David LEVRAT became an engineer in civil engineering and in fluid mechanics after training at the University McGill of Montreal (Canada) and at the ENSEEIHT of Toulouse (France). At the same time as these engineering consultant’s activities in hydroelectricity, at present led in Uganda, and to wanderings in South-East Asia, he looked according to his own statements « an editor between two dams ». This euphemism hides in reality a consequent research work in the crossed field of the sciences and the philosophy title « Intuition » which called implicitly its integration in PLASTIR. This transdisciplinary project addresses several areas such as sciences, arts, philosophy, ethics or economy. We deliver here the part from it relative to the nature of sciences. What does it say us basically? That « the monad of the sciences can be called Natural. Intrinsically, the Nature is split in two, in Physics and in Metaphysics. The Physics is the existential part of the Nature, the one which shows itself according to a spatialized time, a dimension, and is understandable; it is read and counted. The Metaphysics is the essential part of the Nature, the one which is outside any form of temporality. The element of imbalance of the Physics is the Psychic, which indicates what is preserved according to a certain dimension, what offers a form of obvious identity, a law in the time. The movement of the Sciences, it is that of the Metaphysics towards the Physics. The Psychic interface moves, it follows the movement of the truth, on behalf of reality which is lived. The epistemology, it is the memory of the passages made at the level of this thick border of the things of the Nature. On the Physical face of the interface, we find the Biology and on the Metaphysical face or maybe exactly in the interface we find the Psychoanalysis « . We discover the tone of all the logico-deductive reflections there which are going to follow. Every discipline, area, segment, sub-section is there methodically, surgically, quasi-organically detailed, with every time an opening towards a new epistemological field having lupascian accents. In here is an outline. The physical nature: the time would be « a relationship of disorganization of a monad towards an other one « , the thermodynamics « a dialogue between the quantitative and the qualitative « , the « mass-energy of which transfers objectively, inexorably, of the macroscopic towards the microscopic « , an information which « the quality debauchery allowed the statistical emergence of a quanta of life, which cut in two multiplies. Of the quantum auto-replication in the mesoscopic auto-replication ». The biological nature: « The life is a waste of the waste; it spoils the change, minimizes the permutation. It settles it and prevents it from coming true as perfectly as possible. As long as we shall not have found the Idea, we shall be fed by objective overproduction… it is a shape of understanding of the matter according to a reorganization of the parts, a signature made by particles distributed in the space-time… In the direction of the evolution, it is reasonable to think that the visible loss of vital information is compensated with certain creativity, with a new dimension semi-undecidable, the thought « . The psychic nature: « The world of the thought grows as a tree by developing its branches for ever to balance itself: from the chaos appear all the branches of dimensions, masses, energies, lives which engender themselves in one comings and goings of looks; this waltz entails them in a whirlwind of matter and a deluge of energy, embraces the life, finally closes the eyes of the thought. Memory is a fold of time, a slow breaker which settles down in river and moves in the same speed as it but in opposite direction: it is completely synchronized with a subjective time ». – About the psyche, Jung and Freud: « The dialogue between both could be facilitated around a table, between the affects of the nutrition at Freud and the incorporation at Jung. Jung has the intuition of the embodiment, a kind of premonition. It is a serious poet. Jung could be interested not in the appearance of the sexuality, but in that of the word. Until the word, our dreams are our premonitions. During this period, before focusing us, the awakened life is imagined by inconsistent flows « . The Metaphysics: « Let us try to build, starting from scratch or nothing, what there would be of bigger. It would be at first a distinction, then a distinction of distinction, a dimension, then a dimension of dimension, a space. Finally, a meta-space. That would be a space of space and in which it would so be big? It would be all the possible combinations of the things that compose a space. Meta-space, it is a set of points everywhere at the same time in the space, all the combinations of which are realized, posted ». – About time, Bachelard and Bergson: « The intuition of Bachelard, it is because the game of the life is, nevertheless, a mirror of the life. It is exact, but only if we agree to lose a last new thing. A thing which Bergson could not accept « . The Zen attitude: « The end of the understanding, it is the western consciousness. The end of the science, it is the oriental consciousness, it is the shiki, that I venture to translate improperly by Zen ».
