it is difficult to (www.college-de-france.fr), both in aspect since, when it comes to public define, health appears to be a good French and in German. health and prevention, those that is at least ‘collective’ in so far as

A. FAGOT-LARGEAULT P. BOURDELAIS P. U. UNSCHULD C. MANTEL R. DIETZ S. KAUFMANN A. BASDEVANT M. KAZATCHKINE

30 THE LETTER - N° 2 S.E. Claude Martin, Ambassador of France, Prof. Detlev Ganten, President of Charité and Prof. Pierre Corvol, Administrator of the Collège de France, at the French Embassy in Berlin.

PROGRAM

Friday 11 May 2007 Saturday 12 May 2007 The lessons of history The institutions managing public health: a comparative Prof. Anne Fagot-Largeault, Collège de France, Paris approach From public hygiene to public health Prof. Didier Tabuteau, Institut d’Études Politiques de Prof. Patrice Bourdelais, EHESS, Paris Paris Public health, field of progress and citizenship issue Sanitary security, institutional reform or reappearance (18th to 20th centuries) of public health policies? Prof. Paul U. Unschuld, MPH, Direktor, Horst-Görtz- Prof. Reinhard Busse, MPH, Berlin Institut für die Theorie, Geschichte und Ethik Comparative European perspective on the health Chinesischer Lebenswissenschaften, Charité, Berlin systems of social insurance The political perception of public health – an historical Prof. Françoise Forette, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux perspective de Paris Dr Carsten Mantel, MPH, Leiter, International Health The implications of longevity Programme, Institut für ropenmedizin, Charité, Berlin Prof. Adelheid Kuhlmey, Charité, Berlin From public health to international and global health Demographic trends, the new challenges and Revolutions and contemporary challenges: case studies institutional demands Prof. Rainer Dietz, Charité, Berlin; Mitglied der BBAW Health, a global public good? Cardio-vascular diseases Prof. Bernhard Badura, Bielefeld Prof. Stefan Kaufmann, Max-Planck Institut für Political dimension of public health Infektionsbiologie, Berlin; Mitglied der BBAW Prof. Roger Guesnerie, Collège de France, Paris Infectious diseases: tuberculosis Global public goods – an economistic point of view Prof. Arnaud Basdevant, Université Paris VI, Paris Prof. Philippe Kourilsky, Collège de France, Paris Obesity, a new challenge for public policies Science and actions in the field Prof. Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Prof. Karl Wegscheider, Hamburg Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria Methodological challenges in public health The Aids issue

D. TABUTEAU R. BUSSE F. FORETTE A. KUHLMEY B. BADURA R. GUESNERIE P. KOURILSKY K. WEGSCHEIDER

N° 2 - THE LETTER 31 This colloquium was organized We cannot move forward to meet reflection by different categories of jointly by Prof. Pierre Rosanvallon, these challenges without a specialists who are too seldom holder of the Chair of Modern and methodological review of actions invited to work together. The aim Contemporary History of Politics, already undertaken in the field. of this colloquium is to advance in and Mr Detlev Ganten, President The long history of hygienism and this direction by bringing together of the Charité Medical University sanitary management of the best professionals and the main of Berlin (Germany) and President populations by states has many French and German decision- of the Collège de France’s Scientific lessons and warnings, not always makers on these issues. Biologists, and Strategic Orientation heeded. The very terms on which doctors, historians, philosophers, Committee (COSS). these issues are apprehended, as economists and the heads of well as the redefinition of public national and international public At the dawn of the 21st century, health as a global collective good, agencies are going to work public health issues are one of should also be revised. together during these two days to citizens’ and governments’ main explore ‘the new world of public concerns. New epidemics such as At the crossroads of science and health and prevention’. Aids and new threats such as SARS action, economics and politics, Prof. Pierre Rosanvallon have appeared. Problems relative national public interventions and to lifestyle, such as obesity, have international action, the become major health challenges of management of public health a kind previously unknown. problems first requires joint

In these areas more and more questions are arising on the conditions of an operational global management. Which institutions, procedures, financing and rights ought to be established to ensure effective management and reduce the worst inequalities? Like environmental and climate-change issues, those of public health are core challenges that the community of nations will have to meet in coming years. The gravity of the situation is an indication of the amplitude of the task. C. Mantel and Prof. P. Rosanvallon

Crédits stills pp. 29-32 : Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften / A. Schaefgen.

At the public conference on the Director General of Health (Paris), Prof. evening of 11 May, French and Reinhard Kurth, President of the Robert German political personalities spoke Koch Institute (Berlin), Prof. Alfred on the subject of public health in the Spira, Inserm U569, Kremlin Bicêtre presence of Ms Katrin Lompscher, Hospital (Paris), and Prof. Stefan German Minister of Health, the Willich, Director of the Institut für Environment and Consumer Sozialmedizin, Epidemiologie und Protection, who delivered a paper. Gesundheitsökonomie, Charité – Universitätsmedizin (Berlin). A discussion on health in large cities was Public Lecture then held between Prof. Didier Houssin,

32 THE LETTER - N° 2 PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SCIENCES AND THE SECRETS OF NATURE

of two great European naturalists terrifying. Nature is female. to and around South America: Nature is how things ought to be, Charles Darwin, of course, but a positive value, so natural is best. also Humboldt, whose work Nature is crueller even than Man, Darwin adored. Goethe was much so that from its very beginning, pleased when he got the book the human race has had to shield from the scientist. He wrote in a itself from the forces of nature. letter that it was, ‘a flattering Nature, above all, is other than us illustration that implies that – except that we are part of Poetry too might lift the veil from nature. nature’. And nature has secrets. Most Prof. Ian Hacking Lifting the veil from nature? That is metaphors die in the course of a what Pierre Hadot contemplated for lifetime. Their play is forgotten, decades, finally publishing, in 2004, and they become literal or lost. Lecture given at the University of The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the How long can a metaphor live? Cordoba (Argentina), 14 March 2007 History of the Idea of Nature Pierre Hadot’s absorbing book is where he was awarded a doctorate (English 2006, surely, soon, it will written around a single phrase: honoris causa. appear in Spanish). It is an Nature likes to hide. That is a absorbing discussion of the idea that mistranslation of a fragment that nature has secrets, that can be Heraclitus inscribed some 2500 I should like to take this occasion discovered (or not) by many means, years ago. As Hadot likes to say, to say a few words about the including the sciences. We ‘To write the history of thought is sciences, philosophy, nature, and philosophers of science tend to sometimes to write the history of the search for truth. It was become involved in special sciences, series of misinterpretations’. suggested that I say something or to focus on questions about about what philosophers of the particular types of scientific inquiry, The saying, that nature likes to sciences are doing today, but I so I thought it worth while, this hide, is alive and well. Here is a shall be as much concerned with morning, to speak about our physicist, Steve Chu, in 1994: ‘I’m what we do not do. relationship with nature itself. betting on nature to hide Bose condensation from us. The last 15 About 40 years ago a bizarre And what is nature? At the years she has been doing a great engraving caught the attention of beginning of modern science, job.’ Bose condensation is a weird my colleague at the Collège de Robert Boyle, one of the first phenomenon that takes place France, Pierre Hadot, the great great experimentalists, asked when atoms of the right kind get scholar of neo-Platonism. It is a very exactly that question. His little very cold, ultracold, almost to strange image. A naked man with a pamphlet, On the Vulgarly absolute zero. Einstein foresaw it lyre is lifting the veil off a many- Received Notion of Nature, in 1925, but no one could breasted and very Egyptian looking 1686(1), found eight meanings for produce it until 1995. (Chu lost goddess. She is Artemis, at whose the word. Boyle pretty much his bet.) Chu shared a Nobel Prize feet is a volume of Goethe’s tract, suggested we scrap the lot. No in 1997 for one of the tricks The Metamorphosis of Plants. one paid him any heed. And with needed to make this strange good reason. Nature is too deeply condensate (using laser light to Alexander von Humboldt had it entrenched in our awareness of cool atoms). The people who did engraved in 1807, for his the world. make the stuff got another Nobel, Geography of Plants. As we well 2001. I myself am fascinated by know, the understanding of life Nature is awesome. Nature is Bose condensation, which was the was forever changed by the travels gentle tranquillity itself. Nature is topic of my address to AFHIC, the

1. R. Boyle, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, 1686.

N° 2 - THE LETTER 33 Asociación de Filosofía e few candidates, and favours the de la Ciencia del Cono Sur, in unimpressive thought that what Florianopolis last year. causes birth tends to cause death, or what is born wants to die. And what is on the back of the Only much later do we get gold medals for physics and ‘Nature loves to hide’. The Greek chemistry that these physicists word we translate as nature received? An engraving of Nature, – phusis (which word became our whom the Swedish academy ‘physics’) – evolved almost describes as a goddess resembling beyond comprehension. Isis. She is being unveiled by an unclothed youth, the genius of In Heraclitus’s day, Hadot science. He is revealing her teaches, it was nature of; the Prof. Pierre Hadot secrets, including her breasts. I nature of a thing was on the one have discovered that some, and hand its process of genesis, possibly most, physics and appearance, or growth, hence we begin to worry that technology chemistry laureates are Hadot’s reading. On the other has irrevocably destroyed her, as astonished, or even appalled, hand, it meant a thing’s we debate genetically modified when told to look at what is on ‘constitution, or proper nature’ – organisms, the climate that we the back of their medal. They one of our meanings today, and have modified at our peril, or seem never to have noticed the out of which ancient philosophy simply how much land we want woman being undressed. constructed essence. But when the to consign to what we call nature word became not of, but absolute, preserves. Nature works her Hadot’s book has 20 plates the secrets of nature were much rhetoric as much as she ever did. reproducing such images – often, talked about. Nature became Hadot tells us some of the reasons less chaste than the Nobel one – personified, and she had secrets, why. throughout the history of modern as in the Orphic hymn, ‘O Nature, science. They start with mother goddess of all things, There are two overarching engravings in books by the likes mother of innumerable ruses’. attitudes to nature, Promethean of Leeuwenhoek, great pioneer of Dame Nature came on stage, and Orphic. the microscope. although always in the role of a divinity. Zeus, you recall, was disturbed that people were becoming too Who’s who in the images of uppity, and hid fire away from Nature? Isis is an Egyptian their knowledge. Prometheus by goddess. She becomes identified trickery stole it, thus exposing one with Artemis of Ephesus. Nature of the secrets of nature for us all is progenitor, hence the Egyptians to use. There is a raft of metaphors endowed her with many breasts, at work here. Secrets must be that she might suckle her extracted from nature. The initial creatures. Or maybe not, could model is not the laboratory but the those be bull’s testicles on law. Nature must be brought to Pierre Hadot, Le Voile d’Isis: Essai sur Egyptian statues, as some would court and tried. In a trial, l’histoire de l’idée de Nature, have it, male offerings to the informants were tested by torture. Paris: Gallimard, 2004. The Veil of Isis: An Essay on goddess who creates? The Nature’s secrets must be wrung the History of the Idea of Ephesian version definitely has from her. The great prophet of the Nature, transl. Michael Chase. th Cambridge, Mass.: The breasts, six or more, and thus 17 century was Francis Bacon, Belknap Press, 2006. equipped she enters the modern who praised not only torture but world. But thanks to Heraclitus’s also dominance. ‘I am come in very The ancients called Heraclitus as maxim, she is veiled. truth leading to you to Nature ‘the obscure one’. No one knows with all her children, to bind her what he meant by the sentence he Nature is as politically alive now to your service and make her your wrote down. Hadot tries out a as she has ever been, precisely as slave.(2)’

2. Francis Bacon, Temporus partis masculus [c. 1610]. In B. Farrington, Temporus partis masculus: An untranslated writing of Francis Bacon, Centaurus 1 (1951): 193-205.

