Conference cycle organized by Gabriella Crocco
Inter-disciplines is a seminar proposed by Imera to reflect on the theoretical consequences of interdisciplinary dialogue. Internationally renowned figures who have actively worked at the intersection of two (or three) disciplines will present, in a major conference, an assessment of the theoretical or methodological changes that this interdisciplinary dialogue has prompted, as well as the dynamics it has triggered within each discipline.
The underlying questions of this work are as follows:
How do disciplinary identities change (or have they changed) through interdisciplinary dialogue? What difficulties have been encountered and how have they been resolved (if at all)? What are the key concepts that have made the dialogue possible, and what are the irreparable specificities of each discipline?
The two (or three) disciplines in question can be traditionally “close” (such as mathematics and physics) or relatively distant (such as literature and mathematics). We ask the speakers to present their past achievements in light of the perspective we propose.
The seminar is open to all colleagues from the laboratories and institutes of Aix-Marseille and is offered as doctoral training on ADUM. The major conference of invited colleagues will be prepared, with the participation of doctoral students, master’s students, postdocs, and anyone else who wishes to participate, through the reading and discussion of preparatory texts proposed by the speakers. These texts consist of articles or chapters written by the conference speakers themselves or excerpts from works they consider decisive in their intellectual journey.
The reading workshop, aimed at preparing the major conference in advance with doctoral students and master’s students, will be led by Gabriella Crocco and Fausto Fraisopi, possibly in collaboration with specifically requested AMU colleagues based on the topics addressed.
In this second session of the 2023-24 series, Frédéric Darbellay offers an analysis of the potentialities of interdisciplinarity, as well as the obstacles it encounters. He sheds light on the complex relationships it maintains with institutionalized disciplines:
Wednesday 29 november 2023, 3-6 pm
(Iméra, first floor meeting room of Maison Neuve)
Towards a Theory of Interdisciplinarity? Between Unity and Diversity
Seminar and doctoral training centered around the reflections of Frédéric Darbellay, organized by Gabriella Crocco and Fausto Fraisopi (Iméra), Olivier Morizot and Florence Boulc’h (IRES AMU).
Interdisciplinarity is emerging as a new direction in the evolution of university teaching and research, revealing both its potentials and the challenges that obstruct it, while exposing the complex relationships it maintains with established disciplines. It is considered here as a process of articulation among multiple disciplines, surpassing the mere aggregation of heterogeneous knowledge. Instead of claiming a unified theory that would create a new paradigm, it is essential to recognize the diversity of epistemological stances that contribute to the co-creation of the interdisciplinary process.
Bibliography
- Towards a Theory of Interdisciplinarity? Between Unity and Diversity, Frédéric Darbellay, DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1007082ar
- Identity Paradox and Interdisciplinarity: A Look at Researchers’ Disciplinary Identities, Frédéric Darbellay, DOI: 10.1051/nss/2015056
Thursday 30 november 2023, 4-6 pm
(Iméra, conference hall of Maison des Astronomes)
Principle Conference by Frédéric Darbellay :
Interdisciplinarity: Who? What? How? Why?
Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of numerous national and international project calls, promotional university speeches, as well as theoretical and methodological inquiries of researchers who dare to venture beyond the boundaries of their disciplinary affiliations and engage their disciplinary identities in a context of creative transformation. The objective of this conference is to move beyond the use of the concept of interdisciplinarity as a mere buzzword and to consider it from the following complementary perspectives: What are the characteristics of those involved in interdisciplinarity (Who)? What is the definition of the concept of interdisciplinarity (What)? How can an interdisciplinary research process unfold (How)? And finally, what are the reasons motivating the choice of an interdisciplinary approach (Why)?
| Frédéric Darbellay is also the guest of honor in the framework of the Council for the Development of Interdisciplinarity/seminar training on the day: Interdisciplinarity(s) in Action: Challenges of Education, organized by the Interdisciplinarity(s) Mission and the Talent Development School. |
Biography
Frédéric Darbellay is an Associate Professor at the University of Geneva (Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences), responsible for the Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Unit within the Interfaculty Center for Children’s Rights (CIDE), and Deputy Director of CIDE. His teaching and research address interdisciplinarity in its epistemological, methodological, and organizational/institutional dimensions. His work focuses on the study of the complexity of theoretical and practical questions faced by researchers working from, between, and beyond disciplinary boundaries in a perspective of discovery, creativity, and innovation. His research areas span the fields of humanities and social sciences, education sciences, natural sciences, life sciences, and technology, as well as the dialogic intersections between these different scientific cultures. Frédéric Darbellay is the author and co-author of numerous publications on inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, and he is involved in multiple academic projects and national and international scientific networks that implement and promote dialogue and integration between disciplines. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Td-net (Network for Transdisciplinary Research) of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, the Board of Directors of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS), and the Scientific Council of the Global Research Institute of Paris (GRIP). He is also a member of the Interdisciplinarity Development Council (Strategic Steering Body) of Aix-Marseille University.
