Themes

IMéRA wishes to query the most common and most fundamental notions in research. To start its activities, it has chosen the theme of crisis. In the future the Scientific Board will take part in defining the Institute’s themes of study.

2007-2010: Crisis

In the recent past, all of our disciplines have, each in its own way, become increasingly receptive to the factors of uncertainty, unpredictability and instability inherent to complex phenomena. They have also expanded the range of methods for processing information subjected to a variety of mediations (that which cannot be observed directly, or is invisible, or even identified through simulation only).

Above all, complexity involves critical transitions and system crises, hence the choice of the general theme selected over a year ago by IMéRA's promoters to launch its programme: the question of crises.

But studying the theme of crises in a variety of forms and in greater depth leads to the uncovering of connected themes: first of all, that of the blindness resulting either from too much uncertainty or from focalisation on desired situations; that of the role of errors when they bring about revisions or awareness of limitations; that, also, of the problem of regulation: is it possible to reduce the probability of crisis in the system without eliminating instabilities that generate fruitful discoveries?

Whatever the answer, IMéRA has chosen to commence its activities, inspired by the un-rest and un-certainty informing research carried out within and into a world where crisis is no longer seen as an ephemeral phenomenon, but as an intransient state.

This human condition of the sciences, seen here in a “time of crisis,” requires a confrontation between the modes used to explore these critical states—in sciences and equally in the arts. The outcome will be a space bounded on one side by the limitations of men’s anticipations in uncertain situations and on the other by the use of researchers’ critical judgement, which classifies and discriminates (providing a reminder of the Greek verb from which the word “crisis” is derived). Identifying those limits and actuating this critical examination should, in the complex context of these instabilities, provide new reference points.

A first public event based on the concept of crisis (Ways out of crisis: the idea of crisis / The crisis of science—what comes after? / The Mediterranean, a permanent state of crisis?) took place on 7 November 2007 at the Alcazar Library, as part of the Rencontres d’Averroès. It was followed by several scientific meetings, aimed at analysing the theme in various forms and in greater depth, but also at resting various meeting formats so as to improve possibilities for interdisciplinary exchanges.