34 THE LETTER - N° 2 Our present civilization is would say the same of many of Yet The Metamorphosis of Plants founded upon the use of ‘technical the living scientists whom I most has an extraordinary ‘feeling for procedures to tear Nature’s respect, including those who are organism’. “secrets” from her in order to the most cunning tricksters. dominate and exploit her’, writes Hadot’s own example is his Goethe thought Nature has Hadot, but he urges also that contemporary and colleague, secrets, but not that she is veiled. Bacon’s programme was clearly François Jacob. Hadot loves a The shutters are on our eyes for foreseen in ancient times, even remark of Jacob’s that, whereas not seeing what she shows us around the end of the 3rd century Jacques Monod wanted life as outright. Everything inside is also BCE. He quotes a long passage produced by natural selection to outside: inner and outer are one including two clear statements: be logical, Cartesian, rational, for those who will see, or so he That everything produced problems efficiently solved, Jacob said in a short poem, ‘Epirrhema’. contrary to nature is produced by in his own charmingly sexist Indeed about 1798 he wrote a human technology or technique words ‘saw nature as a rather nice marvellous love poem of two (techne); the aspect of technology girl who was generous but a bit pages, The Metamorphosis of needed to overcome difficulties is sloppy, a bit muddleheaded, Plants. It joyously conveys the trickery. working at one thing at a time, emotion behind his botanical tract and doing her best with what she with the same name. The poem The Greek words that he found handy’. Nature as playful, begins, incidentally, making fun translates as trickery are none nature as joy. not only of the search for a secret other than ancestors of our word, inside, but also of Linnaean ‘mechanics’. It is right to think ‘Poetry too might lift the veil nomenclature. One message is, that a lot of laboratory science is from Nature’ said Goethe when don’t classify, look! trickery, cunning, which is not to he received von Humboldt’s diminish its value. Over eighteen tribute, but we tend to forget that That antique phrase, ‘Nature likes centuries after that 200 BCE talk Goethe had very strong prose to hide’, could be an emblem of of trickery, mechanics came into views about most of the sciences: life itself, constantly mutating, its own, not only with machines plants, the origin of the earth, evolving, changing its meaning. but also with what the physicists light. He was an obsessive Perfect, because mutations still call Galilean mechanics, collector of geological specimens themselves, so we are taught, are Newtonian mechanics, classical – if you want to please the old often just misinterpretations, mechanics. man, it was said, take him a new mistranscriptions, of code. Hadot rock for a present. He intensely takes us as far as an ultimate Twentieth century phusis is hated Newton. Newton had done Orphic misreading, Heidegger and quantum mechanics. Those Nobel the unspeakable; he had tortured dread. The anxiety is caught by prizes, mentioned above, are for light by splitting it up into colours Sartre’s titles, Being and new techniques for tricking nature with his damn prism. (It seems to Nothingness on the one hand, and – no other word will do – have been OK for Nature to do it Nausea on the other. (Both works quantum tricks that cool atoms to with raindrops.) figure at the end of Hadot’s almost zero in an almost vacuum. book.) How can there be being? Prometheus stole fire to warm us In 1790 Goethe published a Some schoolmen said God had to and cook, and we end by stealing pamphlet with a long title, which create everything, every instant, to the ultracold. is known simply as The keep things going. Existentialism Metamorphosis of Plants. It is the turns such thoughts into fear and Then there is the other attitude to culmination of a line of trembling, but also a kind of self- nature, which Hadot calls Orphic: observation and marvelling; it loathing. the poets, if you will, who are also began on the Italian journey, in the laurel grove. The Orphic, where he speculated that there Yet even here there is a strange Hadot writes, ‘penetrates the had to be one original plant, play between the Promethean and secrets of nature, not through which he called the Ur-plant. the Orphic. There may be a violence but through melody, Some readers have praised it, as physicist’s response to the wonder rhythm and harmony … inspired prefiguring evolutionary thinking. (or dread) of existence, and I do by respect in the face of mystery Well, that seems confused: Goethe not at all mean a much touted Big and disinterestedness’. He would have detested natural Bang when everything comes into mentions Leonardo as both selection as much as he detested being. The closest to nothingness Promethean and Orphic, but I Newton’s torturing the colours. that can be imagined is a vacuum

N° 2 - THE LETTER 35 at zero degrees Kelvin. In classical experiment must marvel at what mechanics, that is where nothing is seen, as it is. happens. Thereby lies one of the most marvellous paradoxes of Reading Hadot, one is in the quantum mechanics. An company of a wise Greek, a absolutely cold vacuum is a buzz pagan, a philosopher who believes of quantum activity. There is talk, that a role of philosophy is to at present, that when the almost teach how to live.(3) Pagan? empty, almost zero, is probed by Monotheism has been so amazing tricks, it may reveal core triumphant that we have truths about the fundamental forgotten about pagans. Hadot forces of nature. That in turn recalls a pagan prefect, whose would tell us more about being words he would like to see and nothingness than has yet been inscribed in gold at the door of dreamt of in our philosophies. ‘all churches, synagogues, mosques What a wonderful place for and temples’. The man was nature to hide some of her deeper appalled when a Christian secrets, an absolutely cold total Emperor wanted to remove the vacuum! Altar of Victory from the Roman : ‘We contemplate the same This contrast, between the Orphic stars, the Heavens are common to and Promethean, is precisely us all, and we live in the same where a lack of comprehension world. What matters the path of begins, between those who love wisdom by which each person scientific work and those who fear seeks the truth?’ Well, it matters it. There was talk, a few years a lot. Those who make ago, of the ‘culture wars’ between mathematical models of parts of humanistic and scientistic cultures nature, and use tricks to alter her, – as if that were an event of the in order both to understand her 1990s. In the 1960s, C. P. Snow’s and to exploit her, have one way Two Cultures. Hadot makes us to reveal the secrets of nature. The think more deeply. Children from poets and sages have another. their earliest years, and the human Both leads to types of wisdom, race, from its beginning, all love and the wise must both respect the to interfere in and modify what other wisdom and help preserve it we find in nature. Humans are from error, dangerous error. Promethean, it is part of our nature. But we are also the wondering animal, filled with awe, aware of beauty, which we think of as another type of secret of nature. People who read Snow say we need “bridges” between the two, but that is not what we want. We want to acknowledge both parts of our nature, on the one hand the trickster who changes nature, on the other, the poet who experiences her. The poet must at least respect the experimenter’s infinitely subtle ways of tricking nature, and the

2 See, for example, the essays collected in Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, 1995. But also, ¿Que es la Filosofía Antigua?, México, 1998.

36 THE LETTER - N° 2 DANGER! MUSEUMS ADRIFT

Roland RECHT Professor at the Collège de France holder of the chair of History of European Medieval and Modern Art since 2001.

On 13 December 2006, an article written when creating institutions – such as the It is this very inalienability which by Françoise Cachin, emeritus director of major museums which date from the constitutes the particularity – and also the French museums and of the Musée Revolution or the Commission des credentials – developed in the French d’Orsay, Jean Clair, former director of the Monuments historiques (Commission for system of museums which are not in Musée Picasso, and myself appeared in historical monuments) – to ensure that private hands and can thus be said to be the ‘Débats’ section of the Republic’s cultural goods could be truly independent. These museums are newspaper. Entitled “Les musées ne sont promised a safe and reliable transmission based on an underlying principle, namely pas à vendre” (“Museums are not for down the centuries. Later generations will the Republican ideal of the transmission sale”), the article denounced the erratic have managed to undo this work within of the country’s patrimony. It is a model course presently being steered by the only a few years. And their only objective which has, until now, been successfully French government which intends to lend is that of cultivating a short-term view of exported and which has constituted a out for a period of twenty years the the profitability of our patrimony and our veritable point of reference for all Louvre ensign – much as a trademark is museum holdings, one which insists that countries which wished to resist any licensed by a franchise agreement – and these works are to be considered entirely attempts to privatize art collections. The also hundreds of works of art chosen in terms of their exchange value. State protected its collections, and this in from France’s major national museums; turn guaranteed that not only progress in exchange the government will receive It would seem that the works kept in our in education and study but also the 1 billion euros. A petition was launched museums are currently undergoing a display and promotion of museum on the site of the online journal change in status. When a work of art collections should be accorded an latribunedelart.fr, with our text being used enters a museum, its status as a part of important role in the public life of the as a manifesto. More than 4,600 the patrimony is recognized, and at one country. By deciding to reintroduce an signatures were collected, but this protest and the same time it loses one function exchange value for works of art, the State movement, emanating from professionals whilst gaining another one. Its practical has severely weakened the status of working in the art world, was to no avail. value is thus altered – for example an museum objects. We are starting down a It met merely with a blunt refusal from object used in religious rites becomes, on slippery slope. Loans which are the French authorities. entering the museum, primarily a work of negotiated at prices until now neither seen art – and, parallel to this, the same work nor even dreamed of could soon lead to The decisions taken in recent years no longer possesses any exchange value. a progressive abolition of the concerning the future of our national Public collections are meant, by dint of inalienability of French collections. There heritage cannot fail to shock. Certainly their inalienability, to be protected is much that can be done – and indeed the question of how our heritage’s definitively from any attempt to dismantle nothing should be left undone – in order perennity can be guaranteed does need to them occasioned by either capricious or to stop this very dangerous drift, which be asked. Nonetheless, the answer surely financially motivated decisions on the could well have even more fatal does not lie in the dismantling of our part of the authorities. The various consequences in the future. After all, what national museum collections by a long acquisitions which have been made by has become of the fine and ambitious and drawn-out process of haemorrhaging successive generations of curators bear promises enshrined in the law on our heritage away, and nor is it to be witness to the history of changes in taste. museums, passed in 2002, with its clause found in this idea of ‘selling for a song’ These works of art can be seen as concerning the “protagonists of cultural our monumental patrimony. Earlier superimposed strata which, when viewed development and democratization”? generations did not hesitate to invest both as a whole, reveal the distinctive history of their energy and their personal conviction the individual museum institutions. Translation: Dr. Cecilia Griener Hurley