In this first session of the 2023-24 cycle, Giuseppe Longo and Marie Chollat-Namy offer you a critical exploration of fundamental concepts related to computer science, biology, cognition, and artificial intelligence:
Wednesday 11 October 2023, 3-6 p.m.
(Iméra, First-floor meeting room of Maison Neuve)
Critical examination of the idea of computation and information applied to living beings and cognition
Speaker: Marie Chollat-Namy, postdoctoral researcher under Giuseppe Longo at the Cavaillès Center, Republic of Knowledge, École Normale Supérieure, and Vice President of the Friends of the Thunberg Generation Association.
During this seminar, Marie Chollat-Namy will discuss the deceptive use of the concepts of information and computation in molecular biology, widely adopted in neuroscience and across all aspects of life, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. She will present the info-computational view of human and biological cognition as guided computation driven by a teleological optimality law in constant battle against entropy. Following the alleged decoding of the “program” of life, this paradigm promises the decoding of the human mind and its surpassing by artificial intelligence, not without consequences at scientific, philosophical, and political levels.
Drawing from certain theses in the book “Le cauchemar de Prométhée: Les Sciences et leurs limites” (Giuseppe Longo 2023), she will emphasize the limitations of the concepts of information, computation, and optimality applied to life and its intelligence. She will then propose an alternative anti-entropic and non-teleological approach that integrates the question of meaning.
| Marie Chollat-Namy’s lecture will be followed by a discussion about G. Longo’s book “Le cauchemar de Prométhée: Les Sciences et leurs limites,” moderated by Gabriella Crocco, Epistemologist and Head of the Explorations interdisciplinaires program at Iméra, Fausto Fraisopi, Philosopher and Senior Fellow at Iméra, Olivier Morizot, Physicist and historian of science, and Florence Boulc’h, Chemist at AMU, who are co-responsible for the IRES interdisciplinary group. |
Biography
Marie Chollat-Namy is a postdoctoral researcher at the Cavaillès Center, Republic of Knowledge, École Normale Supérieure, working in the team of Giuseppe Longo and Maël Montévil. She also serves as the Vice President of the Friends of the Thunberg Generation Association.
During her undergraduate studies in life sciences at Agroparistech school, Marie specialized in the fields of cell biology and synthetic biology. Somewhat disappointed by this young discipline, which was rich in promises but lacked theoretical depth, she redirected her focus toward immuno-oncology and pursued her doctoral thesis at the Gustave Roussy Institute, specializing in cancer research. Faced with the challenges of contemporary science and the absence of an explicit theoretical framework, she shifted her attention to theoretical biology, blending biology, philosophy, and mathematics. She actively participates in the Friends of the Thunberg Generation Association, an initiative led by philosopher Bernard Stiegler, notably by leading a working group on entropy and the living.
Bibliography
- Marie Chollat-Namy, Giuseppe Longo. Entropie, Neguentropie et Anti-entropie : le jeu des tensions pour penser le vivant. Invited paper in Entropies, ISTE OpenScience – Published by ISTE Ltd. London, UK, 2022. (ChollatLongo-entropies.pdf).
- Marie Chollat-Namy, Maël Montévil. Critique de la vision info-computationnelle de la cognition, pour une approche anti-entropique du vivant. Papier en cours
Thursday 12 October 2023, 4-6 p.m.
(Iméra, conference room of the Maison des Astronomes)
Giuseppe Longo’s Grand Conference: Myths and Limits of the Digital – Artificial Intelligence and the Biology of the Genetic Program
This conference by Giuseppe Longo presents the fundamental theses contained in the book “Le cauchemar de Prométhée: Les Sciences et leurs limites,” published in 2023 by PUF. The book organically synthesizes research that Longo has been conducting for decades, employing a dual interdisciplinary approach.
On the one hand, his reflection starts from mathematics and extends to other sciences, notably information sciences and life sciences. He strongly denounces a long-standing double reduction within theoretical knowledge. This reduction includes the reduction of mathematics to a formal calculation devoid of meaning and the computational and mechanistic reduction of life, which contributes to ecosystem disruption and the pitfalls of a dominant molecular biology based on false or vague principles and laden with consequences.
On the other hand, Longo’s meditation begins with the relationships between science, history, and philosophy to critique the scientistic ideologies and myths that shape our society and threaten our coexistence. He proposes an innovative and “alternative” epistemological approach to the mainstream, based on the concept of limits. In response to an increasingly invasive technoscience, science can establish its own boundaries.
