Scientific Orientation
IMERA aims at nurturing an atmosphere of collegial interchange where researchers can query the strength and interest of their projects not only in connection with the requirements (both justified and fertile) of their own disciplines, but also by confronting their work, methods and questions with the wider range of knowledge areas linked to their own.
Research projects carried out at IMéRA focus on interactions within social sciences and between social sciences and formal/experimental sciences, and on relationships between art and science. The exploring process can be a reflection on relations between disciplines, or it can focus on specific objects.
Starting in September 2007, IMéRA selected the theme of Crisis to provide a common locus for the questions raised by various disciplines. This was continued up to 2009-2010. Questions now focus on themes such as networks, boundaries, etc. with a threefold aim: exploring fields ans analysis tools; fostering cross-disciplinary interchanges; opening up reflection paths for researchers in connection with their research directions.
IMéRA's inspiration and concern can be encapsulated in the phrase The Human Condition of Science, defined as follows :
1. in Man's research activity, the relationship between human creativity and the capacity to test science through demonstration and experimenting;
2. in the connection between science (its theories, models, technologies) and the social condition of Man, the relationship between partial neutralisation of social issues necessary to ensure research distancing and the integration of research results into social history;
3. in relationships between art and science, because even though “science will not inhabit things,” one of modern-day artists’ inclinations consists in disclosing the “inhabiting” consequences of techno-scientific devices that make the core and future of our modernity;
4. in relationships between hard science, art and social sciences, the analysis of renewal dynamics through scientific innovation, experiment testing and technical achievements, and its reception by society.