N° 2 - THE LETTER 37 THE ORIGINS OF THE INSTITUT MAREY OF THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE AND ITS ROLE IN THE UPSURGE OF FRENCH NEUROPHYSIOLOGY by John Simon McKenzie Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne

The first official meeting of the themes concerning standardisation. In international commission, as the reality very few came, and finally the Association of the Institut Marey, took function for which the Institut had been place at the Station Physiologique in created was forgotten. 1902. Its members came from various countries: Belgium, England, France, For 35 years, the effective direction of the Germany, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, and Institut Marey was assured by Lucien Bull the United States of America. They drew (Dublin 1876-Paris 1972), who had up the statutes of the Institut, which were begun as Marey’s assistant in 1896. Bull approved by a decree of the Council of was an enlightened amateur in the field of State in 1903, the Institut Marey being photography who had obtained a first recognised as an Establishment of Public degree from the University of Paris in Utility. natural sciences (Botany, Geology and Étienne-Jules Marey Zoology) in 1908, but he was not a Great hopes unrealised physiologist. He was essentially interested The Institut Marey was named after its Marey’s death in 1904 put the Institut in in high-speed cinematography. The other founder, the renowned physiologist a difficult situation. It had been his brain full-time researcher was Pierre Noguès Marey (1830-1904), a Professor at the child and he would have been its driving (1878-1961?) who had been an assistant Collège de France in the Chair of Natural force. His position as Director had by this to Marey. A very skilful mechanic, he History of Organised Bodies. Marey very fact made the Institut a dependency constructed a cinematographic camera devoted his life of research to the accurate of the Collège de France. But with Marey capable of taking 300 frames per second. mechanical recording of various gone, the members of the Institut made it The titular Director from 1911 was physiological phenomena, which clear that this tutelage, which had been Charles Richet (1850-1935), Professor of culminated in his invention of only de facto, could not be taken as Physiology at the Paris Medical Faculty, chronophotography (1882-1892) for the binding, and claimed the exclusive use of Nobel Prize winner in 1913 for the analysis of human and animal movement the track and the central lawn for the discovery of anaphylaxis, made together which led to cinematography. Institut. After four years of dispute, in with Paul Portier. He was also the author, 1908 the City of Paris decided on a in 1923, of a Traité de Métapsychique Backed by the 4th International Congress division of the terrain with separate leases defending his spiritualist claims. He was of Physiology at Cambridge in 1898 for each of the parties. content to leave the running of the Institut which elected an international Control Marey to Bull, promoted assistant- Commission to foster the standardisation The statutes of the Institut had director (sous-directeur). It seems that of methods and apparatus used in inadequacies that were seriously harmful their main preoccupation was the physiology, he organised the funding of to it, in particular the lack of provisions for financing and the construction of a an institute to work on this program. The financing that could measure up to its monument in honour of Marey, where 5th International Congress in Turin, 1901, objectives. Its President, elected by the his ashes were deposited, and which was designated the Control Commission as the Association for five years, had the duty unveiled on the eve of the Great War. “Institut Marey”, to be established in a of directing the Institute, though without new building, on land at the Parc des salary. It was therefore predictable that he During the Great War, Lucien Bull and Princes, already leased by the City of Paris would give priority to his own the Institut Marey collaborated with a to the Collège de France to accommodate professional obligations. In fact the British Lieutenant, Lawrence Bragg the Physiological Station attached to permanent personnel of the Institut (Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915), to Marey’s Chair. The building was located consisted of only two researchers, two develop a method of locating enemy at the rear of the terrain, on the large technicians and a porter. In the mind of its artillery batteries, based on the arrival time circular track equipped for the analysis of founders, the establishment would accept of the sound of a gun discharge at a series walking and running, opposite the Station recognised researchers who would visit of microphones aligned close to the front. Physiologique at the street entrance. the Institut for limited periods to work on It was widely adopted by the allied armies,

38 THE LETTER - N° 2 the Institut producing many of the Collège de France (Chair of Physiology necessary equipment installations. Bull of Sensations), ant it was in an adjunct to received honours for his work: Chevalier his laboratory known as the “steel house” de la Légion d’Honneur and Commander that Fessard did the work for his doctoral of the Order of the British Empire. thesis: “Rhythmic properties of living matter. Rhythmic responses of isolated This brief period of fame did not prevent nerves”, which he defended in 1936. At a progressive decline of the Institut after the time he was author of numerous the war, its international character publications, particularly on the genesis disappearing so much the faster when it of electromotive force in the electric organ was decided to exclude the physiologists of Torpedo, about thirty of them in of Germany and its allies. The reputation collaboration with his friend Daniel of the Institut probably suffered further Alfred Fessard Auger. They were the first in France to erosion in the mid-1920s, when Richet present recordings of unitary action sponsored the much-criticised work of of the printery, who speedily had him give potentials. In the years 1934-1936, Athanasiu, obtained at the Institut Marey up commercial studies so as to prepare Fessard played a primary role in the with their string galvanometer. for competitive entry into the Ecole introduction of electroencephalography normale for teacher formation at Auteuil into France. By 1921, Richet, crowned with the Nobel (1921-1922). He was then able to study Prize, had become a sort of patriarch for a first degree (licence) in Physics at the In 1937, thanks to a scholarship of the reigning unchallenged over French Sorbonne. Still advised by Lahy, he Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to medical physiology. He disregarded his studied the physiology of the nervous spend six months in the Cambridge statutory obligations. The Institut suffered system with Louis Lapicque, and physiological laboratory directed by from a chronic lack of funds, its physiological psychology with Henri Edgar Adrian (Nobel Prize for 1932, equipment had become obsolete, and its Piéron. He was interested in associating shared with Charles Sherrington), who direction unable to remedy the situation. with psychologists and psychiatrists who had demonstrated the numerical coding The most serious failure was the placed their hopes in the experimental (number and frequency of action incapacity of the Institut, despite analysis of cerebral functions. potentials) in sensory and motor axons. considerable initial expenditure, to set up Working with Adrian’s collaborator a laboratory of work physiology within He started as a demonstrator Bryan Matthews, Fessard succeeded in the deadlines agreed with the authorities. (préparateur) of the École pratique des recording a slow potential generated in a The expected funding was withdrawn hautes études (EPHE) in the Laboratory filament of spinal cord dorsal root in the and allocated to others, Richet being of Physiology Applied to Mental Hygiene frog, in response to a single action associated with this humiliating created for the psychiatrist Edouard potential in a single afferent fibre. They transaction, as is shown by the Toulouse. Its section of applied named this response a “synaptic Association minutes (5 Sept. 1913). psychology was directed by J-M Lahy, potential”. and that of physiology by a pupil of After Richet’s death in 1935, the Lapicque’s, Henri Laugier, who made the On his return to the Institut Marey, electrophysiologist Louis Lapicque was most of the young physicist’s knowledge Fessard continued his research on the elected President of the Association in for carrying out electromyographic electric organ of Torpedo. In 1938/39 he 1936. In 1938 he gave his approval to recordings and psychophysiological tests. showed with Wilhelm Feldberg and Alfred Fessard, then Maître de In 1927 Fessard joined the EPHE David Nachmansohn that acetylcholine Recherches of the Caisse nationale de la laboratory of physiological psychology of acted as a mediator for transmission of recherche scientifique (ancestor of the the Sorbonne, directed by Piéron, where excitation from the nerve to the CNRS), to install his laboratory in the he soon became assistant-director. electroplaques generating the discharge premises of the Institut Marey, which by of the electric organ. This organ thus then no longer had any activity related to While associated with certain of Piéron’s served as a model for the transmission of its original purpose, and had become psychophysiological experiments, Fessard excitation at neuro-muscular junctions practically derelict. was also the laboratory’s expert in and neural synapses. The further statistics applied to aptitude tests, to investigations they planned were Alfred Fessard biotypology investigations, and to interrupted by the war in 1939. Alfred Fessard was born on 28 April experimental results. From 1928 he 1900. His father, a printer in Montmartre, concentrated mainly on electrophysiology, As a Captain in the reserve, Fessard was hoped to make him his successor. the development of which was favoured mobilised into the Air Force. With Piéron, Fortunately, he was noticed by the by the advances in electronics. In 1923, appointed director of the psycho- psychologist Jean-Maurice Lahy, a client Piéron was named Professor at the physiological section in Medico-