By challenging these deceptive visions of our present, the complexity of life (which cannot be reduced to algorithmic processes) and human knowledge (which cannot be reduced to the reconstruction of computational procedures) emerges. Science, driven by the search for meaning, is thus intertwined with the (politically) essential task of fostering a human community aware of the vital challenges it must confront and responsible in its actions.
Biography
Giuseppe Longo is an emeritus research director at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) and a member of the Cavaillès Center, Republic of Knowledge, CNRS, Collège de France, and École Normale Supérieure. You can find more about him here: https://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/.
He also served as an Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, USA, from 2013 to 2019.
As a mathematician, he has dedicated a significant portion of his work to studying the relationships between mathematics, computer science, and physics, as well as developing theoretical concepts applicable to biology. He has supervised 22 doctoral theses in computer science, logic, and at the interface of physics and biology. More recently, through numerous collaborations, Longo has compared physical randomness (dynamic and quantum) to algorithmic randomness, enriched and applied the theory of criticality, modeled biological rhythms and protensive time in two-dimensional varieties. Analyzing non-computability in logic and physics has allowed for discussions on unpredictability in biology and the theoretical structure of evolution. His current project involves developing an epistemology, historically documented, exploring new interfaces between disciplines and seeking alternatives to the new alliance between computational formalism and the governance of humanity and nature through supposedly objective “optimality” algorithms and methods.
Bibliography
La bibliographie complète de G. Longo est disponible ici https://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/download.html
Travaux en relation à la conférence de Longo
* G. Longo. Letter to Alan Turing. Invited, in Theory, Culture and Society, Posthumanities Special Issue, 2018: (Letter-to-Turing.pdf) (Version ”article”, en français, largement revue en collaboration avec Jean Lassègue pour Intellectica, 2020: Longo-Lassegue-Turing.pdf;
*Giuseppe Longo. The Cognitive Foundations of Mathematics: human gestures in proofs, in Images and Reasoning, (M. Okada et al. eds.), Keio University Press, Tokio, pp. 105-134, 2005: incompl-images.pdf (version préliminaire en fran,cais, étendue par un texte avec Francis Bailly, in Il pensiero filosofico di Giulio Preti, (Parrini, Scarantino eds.), Guerrini ed associati, Milano, 2004, pp. 305 – 340. (incompl-incert.pdf))
*Giuseppe Longo. The reasonable effectiveness of Mathematics and its Cognitive roots. In Geometries of Nature, Living Systems and Human Cognition series in “New Interactions of Mathematics with Natural Sciences and Humaties” (L. Boi ed.), World Scientific, pp. 351 – 382, 2005. (reason-effect.pdf)
* G. Longo. Des hommes et des machines : comment reconnaitre une caricature ? aux Actes du Colloque “Le travail au XXIème siècle : Droit, techniques, écoumène“, Collège de France, Paris, 26-27 février 2019: (ReconnaitreCaricature.pdf)
*G. Longo. Corrélations artificielles vs intelligence des causes, dans le Livre Blanc Tome 2 “Contribution des outils numériques à la transformation des organisations de santé“, Commission des Affaires Sociales, Assemblée Nationale, Paris, 2019: (CorrelCauses.pdf)
Shankar Raman – How to Write the Relations between Mathematics and Literature in Their History?
The holder of the FIAS 2022-23 fellowship, Shankar Raman, will be the keynote speaker at the 4th conference of the Inter-disciplines cycle.
Objective
The aim of this training is to present the concepts and methods that Shankar Raman has developed to uncover the role of these unlikely allies (mathematics and literature) in shaping the mindset of modernity and to reveal a kinship that the humanities and exact sciences could renew in a productive way today.
Tuesday, May 16th, from 3pm to 6pm – Doctoral Training: Mathematical Constructions and Poetic Construction in the Early Modern Period: Descartes and Philip Sidney
Address: Iméra, Maison des Astronomes, 2 place Le Verrier, 13004 Marseille
Target audience: PhD students, Master’s students, Researchers-Teachers
- This doctoral conference will explore the close links between the first science of forms, geometry, and the first art of forms, poetry, in early modern Europe.
- The author seeks to identify correlations in the 16th century that testify to a broad and shared cultural reaction to an inherited Greek tradition in which the relationship between “matter” and “manner” played a fundamental role.
- The author will present René Descartes and Sidney as two key figures whose contributions, respectively, to the theory and practice of mathematics and poetry, vividly reveal the nature of this reaction and its implications for the subject of early modernity and the world they sought to create.