N° 2 - THE LETTER 39 psychological Inspection of the Air Force, foundation of the Centre d’études. together with certain of their Following his first investigations on the collaborators, they left Paris for the visual system of various lower vertebrates, military airbase of Mérignac, near he spent several months in 1952 in Bordeaux. Horace Magoun’s laboratory in Los Angeles with a leading group working on Demobilised after the armistice of 1940, the monkey brain reticular formation and Fessard regained his EPHE laboratory at mechanisms controlling attention. On the Institut Marey, where, despite the returning to Paris, he collaborated with difficulties of the Occupation, he resumed Denise Albe-Fessard in 1952 to Monument in memory of Étienne-Jules Marey research as best he could. With the accomplish the first intracellular after its restoration neurologist Auguste Tournay, a pupil of recordings in the brain, in the electric lobe Babinski, he performed electromyo- of Torpedo and then in the cerebral cortex research on the Pigeon visual system – graphic recordings on adolescents afflicted of the cat. In 1953 he defended his thesis, anatomy, physiology and psychophysio- with poliomyelitis. He also undertook the was appointed professor in the Faculty of logical correlations (1966), which was initiation of clinicians to the practice of Sciences, and resumed his research at the continued with various collaborators in electroencephalogaphy. In 1942 he Institut Marey. He also worked with studying the centrifugal visual system. married his second wife, Denise Albe, an Arlette Rougeul on various subcortical engineer-physicist from the school of structures and on responses in the Following the perspectives developed by Physics and Chemistry of the City of Paris, association cortex, including the effects of Fessard in a succession of international who had been associated with the work conditioning using chronically implanted congresses, researchers in the Institut of the laboratory since 1940. electrodes. Marey investigated in depth the activity of nervous pathways underlying “non- In 1946, he was sent on an Official In the years 1945-1950, the Fessards had specific” sensory brain responses involved Mission to visit neurophysiological pursued their investigations on electric fish in attention, emotion and pain. Such installations in the U.S.A. His report in the marine biological station at responses could be implicated in emphasized the serious lag of France in the Arcachon, and with Carlos Chargas in associative mechanisms operating in neurosciences. As a result, the CNRS Rio de Janeiro. Fessard and Tauc learning and even in consciousness. established the Centre d’études de determined the membrane potential of physiologie nerveuse et d’électrophysiologie the electroplaque in 1951. In 1950, Jean Massion, a medical graduate from at the Institut Marey in 1947, directed by D. Albe-Fessard defended her thesis on Louvain, arrived in 1961 in the Institut Fessard. In 1949 he was elected to a new the electrogenesis of the discharge in the Marey. He first worked on intralaminar Chair of General Neurophysiology at the electric organ of Gymnote, Torpedo, and thalamic responses with D. Albe-Fessard, Collège de France, and the Institut Marey Ray. Michel Meulders and Lawrence Kruger, was reattached to the Collège as “Station and then on the influence of sleep states Institut Marey of the Collège de France”, Yves Galifret, recruited by Piéron in 1942 on somatic responses. Soon he began a again with Fessard as Director. as a laboratory technician, became his long and detailed investigation of the assistant at the Collège de France in 1946, motor pathways relaying in the He began recruiting promising researchers working with him on the psychophysics cerebellum, brainstem and thalamus, and in 1947, and soon had with him the of vision. On Piéron’s retirement in 1951, their control by the cortex. In nuclei of diverse groups: brain Galifret became Fessard’s assistant and collaboration with Robert Naquet and neurophysiology (Pierre Buser and Denise later his assistant-director. For some years Monique Denavit-Saubié, D. Albe- Albe-Fessard), electrophysiology of he continued to work with Piéron, who Fessard also studied the role of human movement and muscle synergies had obtained from the CNRS the diencephalic zones on sleep. (Jacques Paillard), intracellular study of possibility of continuing his research for a synaptic transmission between the large while. In 1955 he could join the Institut These different research themes began to identifiable neurons in ganglia of the Marey and occupy the space made attract numerous postgraduate marine mollusc Aplysia (Ladislav Tauc). available by the departure for Marseille of researchers from France and abroad. In He introduced Thomas Szabo to research Michel Dussardier, a graduate of Alfort the Institut Marey of the 1960s, ideas on electric fishes. veterinary school who studied the control seemed to be bubbling over, and the of the digestive tract in sheeps. Pierre Buser research increasingly diversified in both Pierre Buser, a graduate of the École introduced him to electrophysiology in topics and methods of approach. In 1961, normale supérieure, with an agrégation the course of a study of the electrical encouraged by her faithful collaborator in natural sciences, had tenure in the response to visual stimulation of the optic Pierre Aléonard, Denise Albe-Fessard Faculty of Sciences, but lacking premises tectum in the Tench (a freshwater fish). began collaboration with the had come to the Institut Marey since the He then undertook his own doctoral neurosurgeon Dr. Gérard Guiot at the

40 THE LETTER - N° 2 Hôpital Foch. By recording evoked field screened by vegetation behind the Marey who had advised Jacques Glowinski to potentials and single-neuron activity in monument at the north-east side of the take up the biochemical study of the the thalamus of Parkinsonian patients, lawn, bordered by flower beds near the brain. She herself continued with her she could guide a needle electrode to main building. investigations well after retirement. Her nearby locations with the best chance for last published article was a review of effective therapeutic lesions. At the same The impact of the Institut Marey began to pathological pain in 2001. She died in time new information was provided on spread with the return home of visitors 2003, aged 87 years. somatic representation in the human and the departure of some staff to other thalamus. This led her to complementary centres. Buser, a full Professor at the The historic buildings of the Station research on brains of laboratory simians. Faculty of Sciences of Paris, in 1961 Physiologique and the Institut Marey at In parallel, Jean Delacour’s team studied obtained his independent laboratory in the Parc des Princes were demolished at the behavioural effects of thalamic and the new Faculty of Sciences at Jussieu. the end of 1978, and the monument limbic lesions in the Rat. With Paillard went to Marseille, was appointed containing Marey’s ashes was restored electrophysiological responses, Henri professor, and soon was Director of the thanks to the generosity of the French Korn mapped the pathways of new CNRS Institute of Neurophysiology Tennis Federation, and displaced to its somesthesic and visceral representations and Psychophysiology, where he was present site in the grounds of the Roland in the cat brain. Albe-Fessard explored joined by Massion in 1967. Henri Korn Garros stadium. The Institut Marey had the possible involvement of the caudate went to John Eccles’ USA laboratory in lasted only three quarters of a century! nucleus in non-specific response 1967, and Galifret, appointed professor at mechanisms while working with Jussieu, soon had his own premises there. Alfred Fessard, who was elected in 1963 Oswaldo-Cruz and Rocha-Miranda, In the same period, Besson’s team which to the Academy of Sciences of the Institut Brazilian post-doctoral workers. included Gisèle Guilbaud began to grow de France, died on 20 February 1982 at Investigations of the caudate nucleus were in the Institut Marey, studying nociceptive the age of 82. In a death notice, Pierre developed further by George Krauthamer, pathways and their control by cortex and Buser wrote that Fessard’s profound Research Fellow of an American brainstem. In the Institut’s research, reflections on integrative brain activities foundation. This expanded into emphasis was being given to tracing had deeply influenced the research at the investigations of basal ganglia pathways specific neural pathways for pain, and Institut Marey: “His great simplicity, the and their relation to Parkinsonism by Paul connexions in the basal ganglia, using warmth of his welcome, attracted the Feltz, Jean Féger and others, among them new anatomical techniques for axonal young; a number of physiologists owe C. Ohye, a Japanese neurosurgeon. Tauc’s transport in association with antidromic their vocation to this attitude of mind, meticulous intracellular research on stimulation. and their career to the certainty and Aplysia ganglia also attracted important scrupulous equity of his judgement and visiting workers, including future Nobel The events of 1968 accelerated the decisions”. Prize winner Eric Kandel from Harvard, planned transfer of the Centre d’Etudes to John McKenzie who came to Marey “to learn Aplysia”. the CNRS domain at Gif-sur-Yvette in the southern suburbs of Paris. Delacour Dr John Simon Since 1947, the Institut Marey had grown and other researchers took posts with McKenzie, now by the early 1960s to some 40 their teams in new universities, formed Senior Fellow in researchers, with 16 electrophysiology after 1968 by splitting up the old the Department stations, and 25 other staff, distributed unwieldy University of Paris. of Physiology of among technical assistants, the University of administration and maintenance The Last Years Melbourne, personnel, with an important service for Successive Administrators of the Collège worked in the histology, under the direction of Suzanne de France had resisted pressure from the Institut Marey Laplante, extensive animal housing with adjacent Roland Garros tennis stadium in two periods, facilities for animal training, and wanting to expand onto the adjacent site the years 1968 and 1976. The mechanical, electrical, electronic, leased by the City of Paris to the Collège electrophysiological investigations he photographic, and illustration de France for the Station Physiologique pursued in the laboratory of Denise Albe- workshops. The main building had and the Institut Marey, but the lease was Fessard were concerned with the changed little externally in sixty years, but due to expire in July 1972. On Alfred organisation of connexions between the room arrangements had been altered Fessard’s retirement in 1971-72, the various deep cerebral structures of the basal as required, with laboratory services and Collège obtained 5 years’ grace for the ganglia in different mammals. His article electrical wiring brought to contemporary concession while a new location for Prof. on the Institut Marey is the summary of standards. The garden was flourishing, Albe-Fessard’s laboratory was sought. In an exhaustive study on the history of this and additional quarters that had to be 1977, she moved at Paris VI, Jussieu, institute, which he has finished after several added in temporary buildings were partly rejoining Buser and Galifret. It was she years of research.

N° 2 - THE LETTER 41 OBITUARY

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes with always the same success and the trying to convince them that science was Chair of same creativity. an attractive and fascinating adventure. Physics of Condensed Pierre-Gilles de Gennes can be considered He was an exceptional lecturer. During Matter as the founder of a new domain of physics more than 30 years, he gave lectures at 1971-2004 and chemistry called now “soft matter”, the Collège de France which were where one studies systems which are followed by a large community of generally quite complex and whose researchers and which have played a very scientific analysis seems at first sight too important role for structuring this 18 May 2007 difficult, and even impossible. He has community and for orienting it towards Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was an been able to build models for them and to new topics. The fact that his lectures were outstanding scientist with an overflowing identify their essential features allowing dealing with different subjects every year, imagination and an insatiable curiosity. one to understand their properties and to as this is the rule at the Collège de France, His deep and sure physical intuition predict their behavior in new explains certainly his desire to constantly always allowed him to penetrate to the environments. De Gennes’s talent for explore new research fields. heart of the phenomena that he was imagining new applications of studying. fundamental studies, like liquid crystal His death is felt with a great sorrow all displays or systems avoiding aquaplaning, over the world, and in particular at the Throughout his scientific career, he never was unique. Collège de France. We will remember him stopped to explore and to open up new as friendly colleague, highly cultured, scientific fields, going from He was also very much concerned by the paying great attention to the new superconductors to the mechanism of reform of scientific studies. During several developments occurring in other fields. memory, passing through liquid crystals, years, he was the Director of the “École de His great simplicity and his sense of polymers, colloids, gels, soap bubbles, physique et chimie industrielle de la ville humor were greatly appreciated and were vulcanization. In each of these domains, de Paris”, where he renovated completely making easier the contacts with him he brought decisive contributions, started the programs of the courses given to the which were always stimulating. His research teams which pursued with students, opening them with a great presentations at our faculty meetings were success the new projects that he had success to other fields like biology. He remarkably clear and appropriate. We initiated. No sooner had he laid the devoted also a lot of his time to college will always think of him with emotion foundations of a new research field that and high school students, introducing and admiration. he was starting to investigate another one, them to simple physical phenomena and Prof. Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

Jean-Pierre For many, Vernant thus triggered a that: he was a rare and invaluable type Vernant generation gap, a break with the of human being, embodying a virtue Chair of humanist tradition and pure philology. that Aristotle called greatness of spirit, Roman Unde irae. The Marxism of his youth Saint Thomas d’Aquin (reader of History was at the origin of that break: all Aristotle), virtue of strength, and 1975-1999 young communist historians learned Descartes, generosity. I have never seen that one could only write history a chief be as egalitarian as he was and, illuminated by a theory. But it is about to put it mildly, as ‘kind’. He embraced the man himself that I want to talk, he communism on the basis of his ideal of who, from the creation of the Armée solidarity and equality. He cared for Secrète (resistance army) in November others, he was open, welcoming, and 9 January 1942, was put in charge of it for the talked to everyone on an equal footing Others would be able to talk more Toulouse area, and who freed for, as Descartes wrote, the most knowledgeably about the scholar, Toulouse on 19 August 1944 at the generous are usually the most humble. who was a Hellenist but also a head of his volunteers. Among those Courage is the other side to philosopher and psychologist. Jean- volunteers was Yves Laporte, future magnanimity; during the months Pierre Vernant showed, for example, Administrator of the Collège de preceding the Normandy landing, that in order to understand history, France, who welcomed Vernant when wrote Vernant in a volume of his whether Greek or other, it is better to he was elected to the Collège, calling memoirs, ‘with every step we have general ideas, that is, him ‘mon Commandant’. Vernant was wondered whether it would be the philosophical ideas, on what human a born leader, one might be tempted last’. matters are, as they constitute history. to say. Yes, but he was far more than Prof. Paul Veyne

42 THE LETTER - N° 2 I NSTITUTIONAL D ATA COLLÈGE DE FRANCE ORGANIZATION CHART

Administrator of the Collège de France: Pierre CORVOL The Administrator of the Collège de France is a Collège de France professor, elected by his/her colleagues to direct the institution for a period of 3 years, renewable twice.

Professors of the Collège de France

I – MATHEMATICAL, PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCES

Analysis and Geometry — Alain CONNES Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems — Jean-Christophe YOCCOZ Partial Differential Equations and Applications — Pierre-Louis LIONS Number Theory — Don ZAGIER Quantum Physics — Serge HAROCHE Mesoscopic Physics — Michel DEVORET Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology — Gabriele VENEZIANO Geodynamics — Xavier LE PICHON Climate and Ocean Evolution — Edouard BARD Observational Astrophysics — Antoine LABEYRIE Chemistry of Molecular Interactions — Jean-Marie LEHN Chemistry of Condensed Matter — Jacques LIVAGE Human Genetics — Jean-Louis MANDEL Genetics and Cellular Physiology — Christine PETIT Biology and Genetics of Development — Spyros ARTAVANIS-TSAKONAS Morphogenetic Processes — Alain PROCHIANTZ Molecular Immunology — Philippe KOURILSKY Microbiology and infectious diseases — (not appointed yet) Experimental Cognitive Psychology — Stanislas DEHAENE Physiology of Perception and Action — Alain BERTHOZ Experimental Medicine — Pierre CORVOL Historical Biology and Evolutionism — Armand de RICQLÈS -Human Paleontology — (not appointed yet)

II PHILOSOPHICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Philosophy of Language and Knowledge — Jacques BOUVERESSE Philosophy of Life Science — Anne FAGOT-LARGEAULT History of Syncretisms in Late Antiquity — Michel TARDIEU of Nature — Philippe DESCOLA Economic Theory and Social Organization — Roger GUESNERIE Modern and Contemporary History of Politics — Pierre ROSANVALLON Writings and cultures in modern Europe — Roger CHARTIER Contemporary Arab History — Henry LAURENS Rationality and — Jon ELSTER Comparative Legal Studies and Internationalization of Law — Mireille DELMAS-MARTY

III – HISTORICAL, PHILOLOGICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Pharaonic Civilization: Archaeology, Philology, History — Nicolas GRIMAL Assyriology — Jean-Marie DURAND Biblic communities — (not appointed yet) History and Civilization of the Achaemenid World and of the Empire of Alexander — Pierre BRIANT Epigraphy and History of the Ancient Greek Cities — Denis KNOEPFLER Religion, Institutions and Society in Ancient Rome — John SCHEID

44 THE LETTER - N° 2 Indo-Iranian Languages and Religions — Jean KELLENS History of India and Greater India — Gérard FUSSMAN History of Modern China — Pierre-Étienne WILL National Antiquities — Christian GOUDINEAU Turkish and Ottoman History — Gilles VEINSTEIN French Mediaeval Literature — Michel ZINK Modern and Contemporary French Literature: History, Criticism, Theory — Antoine COMPAGNON Modern Literatures of Neo-Latin Europe — Carlo OSSOLA Literary Creation in English — Michael EDWARDS History of European Medieval and Modern Art — Roland RECHT

Annual Chairs (2007-2008) Chair of Artistic Creation — Ariane MNOUCHKINE European Chair — Manfred KROPP International Chair — Pierre MAGISTRETTI Chair of Technological Innovation - Liliane Bettencourt — Gérard BERRY

Emeritus Professors of the Collège de France

Anatole ABRAGAM — Nuclear Magnetism Maurice AGULHON — Contemporary French History Étienne-Émile BAULIEU — Bases and Principles of Human Reproduction Georges BLIN — Modern French Literature Yves BONNEFOY — Comparative Studies of the Poetic Function Pierre BOULEZ — Invention, Technique and Language in Music Pierre CHAMBON — Molecular Genetics Jean-Pierre CHANGEUX — Cellular Communication Claude COHEN-TANNOUDJI — Atomic and Molecular Physics Yves COPPENS — Palaeontology and Prehistory François-Xavier COQUIN — Modern and Contemporary Russian History Gilbert DAGRON — Byzantine History and Civilization Jean DAUSSET — Experimental Medicine Jean DELUMEAU — History of Religious Mentalities Marcel FROISSART — Corpuscular Physics Marc FUMAROLI — Rhetoric and Society in 16th and 17th century Europe Jacques GERNET — Social and Intellectual History of China Gilles Gaston GRANGER — Comparative Epistemology Jacques GLOWINSKI — Neuropharmacology François GROS — Cellular Biochemistry Jean GUILAINE — European Civilizations in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age Ian HACKING — Philosophy and History of Scientific Concepts Pierre HADOT — History of Hellenistic and Roman Thinking Claude HAGÈGE — Linguistic Theory Françoise HÉRITIER — Comparative Studies of African Societies François JACOB — Cellular Genetics Pierre JOLIOT — Cellular Bioenergetics Yves LAPORTE — Neurophysiology Jean LECLANT — Egyptology Nicole LE DOUARIN — Molecular and Cellular Embryology Georges LE RIDER — Economic and Monetary History of the Hellenistic Orient Emmanuel LE ROY LADURIE — History of Modern Civilization Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS — Edmond MALINVAUD — Economic Analysis André MIQUEL — Classical Arabic Language and Literature Philippe NOZIÈRES — Statistical Physics Jean-Claude PECKER — Theoretical Astrophysics

N° 2 - THE LETTER 45 Jacques PRENTKI — Theoretical Physics of Elementary Particles Daniel ROCHE — French History in the Age of the Enlightenment Jacqueline DE ROMILLY — Greece and the Development of Moral and Political Thinking Jean-Pierre SERRE — Algebra and Geometry Javier TEIXIDOR — Semitic Antiquities Jacques THUILLIER — History of Artistic Creation in France Jacques TITS — Group Theory Pierre TOUBERT — Occidental History Paul-Marie VEYNE — History of Rome Nathan WACHTEL — History and Anthropology of Meso- and South American Societies Harald WEINRICH — Romance Languages and Literatures Jean YOYOTTE — Egyptology

Administration Director of Cultural Affairs and External Relations: Florence TERRASSE-RIOU Director of Administrative and Financial Affairs: Jean-François RIGONI

LECTURES GIVEN BY THE PROFESSORS ABROAD

CANADA Institute of International Studies, Mireille Delmas-Marty (holder of the Chair of Comparative Legal Studies and Internationalization of Law) International penal justice. Laval University, Québec Philippe Descola (holder of the Chair of Anthropology of Nature) The production of images. Pierre-Étienne Will (holder of the Chair of Modern Chinese History) 1. Daily life in China seen through legal documents from the 18th and 19th centuries; 2. The difficulties of the empire as perceived by the Emperors Daoguang (1821-1850) and Xianfeng (1851-1861). University of Montreal Philippe Descola (holder of the Chair of Anthropology of Nature) Du social au collectif. University of Quebec Philippe Kourilsky (holder of the Chair of Molecular Immunology) The birth of systemic immunology. Jacques Bouveresse (holder of the Chair of Philosophy of Language and Knowledge) The question of philosophical pluralism: are the comparison and choice between systems possible? and two seminars on: Gödel and the Vienna circle.

BULGARIA New Bulgarian University, Sofia Gilles Veinstein (holder of the Chair of Turkish and Ottoman History) The Ottoman Empire’s treaties with European states. The question of ‘capitulations’ (15th to 18th centuries) and one seminar on: Ottoman documents relative to the ‘capitulations’. Some examples. St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia Gilles Veinstein (holder of the Chair of Turkish and Ottoman History) The body of Muslim clerics (Oulemas) and its organization in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman documents on the Oulemas. Study of some examples.

CHILI University of Santiago Jacques Livage (holder of the Chair of Chemistry of Condensed Matter) Frontiers in Materials research: soft chemistry.

46 THE LETTER - N° 2 GERMANY Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg Roland Recht (holder of the Chair of European Medieval and Modern Art) Questions pertaining to medieval art and all his seminars on: The comparative historiography of art. ‘La Charité’ University, Berlin Pierre Corvol (holder of the Chair of Experimental Medicine) Angiogenesis and cancer.