Thursday, May 17th, from 4pm to 6pm: Shankar Raman’s Public Keynote Lecture: “Specifying the Unknown Thing in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice”
Address: Iméra, Maison des Astronomes, 2 place Le Verrier, 13004 Marseille
Open to the public
- This public lecture will focus on Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice.”
- Shankar Raman will explore how algebra can help understand the stakes of this play.
- He will also present his research on the relationship between literature and mathematics in early modern Europe.
Keynote Speaker
Shankar Raman is a Professor of Literature. His research focuses on the literature and culture of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature (with a minor in German) from Stanford University in 1995, changing fields and careers after obtaining a Master’s degree (U.C. Berkeley) and a Bachelor’s degree (MIT) in electrical engineering.
His first book, “Framing ‘India’: The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture” (Stanford 2002), examines the relationship between colonialism and literature in 16th and 17th-century Europe. He compares Portuguese, English, and Dutch colonial activities to examine the role of India as a figure through which these various European powers imagine and define themselves. A second book, “Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies,” was recently published by Edinburgh University Press (2011). He is also the co-editor, with Lowell Gallagher, of “Knowing Shakespeare: Senses, Embodiment, Cognition” (Palgrave Macmillan 2010). He is currently working on a monograph on the relationship between literature and mathematics in early modern Europe, titled “Before the Two Cultures.” From 2005 to 2010, he participated in the project “Making Publics: Media, Markets and Associations in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 [MaPs],” a major interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (CRSH) of Canada. Professor Raman held a F
IAS fellowship at IMéRA, Aix-Marseille University, in the fall of 2022 and is currently at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Strasbourg.
In collaboration with
- Gabriella Crocco, Epistemologist, AMU, Director of the Iméra Program for Interdisciplinary Explorations
- Fausto Fraisopi, Philosopher, University of Freiburg, Multiannual Fellow at Iméra
- Philippe Abgrall, Historian of Mathematics, CNRS AMU
- Marie Anglade, Historian of Mathematics, AMU
- Jean Yves Briend, Mathematician, AMU
- Mathieu Brunet, Literary Historian, AMU
January 25th and 26th, 2023
Holder of the Chair of the University Agency of the Francophonie (AUF), Nancy Rose Hunt will be the keynote speaker at the 3rd meeting of the Inter-disciplines cycle.
Doctoral College Training
Wednesday, January 25th, 3pm-6pm
📍 Iméra, Maison neuve, 1st floor
Priority Audience: PhD students, Master’s students, Researchers-Teachers
Objectives
How to write the history of the Congo, from the spectacular colonial violence to decolonization? The objective of this training is to present the concepts and methods that Rose Hunt’s historical and anthropological work has developed, in constant dialogue with major figures of French epistemology and anthropology (Frantz Fanon, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Michel Foucault). In contemporary and neoliberal Africa, new forms of psycho-humanitarianism have emerged alongside war, rape, and genocide. Global mental health logics tend to overlook vernacular and subjective forms of “madness.” People who wander boldly in the streets of African cities – “the mad” – require a new ethnographic approach that takes psychiatry into account while keeping it distant and minor, so that everyday lines of thought, action, and derision – sometimes with daydreams – are not stifled or lost.
Possible prerequisites
Reading Nancy Hunt’s articles:
- “Espace, temporalité, et reverie: Écrire l’histoire des futurs au Congo belge” (Space, Temporality, and Reverie: Writing the History of the Future in Belgian Congo), in the special issue “Politiques de la nostalgie” (Politics of Nostalgia), eds. Guillaume Lachenal and Assitou Mbodj, Politique Africaine, no. 135 (October 2014): 115-36. (https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-africaine-2014-3-page-115.htm)
- “Afterlives: A Trajectory and the Curatorial Turn,” the Afterlives Thematic Thread in Allegra Lab: Anthropology for Radical Optimism, May 26, 2020: https://allegralaboratory.net/afterlives-a-trajectory-and-the-curatorial…
Bibliography:
- “Interview with Nancy Rose Hunt” on “Affect, Embodiment and Sense Perception,” a Cultural Anthropology curated collection of interviews with authors (Hunt, Thomas Csordas, Joseph Alter, Lochlann Jain, and Eva Hayward), http://production.culanth.org/curated_collections/16-affect-embodiment-a…, launched on March 15, 2013.
- “An Acoustic Register, Tenacious Images, and Congolese Scenes of Rape and Ruination,” in “Scarred Landscapes and Imperial Debris” Special Issue, edited by Ann Laura Stoler, Cultural Anthropology 23 (2008): 220-53.
Team or Speaker
Nancy Rose Hunt, Professor of History, University of Florida, and Emeritus Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – Holder of the AUF Iméra Chair.
In collaboration with:
Sinzo Aanza, Congolese writer, playwright, and visual artist, author of “Généalogie d’une banalité” (2015), “Projet d’attentat contre l’image ?” (2017), and “Plaidoirie pour vendre le Congo” (2020), among others.
Aude Franklin, ATER at CEMS (Center for the Study of Social Movements), anthropologist of violence and situations of exile.
Gabriella Crocco, Philosopher, Professor at AMU, Director of the Iméra Program for Interdisciplinary Explorations.
Why Madness? Towards New Histories of Africans, Racism, Suffering, and “Vivacity”
Keynote lecture by Nancy Rose Hunt
Thursday, January 26th, 4pm-6pm
📍 Iméra, Maison des Astronomes
“On Thursday, January 26th, I will speak about the vast theme of madness – not mental illness, but madness in the stories of race, Africa, and Africans. I will present the concepts I have used to introduce several new African stories of madness (Psychiatric Contours, forthcoming in 2023). The psychiatric issues in A nervous states (Hunt 2016) will also be discussed. Such concepts and issues find their way into how I teach the history of race and madness in North America, across the panorama of the 16th century and with many archival sources mined and exploited by students. Frantz Fanon is there among other figures, opening intimate and insurgent angles over a long duration suggesting the emergence of categories germane to psychiatry, labor, and care. That I ask students to select sources might be surprising. Yet historical meaning always has individual dimensions, and I do not want to dictate how disturbance, trauma, and subjection might resonate subjectively. In contemporary and neoliberal Africa, new forms of psycho-humanitarianism have emerged alongside war, rape, and genocide. Global mental health logics tend to overlook vernacular and subjective forms of madness. People who wander boldly in the streets of African cities – ‘the mad’ – represent and enable ‘vivacity.’ And vivacity, a Foucauldian word, is part of my ethnographic approach, an approach that takes psychiatry into account while keeping it distant and minor, so that everyday lines of thought, action, and derision – sometimes with daydreams and afterlives – are not stifled or lost.” – Nancy Rose Hunt.
Bibliography
- “Afterlives: A Trajectory and the Curatorial Turn,” the Afterlives Thematic Thread in Allegra Lab: Anthropology for Radical Optimism, May 26, 2020: https://allegralaboratory.net/afterlives-a-trajectory-and-the-curatorial-turn/
- “Espace, temporalité, et reverie: Écrire l’histoire des futurs au Congo belge” (Space, Temporality, and Reverie: Writing the History of the Future in Belgian Congo), in the special issue “Politiques de la nostalgie” (Politics of Nostalgia), eds. Guillaume Lachenal and Assitou Mbodj, Politique Africaine, no. 135 (October 2014): 115-36.
- “Interview with Nancy Rose Hunt” on “Affect, Embodiment and Sense Perception,” a Cultural Anthropology curated collection of interviews with authors (Hunt, Thomas Csordas, Joseph Alter, Lochlann Jain, and Eva Hayward),
http://production.culanth.org/curated_collections/16-affect-embodiment-and-sense-perception, launched on March 15, 2013.
- “An Acoustic Register, Tenacious Images, and Congolese Scenes of Rape and Ruination,” in “Scarred Landscapes and Imperial Debris” Special Issue, edited by Ann Laura Stoler, Cultural Anthropology 23 (2008): 220-53.
9- 10 November 2022
Pier Luigi Gentili: Professor of Physical Chemistry, Complex Systems, University of Perugia
Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Biotechnology, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Perugia, Italy. Email: pierluigi.gentili@unipg.it
INTERDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATION INTO COMPLEX SYSTEMS
Résumé
After more than two thousand years of philosophical inquiry and three hundred years of the rigorous and systematic use of the experiments, the knowledge of the natural laws has significantly grown, as proved by the astonishing technological achievements. Nevertheless, we still experience substantial limitations in our attempts to exhaustively describe systems such as the climate, the living beings, the human brain, the human immune system, the ecosystems on earth. These are examples of Complex Systems. Seemingly, they are pretty diverse. They are traditionally investigated by well-distinct disciplines. In the last forty years or so, an interdisciplinary investigation focused on Complex Systems has begun. New scientific knowledge is emerging, which can be named Complexity Science. Such new science is pointing out the features shared by Complex Systems, i.e., their ontology. But, at the same time, it is analyzing them from an epistemological point of view because it is trying to determine and overcome at least some of the hurdles that impede the description and prediction of the Complex Systems’ behaviour.
A more in-depth analysis of Complex Systems is undoubtedly required to give new hints and tools to humanity urged to tackle global challenges.
References
1. Gentili, P. L. “Untangling Complex Systems: A Grand Challenge for Science”, CRC Press,
Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton (FL, USA), 2018.