INDIA Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Bangalore) - Research Institute of Hyderhabad Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas (holder of the Chair of Developmental Biology and Genetics) Disease and Developmental Biology.

ITALY University of Ferrare Alain Berthoz (holder of the Chair of Physiology of Perception and Action) The brain and space. University of Florence Jean Guilaine (holder of the Chair of European Civilizations in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age) The Neolithization of the Mediterranean: open questions. Jean-Marie Lehn (holder of the Chair of Chemistry of Molecular Interactions) From Supramolecular Chemistry to Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry. University of Naples - Suor Orsola Benincasa Carlo Ossola (holder of the Chair of Modern Literatures of Neo-Latin Europe) Traditions of the ut pictura poësis. University and École Normale Supérieure of Pisa Gabriele Veneziano (holder of the Chair of Elementary Particles, Gravitation and Cosmology) Theory of chords and black holes. University of Sienna Michel Zink (holder of the Chair of Medieval French Literature) The Occitan chansonniers as prosimètres. University of Venice Pierre-Étienne Will (holder of the Chair of History of Modern China) 1. Militarism and the revolutionary connection in late-Qing and early Republican Shaanxi province; 2. Engineers and state-building: Li Yizhi (1882-1938) and his circle.

LEBANON Saint-Joseph University of Beirut and the Institut français du Proche-Orient Henry Laurens (holder of the Chair of Contemporary Arab History) Autobiography – Arab politician.

SPAIN University and Institute of Chemistry Research, Seville Jean-Marie Lehn (holder of the Chair of Chemistry of Molecular Interactions) From Supramolecular Chemistry to Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry.

SWEDEN University of Uppsala Jean-Marie Lehn (holder of the Chair of Chemistry of Molecular Interactions) From Supramolecular Chemistry to Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry.

SWITZERLAND University of Geneva Édouard Bard (holder of the Chair of Climate and Ocean Change) Astronomic influences on the climate.

N° 2 - THE LETTER 47 SYRIA Universities of Damascus and Alep Jean-Marie Durand (holder of the Chair of Assyriology) Syrian culture of cuneiform expression.

UNITED KINGDOM Newton Institute (Cambridge) Alain Connes (holder of the Chair of Analysis and Geometry) Non-commutative geometry and motives. Oxford University Michel Zink (holder of the Chair of Medieval French Literature) Images of the narrative and the spirit of poems. Reflections on ‘the love story without words’ of the Chantilly manuscript, Musée Condé.

UNITED STATES Jean Kellens (holder of the Chair of Indo-Iranian Languages and Religions) Harvard University Stanislas Dehaene (holder of the Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology) Putting neurons in culture: the cerebral foundations of reading and mathematics: 1. Recycling the visual brain for reading; 2. Space, time and number: cerebral foundations of mathematical intuitions; 3. Conscious processing and the human Turing machine. Michel Zink (holder of the Chair of Medieval French Literature) The razos of the troubadours and the notion of poetry. Yale University Édouard Bard (holder of the Chair of Climate and Ocean Change) Abrupt climate change: external forcing and internal rearrangements.

URUGUAY Pasteur Institute of Montevideo Christine Petit (holder of the Chair of Cellular Genetics and Physiology) Molecular physiology and pathophysiology of the cochlea.

UZBEKISTAN Universities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Termez Gérard Fussman (holder of the Chair of History of the Indian World) Indian inscriptions found in Uzbekistan: philological analysis and historical interest.

48 THE LETTER - N° 2 LECTURES AND LECTURE SERIES BY FOREIGN PROFESSORS BY INVITATION OF THE ASSEMBLY OF THE PROFESSORS

State chairs reserved for foreign scholars

John ROGISTER, Directeur of Research associated with the École Pratique des Hautes Études 1. A Florentine member of the “Republic of Letters’, Abbot Antonio Niccolini (1701-1769) 2. Abbot Antonio Niccolini and the president of Brosses, author of the Lettres familières sur l’Italie Kathinka EVERS, Professor, Centre for Bioethics at Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University 1. When matter awakens. The open mind and its enemies 2. The responsible brain. Free will and personal responsibility in the wake of neuroscience 3. The neural basis of morality. The naturalistic fallacy revisited 4. Helping the brain forget. Perspectives on therapeutic forgetting Suzanne NALBANTIAN, Professeur, Long Island University (USA) 1. The autobiographical memory: from literature to neurosciences 2. Neuro-aesthetics: scientific theory and aesthetic practice François OST, Professor, Vice Rector, Saint-Louis University, Brussels (Belgium) 1. The detours of Babel. Translation as a paradigm 2. Law as translation Yuri MANIN, Professor, Max-Planck Institute for Mathematics (Bonn, Germany) Symmetries and deformations in non-commutative geometries based upon operads Erwan ROUSSEAU, Lecturer, Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg Hyperbolicity of complex varieties Jérémie SZEFTEL, Instructor, (USA) Mathematical problems around the conjecture of the L2 curve for Einstein’s equations Thomas UEBEL, Professor, Manchester University (UK) Beyond Verificationism and Reductionism: The Contemporary Relevance of the Vienna Circle Paolo MANCOSU, Professor, University of California, Berkeley (USA) Mathematical explanation: why it matters Michael FRIEDMAN, Professor, Stanford University (USA) Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger: the Davos Disputation and twentieth-century Philosophy Pierfrancesco CALLIERI, Professor, University of Bologna (Italy) The archaeology of Iran (and especially of Fars) in the Hellenistic period Ofer Bar YOSEF, Professor at Harvard University 1. Sedentarization and the beginnings of agriculture in the Near East (Natoufien, “PPNA“) 2. The apogee of the pre-ceramic neolithic (the “koiné” PPNB) Josep FULLOLA PERICOT, Professor, University of Barcelona 1. Rupestrian art of lower Mexican California 2. Bronze Age mummies in Cova del pas (Minorque, Spain) Michael SHERINGHAM, Professor, Oxford University; Fellow, All Souls College (UK) Everyday poetics: the street, the day, archives Ali CHAMSEDDINE, Professor, American University of Beirut (Lebanon) Computational tools for spectral action Bruno HELLY, (CNRS), Lyon, Maison de l’Orient Méditerranéen The capital of Thessaly faced with the threat of the 3rd Macedonian War: the year 171 BC at Larissa. (Une relecture critique du décret de Larissa pour Bombos d’Alexandrie de Troade -BCH 59, 1935, 55-66 numéro 2) Adelheid OTTO, Professor, Ludwig-Maximillian University, Munich (Germany) 1. Tell Bazi, Fortress on the banks of the Euphrates from the 3rd millennium until the Roman era 2. Tuttul/Tell Bica, a Syrian metropolis in the Bronze Age Hartmut KÜHNE, Professor, Free University of Berlin (Germany) 1. The river and the steppe: living conditions in the Assyrian era in Ha bur 2. Dur-Katlimmu, western capital of the Medio-Assyrian kingdom

N° 2 - THE LETTER 49 3. Dur-Katlimmu the magnificent: urban and functional division as a mirror of the social structure 4. After the collapse of the Assyrian Empire: legends and new data Anne PORTER, Professor, University of Southern California (USA) 1. Real dimension of the nomadic fact 2. Wool, writing and religion: the role of pastoralism in Urukian expansion 3. Shepherds’ practical policy 4. Since when, the Amorites? Francisco RICO, Professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) The Spanish novel and history of the novel Andrew J. MAJDA, Morse Professor of Arts and Sciences Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New-York University (USA) Mathematical strategies for multi-scale and stochastic modelling in atmosphere/ocean science Jean-Jacques SLOTINE, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The dynamic brain Fabrizio DORRICCHI, Professor, ‘La Sapienza’ University, Rome (Italy) The ‘geometrical’ brain: neuropsychology, shortcomings and paradoxes in the cerebral representation of space Peter STANG, Professor, University of Utah (USA) 1. Nanoscale molecular architecture: design and self-assembly of metallocyclic polygons and polyhedra via coordination 2. Chemical publishing of the 21st century: perspectives of a JACS editor Cynthia KENYON, Professor, UCSF, California Genes, cells and hormones that control the lifespan of C. Elegans

50 THE LETTER - N° 2 EVENTS AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE – 2006-2007

September “History of Neuroscience”, ENS, Department of Philosophy March “Christians’ controversies in Sassanide Iran”, 7th Franco-Syrian Days (Prof. Jean-Marie UMR 7528, Mondes Iranien et Indien and Collège Durand) de France (Prof. Michel Tardieu) “Landscape beyond land: New ethnographies of Projection of the documentary “Au-delà des landscape and environment (Prof. Philippe Descola) apparences” on the anthropologist Jacques Lizot (Prof. Philippe Descola) April Concert, Philharmonic Orchestra of Aubervilliers October (Prof. Carlo Ossola) “The science of reading and its learning” (Prof. “The Hair-Bundle Cytoskeleton” (Prof. Christine Stanislas Dehaene) Petit) “Filiation in former and present European and Mediterranean societies” (Profs Françoise Héritier, May John Scheid and Philippe Descola) “Around Europe” (Prof. Mireille Delmas-Marty) Presentation of the Inserm Grand Prix “Orality and the social link in the Middle Ages (the West, Byzantium, Islam): word given, faith November sworn, oath”, Institut d’Études Byzantines “Social models in crisis. How to get past the “Christians and the Arab World: heritage and dead-end?”, annual cycle of lectures of the Mécénat future” (Profs Henry Laurens and Gilles Veinstein) Altadis and of the République des Lettres Symposium of the Asian Society (Prof. Jean- “Society of precaution and scientific research”, Marie Durand) Mouvement Universel de la Responsabilité Scientifique June Symposium to commemorate the centenary of Final symposium of the ACI of Integrative the death of physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (Prof. Computational Neurosciences Jacques Bouveresse) (Prof. Alain Berthoz) Day in honour of Professor Jean-Pierre “PhD Schools” symposium of Paris VI University Changeux General Assembly of the École des Ponts et Ceremony to inaugurate the 16th year of the Chaussées Institut Universitaire de France “Envie d’Amphi”, organized by the Mairie de July Paris (Lectures by Prof. Dehaene and Prof. Laurens) “Vision-Audition” (Prof. Christine Petit) Inauguration of the Institut Émilie du Châtelet, Mme Barret-Ducrocq