2. Krakauer, D. C., ed. “Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the
Santa Fe Institute”, 1984-2019. Santa Fe, NM: SFI Press, 2019.
3. Gentili, P.L. “Why is Complexity Science valuable for reaching the goals of the UN 2030
Agenda?.” Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 32, 117–134 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-020-
00972-0
Biosketch
Pier Luigi Gentili is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Perugia (Italy). He
received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Perugia in 2004. His research and teaching activities are focused on Complex Systems. He is the author of the book titled “Untangling Complex Systems: A Grand Challenge for Science” (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), an interdisciplinary investigation into Complex Systems. He trusts in the Natural Computing research line to face Complexity from an ontological and epistemological point of view. Being aware that inanimate matter is driven by force fields, whereas the interactions between biological systems are also information-based, Gentili is driven by questions like the following ones. “When does a chemical system become intelligent?” Is it possible to develop a “Chemical Artificial Intelligence?” For the development of Chemical Artificial Intelligence, Pier Luigi Gentili is tracing a new path in Neuromorphic Engineering by using non-linear chemical systems and encoding information mainly through UV-visible signals. Furthermore, he proposes methods to process Fuzzy logic by molecular, supramolecular, and systems chemistry. He is the editor of the book titled “The Fuzziness in Molecular, Supramolecular, and Systems Chemistry” published by MDPI in 2020.
He has several collaborations and work experience in many laboratories: for instance, the “Photochemistry and Photophysics Group” of the University of Perugia (Italy); the “Nonlinear Dynamics Group” of the Brandeis University (USA); the “European Laboratory of Nonlinear Spectroscopy” in Florence (Italy); the “Center for Photochemical Sciences” of the Bowling Green State University (USA); the “Laboratory of Computational Chemistry and Photochemistry” of University of Siena (Italy). He has been Visiting Professor at the University College of London (UK) twice (in 2013 and 2014) and at the Université Paul Sabatier-Toulouse III (France) five times (from 2015 to 2019) through Erasmus Teaching Programs. He has promoted an Erasmus agreement with the Bielefeld University (Germany).
More Information
• Website: http://www.dcbb.unipg.it/pierluigi
• YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqn3EsuAKBA3vVT3Z5XSOA
• Twitter: @Pier_Complexity
• ResearcherID: F-3958-2012
• ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1092-9190
• Scopus Author ID: 7006236658
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pierluigi.gentili.984
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pier-luigi-gentili-51385737/
September 21-22, 2022
Giuseppe Longo
(Professor Emeritus, ENS Paris)
September 22, 2022, at Iméra, 4-6 PM
Relevant disciplines: Computer Science, Mathematics, Biology, Philosophy, Cognitive Science
Abstract
Mathematics is abstract, symbolic, rigorous… Formalist philosophies have reduced these three different and challenging notions to a single one: the formal. Mathematics would then be a calculation on meaningless signs. This reduction has had remarkable consequences. On the one hand, the abstraction and rigor of formalism have allowed the invention of a logical computing machine (the Turing machine), which has contributed to revolutionizing the world. On the other hand, the superimposition of mathematical intelligibility onto mechanization has contributed to a scientistic view of the world devoid of meaning and even rigor. It has notably shaped a mechanistic view of life, which contributes to the disruption of the ecosystem and the deviations of dominant molecular biology with false or vague principles and heavy consequences. At the intersection of mathematics, logic, computer science, and biology, this conference will present a conception of mathematics that seeks to reaffirm the importance of meaning in its practice.
Biography
Mathematician Giuseppe Longo has devoted a significant part of his work to studying the relationships between mathematics, computer science, physics, and the development of theoretical concepts applicable to biology. He has supervised 22 theses in computer science, logic, and at the interface between physics and biology. More recently, through numerous collaborations, Longo has compared physical randomness (dynamics and quantum) to algorithmic randomness, enriched and applied the theory of criticality, and modeled biological rhythms and protensive time in two-dimensional varieties. The analysis of non-computability in logic and physics has made it possible to discuss unpredictability in biology as well as the theoretical structure of evolution. His current project develops an epistemology, historically documented, exploring new interfaces between disciplines and seeking alternatives to the new alliance between computational formalism and the governance of humans and nature through algorithms and allegedly objective “optimality” methods.
Reading workshop, facilitated by Gabriella Crocco, Head of the interdisciplinary explorations program at IMéRA, and Fausto Fraisopi, Senior Fellow at Iméra.
The workshop will take place on September 21 from 3 PM to 6 PM.