December Outside events 25 years of the ANRT “Notions of tradition in the work of Walter Collège de France Colloquium abroad: Benjamin” (Prof. Philippe Descola, Nathan “The New World of Public Health and Prevention” Wachtel) Berlin (Germany) 10-12 May 2007 Presentation of the awards of the Academy of Collège de France, La Charité – Universitätsmedizin Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Berlin, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der INRIA Wissenschaften Meeting of the Haut Conseil de l’Education Artistique et Culturelle (the High Council of Artistic and Cultural Education)

February Symposium of the Union Rationaliste (Prof. Gérard Fussman)

N° 2 - THE LETTER 51 RESEARCH TEAMS RECEIVED

The policy of hosting research teams was implemented Jean-Claude CHEYNET on the basis of an Assembly vote dated 18 March Centre for the Study of Byzantine History and 2001 to contribute towards the training of young Civilization research teams and to enhance the Collège’s scientific Alain THOTE potential. In some cases it was a temporary solution Centre for Research on Chinese and Japanese for teams directed by a professor about to retire. Civilization (UMR 7129) Lyne BANSAT-BOUDON Space permitting, these teams, which have to obtain Institute for Indian Studies the approval of their parent institution and to receive Xavier JEUNEMAITRE on-going funds from it, can be officially hosted by the Genes and blood pressure mineralocorticoid Collège de France team for a four-year contract, (U 772) renewable once. Catherine LLORENS-CORTES Central neuropeptides and the regulation of body They receive a 10,000 annual grant and may obtain fluid homeostatis and cardiovascular functions ATER and lecturing posts, on the same basis as the (U 691) laboratories of the Chairs. Jean-Michel DENIAU The dynamics and physiopathology of neuron The final decision to host these teams is taken by the networks (U 667) Assembly of Professors, after evaluation by a Misha TSODYKS commission of professors. Computational neuroscience Christian GIAUME Teams currently hosted: Junctional communication and interaction between neuronal and glial networks François TRONCHE Molecular genetics, physiology and behaviour UMR: Unité mixte de recherche (UMR 7148) (Combined Research Unit) Christian ROBIN U: Unité (Unit) Semitic studies (UMR 7119)

MAÎTRES DE CONFÉRENCES AND ATTACHÉS TEMPORAIRES D’ENSEIGNEMENT ET DE RECHERCHE (ATER) AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE – 2006-2007

Temporary position permit to receive yearly 31 Maîtres de conférences and 15 ATER in the chairs and research laboratories at the College of France.

Nationality Number German 2 Belgian 1 Brazilian 2 Chilean-Italian 1 French 35 Franco-Swiss 1 Dutch 1 Indian 1 Italian 4 Russian 1 Swiss 2 Taiwanese 1

52 THE LETTER - N° 2 THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE INSTITUTES

The Collège de France has four Institutes: Biology; Xavier Jeunemaitre – Inserm U772 – Genes and the Contemporary World; Literary Studies; and the Blood Pressure Far East. These are informal structures with no Catherine Llorens-Cortes – Inserm U691 – official status from an administrative point of view. Central neuropeptides and the regulation of body They group together Chairs and hosted teams. fluids François Tronche – CNRS UMR 7148 – The Institutes are created or closed on the initiative Molecular Genetics, Neurophysiology and of the professors concerned, after a formal decision Behaviour by the Assembly. Christian Giaume – Inserm U840 – Junctional communication and interaction between neuronal They promote and facilitate research by defining and glial networks. common projects and by pooling technical staff, equipment (technical facilities, libraries, etc.) and Mrs Anne Fagot-Largeault, holder of the chair of premises. Philosophy of Biological and Medical Science, and Mr Armand de Ricqlès, holder of the chair of The modalities of these Institutes’ organization may Historical Biology and Evolutionism, also vary. participate in discussions concerning the Collège de France Institute of Biology. Institute of Biology The aim of the Institute is to promote the research The Collège de France Institute of Biology, created in being done within the Collège de France, via several 1983 on a decision of the Assembly of Professors, actions defined by the professors of the Institute and includes the Collège’s Professors of Biology (whether applied by its Coordination Committee. This their laboratory is located at the Collège itself or committee consists of staff from each of the units and elsewhere) and the teams hosted by the Collège. The research laboratories located on the Marcelin incumbent President is Alain Berthoz. Berthelot site. It is chaired by the President of the Institute of Biology. Chairs whose laboratories are located at the Institute of Biology: Shared resources: Alain Berthoz – Physiology of Perception and - animal facilities: conventional and transgenic Action (CNRS UMR 7152) - technical platforms: confocal imaging and Pierre Corvol – Experimental Medicine (Inserm electron microscopy, neural imaging U833) - equipment for studying behaviour in rodents - document library Chairs whose laboratories are not located at the Collège de France: Scientific activities: Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas – Developmental - Seminars by each professor or laboratory, and Biology and Genetics PhD examinations Stanislas Dehaene – Experimental Cognitive - Seminars organized jointly by different Psychology (Inserm-CEA 562) professors and hosted teams Philippe Kourilsky – Molecular Immunology - Organization of the Institute of Biology’s Jean-Louis Mandel – Human Genetics (Inserm Science Day. U596) Christine Petit – Genetics and Cell Physiology One of the Institute of Biology’s most important (Inserm U587) missions is to enable young teams to occupy Alain Prochiantz – Morphogenic Processes research space on a four-yearly basis, renewable (arrival on the Marcelin Berthelot site in 2008) once.

Hosted teams located within the Institute of Shared funding: Biology (they benefit from all the Institute’s Funding is provided by the Collège de France resources): Voronoff Foundation and a grant from the Jean-Michel Deniau – Inserm U667 – Dynamics Collège’s Federative Institute of Biological Research and Pathophysiology of Neuronal Networks (IFR 52, Inserm-CNRS).

N° 2 - THE LETTER 53 Institute of the Contemporary World Roland Recht: History of european medieval and modern art The Institute of the Contemporary World was Michel Zink: Literatures of medieval France created in 2005. Emeritus Professors: It groups together six Collège de France Chairs, Yves Bonnefoy: History of the poetic function five of which are located on the Ulm site and one Marc Fumaroli: Rhetoric and society in Europe on the Cardinal Lemoine site: (16th–17th centuries) Harald Weinrich: Romance languages and Mireille Delmas-Marty – Comparative Legal literatures. Studies and Internationalization of Law Philippe Descola – Anthropology of Nature Michel Zink is currently the Director of the Jon Elster – Rationality and Social Sciences Institute of Literary Studies. Odile Bombarde, Roger Guesnerie – Economic Theory and Social lecturer, is responsible for the secretariat and Organization coordination. Henry Laurens – Contemporary Arab History Pierre Rosanvallon – Modern and For the past fifteen years, the Institute of Literary Contemporary History of Politics Studies has regularly organized colloquiums under the responsibility of one of its members. These The Institute is coordinated by a professor on the colloquiums bring all of its members together basis of a two-year rotating system. Pierre around a common research programme. Examples Rosanvallon is coordinator for 2006 and 2007. include Yves Bonnefoy’s annual colloquium on ‘Poetry’s self-awareness’, held at the University of The members of the Institute are currently all Sarrebruck in 2005; Michel Zink’s colloquium on participating in a multi-disciplinary study on L’œuvre et son ombre. Que peut la littérature globalization, focused on the following three secondaire? (Editions de Fallois, 2002); and Carlo dimensions: democracy, the rule of law, and the Ossola’s colloquium on Pétrarque et l’Europe market. (Editions Million, 2006).

Three key topics are addressed: The Institute of Literary Studies recently launched - Management of global collective (public) goods a new programme on translation. A preparatory - National sovereignty in question and the question day will be held in the autumn of 2007 and the of governance first colloquium is scheduled for 2008. - Towards a global political society: law and politics in the constitution of an international Finally, the Institute of Literary Studies is closely order. associated with the publication of the History of the Collège de France, coordinated by Marc Fumaroli. Several colloquiums will address these issues in The first volume was published in 2006. 2007 and 2008. Study days will also be devoted to the problems of terrorism and civil wars. The Collège de France’s Oriental Institutes

Institute of Literary Studies As a pioneer in oriental studies in France and in some cases in the world, the Collège de France has The Institute of Literary Studies combines the Collège de always had very rich libraries in this field. Its France Chairs devoted to literature studies and related collections were enhanced by the transfer in 1973 subjects (history of art, history of books): of the oriental studies institutes from the former Sorbonne. To a large extent, these libraries had Professors: always been open to researchers from outside the Roger Chartier: Writing and cultures in modern Collège de France. But their statuses differed Europe considerably, they functioned independently, and Antoine Compagnon: Modern and they did not belong to the French university library contemporary literature: history, theory, critique system, which cut them off from an essential source Michael Edwards: Studies of literary creation of funding (for staff and operating costs). The in English development of catalogues accessible via Internet Carlo Ossola: Modern literatures of neo-latin also necessitated the choice and purchase of new Europe management systems, the costs of which exceeded

54 THE LETTER - N° 2 the means of individual libraries. Finally, most of Buddhist and Confucian texts are all too often at the libraries were affiliated with a Chair and the crux of contemporary issues or violence for consequently depended on its existence. In such their current importance to be denied. cases the Collège could be tempted to maintain a particular Chair to ensure the survival of its library, 5. This reform has been endorsed by agreements which was often the only one of its kind in France. with the Collège de France’s main partners (the Under-directorate of libraries of the Ministry for The reform adopted on 26 June 2005 by the Higher Education and Research, the General Assembly of Professors consisted primarily in Directorate of the CNRS, the BULAC (university systematizing a series of measures, most of which library of languages and civilizations), the national had been taken previously by the Collège to remedy institute for living oriental languages and this situation. civilizations, and the institute for research on the history of texts). The sharing of competencies and 1. The Oriental Institutes now form a federation funding has thus been defined. of five Institutes with a large degree of managerial independence and no legal ties with the Chairs:

2. The Oriental Institute’s documentary collections are considered to be specialized sections of the general library. This will eventually lead to the unification of the catalogues and to a coordinated procurement policy. The collections are currently part of the university documentation system (SUDOC).

Oriental Institutes

Ancient Arabic, Egyptology Middle Byzantium Turkish Far East East Islamic studies

India Tibet China Korea Japan

3. It is primarily the institutes, that is, institutions devoted to research and managed jointly with researchers, most of whom are from outside the Collège, that use the libraries. These institutes have the means to publish. Each of them is run by a Director and a Scientific Committee appointed for three years. The Federation of Institutes is headed by the Council consisting of Collège de France professors and a Scientific Committee with diverse outside personalities.