The texts proposed for reading are as follows:
- G. Longo. “Des hommes et des machines: comment reconnaitre une caricature?” in the Proceedings of the Colloquium “Le travail au XXIème siècle: Droit, techniques, écoumène” (Work in the 21st Century: Law, Techniques, Ecoumène), Collège de France, Paris, February 26-27, 2019: (ReconnaitreCaricature.pdf)
- G. Longo. “Corrélations artificielles vs intelligence des causes” (Artificial Correlations vs. Intelligence of Causes) in the White Paper Volume 2 “Contribution of Digital Tools to the Transformation of Health Organizations,” Commission on Social Affairs, National Assembly, Paris, 2019: (CorrelCauses.pdf)
- G. Longo. “Letter to Alan Turing” (Letter to Alan Turing), invited contribution in Theory, Culture and Society, Posthumanities Special Issue, 2018: (Letter-to-Turing.pdf) (French version, extensively revised in collaboration with Jean Lassègue for Intellectica, 2020: Longo-Lassegue-Turing.pdf; original in Italian: Lettera
In this third session of the 2023-24 cycle, Marc Conesa and Julien Mary highlight the importance of incubation phases for the success of interdisciplinary research projects, emphasizing the need to co-construct shared questions and problems as well as an effective cooperation system. They also examine the obstacles encountered and the solutions found, shedding light on a new mapping of sciences emerging from these interdisciplinary initiatives.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
3:00-6:00 PM
(Iméra, first floor meeting room of the Maison Neuve, 2 place Leverrier)
The Interdisciplinary Group on Natural Atmospheric Electricity (GIEAN): Reflections on a Radical Interdisciplinary Experience
Seminar and doctoral training around the reflections of Marc Conesa and Julien Mary, facilitated by Gabriella Crocco (Iméra), Olivier Morizot, and Florence Boulc’h (IRES, AMU).
This seminar and doctoral training session will focus on the analysis of Marc Conesa and Julien Mary’s article, which gives its name to the session. The article aims to highlight both the blocking factors and the heuristic and epistemological contributions of the Interdisciplinary Group on Natural Atmospheric Electricity (GIEAN) project. One of the authors participated in the project as a coordinator and researcher, and the other as an advisor for MSH SUD, within which the project developed.
The article first examines the genesis of the project and the initial meetings between researchers and practitioners in history, archaeology, geology, physics, and medicine. Then, it looks at the project’s institutional formalization and the construction of common study objects by disciplines characterized by different research temporalities. These disciplines are also traversed by implicit unspoken hierarchies, revealing different regimes of truth and scientific proof administration, without being opposed.
In conclusion, the text questions the multiple effects of interdisciplinarity on the project, the disciplines, the researchers, and the research structure that supported the project.
Finally, throughout the text, the choice is made to remain focused on interdisciplinary encounters and practices, because while the results of a funded research project are often published, the approaches, blockages, implicit prejudices, and epistemological contributions are rarely questioned and valued. Yet, isn’t doing science also about knowing how to transmit by questioning what is being transmitted?
Thursday, March 14, 2024
4:00-6:00 PM
(Iméra, conference room of the Maison des Astronomes, 2 place Leverrier)
Intersectoral Interdisciplinarity in Practice: Reflections on the Experience of MSH SUD and the GIEAN Project
Marc Conesa and Julien Mary
Marc Conesa is a senior lecturer in modern history at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Humanities and Social Sciences in Montpellier.
Julien Mary is a research engineer at CNRS and a contemporary historian at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme “Les Sciences Unies pour un autre Développement” (MSH SUD), where he supports the incubation of interdisciplinary research projects.
The incubation phases of interdisciplinary research are crucial to the success of such projects, which bring together researchers from different disciplines and sometimes even field actors, operating in heterogeneous registers of discourse and practice. It is necessary, however, to lead these actors, upstream of the project, to co-construct shared questions and problems, as well as an effective and equitable cooperation system. This is why MSH SUD focuses on supporting emerging interdisciplinary research projects by connecting researchers from different disciplines, providing methodological support, offering a seed budget, conducting scientific animation, providing training, and conducting foresight.
This support will be illustrated here by the “Interdisciplinary Group on Natural Atmospheric Electricity” (GIEAN) project, exemplary for its broad interdisciplinarity and the difficulty of fitting it into conventional support frameworks. The original objective of this project is to understand the formation and effects of nanocomposites in the atmosphere over the long term. The disciplines involved include the humanities (history, archaeology), natural sciences (geology, physical materials sciences), and medicine.
This presentation will aim to account for the blocking situations and difficulties encountered in setting up such a project. Then, it will highlight what allowed for interdisciplinary weaving beyond mere invocations, particularly through an examination of field practice. Finally, it will underline the new mapping of sciences that emerged throughout this project, by analyzing the shifts initiated in history and medicine in particular.
What is life? Life seems to be self-evident, yet remains elusive. Is it a substance, a structure, a process? For Henri Bergson, ‘life is evolution’; ‘the body changes form at every moment. […] What is real is the continual change of form: form is only an instant captured in transition.
These words underline a central property of living beings, namely an internal power of transformation, movement, and evolution, a unique dynamism. They also pose two formidable questions: what is the origin of this dynamism? How to think about the order and permanence of living forms, particularly our own, in light of the dynamics that characterize their development, their constantly renewed organization, and their history ?
Thus, biological species, long thought according to a fixist scheme, transform and evolve over millions of years.
The human being renews most of its non-neuronal cells in less than ten years, some organs like the intestine in five days. Each cell replaces most of its molecular constituents in a few hours, and finally, each cellular organelle renews its components in a few minutes or seconds. How do organisms and all biological structures maintain a constant physiological state, a homeostasis? Where does the stable geometry of life come from, since ‘a stream of matter […] continually flows through the organism and renews it in its substance,’ as Claude Bernard so aptly put it? How does biological order emerge from the chaos present at the molecular scale?
The revolutionary innovations in microscopy of the last twenty years have revealed the unsuspected extent of these dynamics, and, as we will see, offer new insights into the specificity of living matter and its complex self-organization. […] Life unfolds its dynamic forms in an in-between: on one side, the stochastic world of molecular interactions without which life would not exist and mutations without which life would be nothing but a dull and eternal repetition; on the other side, the deterministic world of physical laws and genetic laws, without which there would be no order. Between the two, life reveals itself as fragile yet certain, creative, and – should we not rejoice in this? – also unpredictable.” (Thomas Lecuit, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France).
WEDNESDAY, 12th June
15h-18h
(Iméra, 1st floor meeting room of the Maison Neuve building, 2 place Leverrier)
Dynamics of the Living
Seminar and doctoral training centered around the reflection of Thomas Lecuit (ADUM doctoral college), led by Gabriella Crocco (Iméra), Olivier Morizot, and Florence Boulc’h (IRES, AMU).
This session of the Inter-disciplines seminar cycle and doctoral training will focus on the analysis of Thomas Lecuit’s article, which explores the underlying principles of morphogenesis and spatial organization of biological tissues. In it, he highlights the importance of mechanical interactions between cells and their environment in regulating developmental processes.
Lecuit also examines how cellular and molecular mechanisms contribute to the generation of complex anatomical forms and structures.
Throughout, this text chooses to remain centered on interdisciplinary encounters and practices because while the results of a funded research project are often published, the approaches, obstacles, implicit biases, and epistemological contributions are rarely questioned and valued. Yet, isn’t doing science also about knowing how to transmit while reflecting on what is being transmitted ?
Thursday, 13th June, 2024
16h-18h
(Iméra, Maison des Astronomes building conference room, 2 place Leverrier)
Morphogenesis, at the edge between biology, physics and mathematics
In this fourth seminar of the Inter-disciplines cycle, biologist Thomas Lecuit, will introduce the concept of morphogene, theorised by Alan Turing and further developed by researchers such as Francis Crick and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Exploring through multidisciplinary approaches including developmental biology, biophysics, and mathematical modeling, he seeks to elucidate the fundamental principles underlying the spatial and temporal coordination of cells during the establishment of anatomical structures. Furthermore, we will discuss self-organization models, highlighting how complex structures emerge from simple local interaction rules.
Biography : Thomas Lecuit
Former student of ENS and a member of the Academy of Sciences, Thomas Lecuit currently serves as the director of the Turing Center for Living Systems located in Marseille, an interdisciplinary center studying complexity and self-organization in biology through the contributions of physics, computer science, mathematics, and biology. Additionally, he holds a chair dedicated to Dynamics of the Living at the Collège de France since 2016.
Thomas Lecuit is a biologist whose research focuses on morphogenesis, which is the origin of forms in living organisms, such as neurons or embryos. During embryogenesis, millions of cells divide, move, change shape, and collectively give rise to a complex organism. What are the mechanical forces at play, and what information flows guide these complex processes to their conclusion? To answer these questions, Thomas Lecuit uses the fruit fly (Drosophila) as a model organism. He observes, characterizes, and perturbs the physical and biological properties of development through experimental approaches, and collaborates with physicists and computer scientists to develop theoretical frameworks for understanding these behaviors.
Bibliography
LECUIT, Thomas. Dynamiques du vivant : Leçon inaugurale prononcée le jeudi 27 avril 2017. Nouvelle édition [en ligne]. Paris : Collège de France, 2018 (généré le 08 avril 2024). Disponible sur Internet : https://books.openedition.org/cdf/5781. ISBN : 978-2-7226-0491-9. DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.5781.