4. Although the collections are considered to be ‘classical’, and the researchers are often specialists in Antiquity or the Middle Ages, the contemporary world falls within their research field. This is not only because classical India ended with the arrival of the British, and the chronological limit of China was the end of the Manchurian Dynasty (1912). The linguistic collections have no chronological limit and the Bible, the Koran, the Veda, and

N° 2 - THE LETTER 55 COLLÈGE DE FRANCE WEBSITES – PODCASTS

Since its creation in 2000 the Collège de France website In six months, they have been downloaded 700,000 has grown considerably. The Institution’s lectures are times and classified first by the ‘iTunes’ podcast reader. thus disseminated more widely, both nationally and Internet users can also download them directly from internationally, and Internet users are offered a the website; there have been 50,000 downloadings technically efficient and aesthetic tool. This process has during the same period. During the coming year we been enhanced by the use of new technologies. hope to double this dissemination. As regards the scientific Chairs, the documents projected during In November 2006 the French website was redone lectures are also available, as it is often essential to a completely: clearer navigation; a more informative sound understanding. This technology has a home page on the Institution’s current news; more considerable educational value and caters mainly for modern site, with quality iconography; an architecture students. that affords rich possibilities for the presentation of content; the integration of new media: podcasts, audio Some videos are also available and we are planning on and video; an RSS feed (system of subscription to a offering Internet users short interviews with Collège de selected site); a relevant search engine and optimized France professors. referencing of all contents for specialized search engines and directories (insertion: keywords, scientific abstracts, In May 2007 an English-language website was created, titling of downloaded documents, etc.). with the following sections:

In this new version, some sections have been Professors: a presentation of their research domain, a highlighted, e.g. publications (these pages are very biography and bibliography, a list of professors and frequently consulted) and research. In the latter section Chairs, honorary professors and deceased professors one of the Institution’s main purposes is highlighted, as Research: presentation of the research laboratories, well as its main mission: the professors’ own original the Institutes and the teams hosted research. Each professor has his or her own space of at Institution: history of the Collège de France, least six web pages. functioning of the Institution, archaeology, projects and libraries The website does not only describe the Collège de Lecture agenda, news France’s history and functioning. It is designed International: presentation of conventions with foreign essentially to make this Institution known, in order to partners promote the diversity and quality of its teaching and Publications: presentation of all the Institution’s research work. Implicit therein is the objective of publications disseminating this scientific material as widely as Search engine. possible, in a spirit of openness, free-of-charge access, and scientific sharing. Over one thousand scientific This site is designed to meet an international public’s documents (lecture notes, abstracts, bibliographies, etc.) expectations. The ergonomics are however identical to are currently available for downloading. the French one, to preserve the unity and identity of both sites. The English site will be developed further The website is also a tool made available to all the during the next few months. professors and emeritus professors for disseminating scientific documents (PDF or audio) to an audience close to their research field (students, researchers, lecturers, etc.) and for presenting their bibliography and/or biography to other colleagues or organizations.

Since November 2006, over a period of eight months, there have been 693,675 connections to the Collège de France website.

Since January 2007, in order to increase the dissemination of lectures and to enable more people to have access to their audio transmissions, a system of audio podcasting was set up for 16 professors’ lectures.

56 THE LETTER - N° 2 PUBLICATIONS – 2006-2007

The Collège de France has a partnership with the Éditions Fayard and the Éditions Odile Jacob for publishing the inaugural lectures of the professors, some lectures of invited professors and the proceedings of some of the College’s colloquiums.

Éditions Fayard

Collection “Leçons inaugurales” Antoine COMPAGNON, La littérature, pour quoi faire?, 2006, n° 188. Daniele VITALI, Les Celtes d’Italie, 2006, n° 189. Jean-Paul CLOZEL, La biotechnologie : de la science au médicament, 2007, n° 190. Pascal DUSAPIN, Composer. Musique, paradoxe, flux, 2007, n° 191. Guy ORBAN, La vision, mission du cerveau. Les trois révolutions des neurosciences cognitives, 2007, n° 192.

Éditions Odile Jacob

Raymond BIRN, La Censure royale des livres dans la France des Lumières, 2007 (foreword by Daniel ROCHE). Jean-Pierre CHANGEUX (ed.), L’homme artificiel au service de la société, 2007. Jean-Pierre CHANGEUX, Jacques REISSE (eds.), Un monde meilleur pour tous, forthcoming. Jon ELSTER, Agir contre soi. La faiblesse de volonté, 2007.

Yearbook

Cours et travaux du Collège de France. Résumés 2005-06. Annuaire 106e année.

DVDs Coproduction College de France / CNED / Doriane Films

Pascal DUSAPIN, Composer. Musique, paradoxe, flux, juin 2007. Antoine COMPAGNON, La littérature, pour quoi faire ?, mars 2007.

The inaugural lectures of Profs. D. Vitali, J.-P. Clozel, G. Orban and M. Devoret can be downloaded on the website of the College de France (www.college-de-france.fr).

N° 2 - THE LETTER 57 COLLÈGE DE FRANCE AUTUMN SYMPOSIUM – 2007-2008

ON AUTHORITY 18 and 19 October 2007

“Authority. Right or power to command, to be authority in the sciences. All the exact, human and obeyed.” From antiquity through to our contemporary social sciences deal with authority. How is consensus world, in all cultures, authority – sovereignty, the built in research? How is scientific authority defined? sacred, the book, dogma – has underpinned the social What submission does it demand? What protest does it order. But what about today? In virtual space, who or allow? what has authority? The number of independent authorities is multiplying Authority is everywhere and nowhere. Law, philosophy, today. Is this the result of our growing mistrust of the religion, political science, economics, sociology: all these state’s authority? disciplines will be questioned on the function that they Nulla auctoritas nisi a Deo, goes the medieval saying have attribute and still do attribute to authority, to the that originated with Saint Paul. ‘There is no authority need for authority, to the effects of its absence, and to that does not stem from God.’ How can authority be laissez-faire and regulation. established in the 21st century? Science has taken a stand against the argument of authority, but there is an authority of science and

Program

Thursday 18 October Friday 19 October Sovereignty and democracy Experiences and sanctions The authority of the Constitution How to justify scientific authority? Pierre Mazeaud, Académie des Sciences Morales et Jean Bricmont, Université Catholique de Louvain Politiques Science and the nature of mathematical theorems The metamorphoses of legitimacy Édouard Brézin, École Normale Supérieure Pierre Rosanvallon, Collège de France The authority of the leading scientific journals Culture and history Denis Jérome, Université Paris-Sud Orsay What makes statements of tradition imperative: a Texts and traditions pragmatic analysis The limits of royal authority in Mesopotamia: Carlo Severi, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences customs, the Ancients, taboos, the Gods’ demands Sociales Jean-Marie Durand, Collège de France Auctor et auctoritas in the Middle Ages The origin of the Biblical canon and the invention Michel Zink, Collège de France of scriptural authority Norms and behaviours Thomas Römer, Lausanne University The ethics of belief and the question of the ‘weight Laissez-faire and power of authority’ The supremacy of share-holders called into question Jacques Bouveresse, Collège de France Roger Guesnerie, Collège de France Understanding the authority of moral standards Authority without a state: the Palestinians since the Catherine Audard, London School of Economics inter-war period Sciences and beliefs Henry Laurens, Collège de France The adoption of a scientific theory: plate tectonics, Regulations and appeals the greenhouse effect What is an independent high authority? Xavier Le Pichon, Collège de France Louis Schweitzer, Haute Autorité de Lutte Contre les Reasons and passions Discriminations et Pour l’Egalité Autority and decision-making Medical authority Bertrand Saint-Sernin, Université Paris IV-Sorbonne Joël Ménard, Université Paris V Interactions between emotion and cognition in Authority of judgement decision-making Guy Canivet, Conseil constitutionnel Jonathan D. Cohen, Princeton University

58 THE LETTER - N° 2

AGENDA

Academic Year 2007-2008

New Chairs Created Microbiology and infectious diseases Human Paleontology Biblic communities

New Professors Gérard BERRY, Chair of Technological Innovation - Liliane Bettencourt 2007-2008 Roger CHARTIER, Chair of Writings and cultures in modern Europe Michel DEVORET, Chair of Mesoscopic Physics Manfred KROPP, European Chair 2007-2008 Pierre MAGISTRETTI, International Chair 2007-2008 Ariane MNOUCHKINE, Chair of Artistic Creation 2007-2008 Alain PROCHIANTZ, Chair of Morphogenetic Processes The Inaugural Lectures will take place at 6 pm in the Marguerite de Navarre Lecture Hall. 4 October 2007: Alain PROCHIANTZ 11 October 2007: Roger CHARTIER 15 November 2007: Manfred KROPP 17 January 2008: Gérard BERRY 14 February 2008: Pierre MAGISTRETTI 13 March 2008: Ariane MNOUCHKINE

Guest Conference Speakers Maria Giovanna BIGA, professor, University of Rome (Italia) Philippe BORGEAUD, professor, Geneva University (Switzerland) Jean COHEN, professor, Columbia University, New York (USA) Elaine FUCHS, professor, Rockefeller University, New York (USA) Diego GAMBETTA, professor, Nuffield College, Oxford University (Great Britain) Peter GOLDEN, professor, Rutgers University, Newark (USA) Orly GOLDWASSER, professor, Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Israel) Geoffrey HILL, emeritus professor, Boston University (USA) Albert de JONG, Dr., Leiden University (Netherlands) Nicholas PURCELL, professor, St. John’s College, Oxford (Great Britain) Dong-Hyun SON, professor, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul (Korea)

WWWWWW. COLLEGECOLLEGE- DEDE- FRANCEFRANCE. FRFR

The Letter of the Collège de France Directeurs de la publication : Pierre CORVOL, Administrateur du Collège de France et Florence TERRASSE-RIOU, Directrice des Affaires culturelles et des relations extérieures Direction éditoriale : Marc KIRSCH - Patricia LLEGOU Traduction : Liz LIBBRECHT - Conception graphique : Patricia LLEGOU Crédits photos : © Collège de France, PATRICK IMBERT - Reproduction autorisée avec mention d’origine. ISSN 1958-1408 - Impression : CAPNORD&AUGUSTIN

11 place Marcelin-Berthelot – 75231 Paris cedex 05 Prix : 5 €