August NSONSISSA is a philosopher, assistant professor (CAMES) and professor at the University Marien Ngouabi of Brazzaville (Faculty of arts and Human sciences). He was also an associate researcher at the center Edgar Morin. Besides numerous essays in review on the philosophy of Aristotle or Leibniz, he published in particular: « Transdisciplinarity and epistemological transversality at Edgar Morin » (L’Harmattan Ed., Collection philosophical opening) in 2010, indicating his attachment to the morinian concept of complexity, but also to its pragmatics and to its epistemology there. The readers will relate to PLASTIR 24, 09/2011 where he dealt with the intersubjectivity at Edgar Morin as paradigm of construction of the scientific objectivity. His initiative is indeed situated in a transverse approach of the paradigm of complexity, « an integrative and rotative modelling of the philosophical, the sociological and the anthropological » rather than in a sociological stationing or strict epistemocritics of the work of Morin. This concept, become philosophy, is of use to him as springboard or of « operator » to approach « the crisis of the social sciences in Africa », and more generally the critical states, the conflicts and the human mutations. The complex thought embodies a rampart against the socio-educative or political hardening and the induction of profound questionings there of the powers as of knowledge. This attempt of refoundation, widely shared in the cross-cultural scale, aims towards an ethics of the globalization and the transmission of knowledge. In this new contribution to PLASTIR, Auguste Nsonsissa “suggests putting forward some russellian considerations on the « sense -data » which do not become confused with the sensations; even though they would have made possible the sensitive experience. Besides, the « sense datum » are objects of consciousness which are of use as formal statements to the logic of the comprehensibility of the physical phenomena. In every case, it is about an overtaking of the rational psychology which, beyond Kant, paradoxically makes way for a closeness maintained by Russell between « science and religion » from its notion of mind ». Indeed, it is clearly the description of a trans-world which escapes the science about which it is a question according to Russel, of an throw-in of a theory of the knowledge which would aim to be to overtake the metaphysical cleavages and to encourage the logico-deductive reasoning, as far as they do not content with training a scientific philosophy, but oppose a psychology involving an excess of rationalization. The « direct experience » of the reality, the spatiotemporal frame of the sense data, the relationship subject-object are weapons or springs of this epistemological contextualized initiative which addresses first and foremost to the logicians and the philosophers of the language, but extends in all the pieces of the knowledge through a fundamentally « sensualist » attitude. This chosification will paradoxically carry Russell towards an overtaking of the metaphysics questioning the mysticism and the notion of mind, but it will be the object of the next essay of our author.
DIOGENE DE SINOPE, THE REALIZATION OF THE DREAM – PROPOSAL OF A TRANSDISCIPLINARY GAME –
Rémy BASTIDE is a plastician, following our definition of the term, being at the same time sculptor of the matter and transdisciplinary actor of a dream. As we have already presented him in PLASTIR 12, 09/2008, he pursues for several years a singular dreamlike project, « The dream of Diogene de Sinope », with the aim of reconstituting it in a most faithful possible way. How? By requesting a transdisciplinary game, of a way much more supported still than previously, but leaving to every partner a not insignificant free will. Actually, the dream about Diogenes, cynical philosopher of the Greco-Roman world appearing as the anti-Prometheus in the fact that he « refuses the benefactions of the civilization brought by the Titan to the men and because he disputes the value of a human intelligence which escapes mostly the control of the reason and this fact can become the source of the biggest troubles « , is materially supported by « The table of the man « , at the same time image, formal structure and interactive space dedicated to the exchange and to the active sharing of the knowledge. This space opens “a way by which the consciousness becomes aware of itself even – entirely – and wakes up Anima ». Having matured, the project is in its phase of realization today, specifying the onset launched by Rémy Bastide in 2008 and supported by PSA (Plasticities Sciences Arts), with the aim of taking shape through a new transdisciplinary pattern: that to bind the scientific knowledge, the poetic knowledge and the real-life experiences. The purpose and the progress of the game are so clearly expressed as well as their space, « The table of the man », presenting the at the same time an horizontal, transverse and vertical reading grid. The game takes place in three phases: its bait (gathering of the raw material), its construction and its combination (realization of the dream). « The objective of the onset of the game is to gather the matter for the construction of the transverse reading » summarizes his author by specifying the modalities, the alternatives and the thematic variants around the central theme of Prometheus, his complex and the drift of Promethium. Everything is thus ready so that the actors of this transdisciplinary game declare themselves; make a commitment, and offer real future prospects to this ambitious, realistic and rich project annunciating « the era of plasticians ».
Mariana THIERIOT LOISEL is a French philosopher living in Canada specialized in sciences of education and a faithful associate of our TD review. She approaches in this issue the role of the father in the construction and the transmission of the knowledge through the relations between science and the philosophical reading of the sacred texts. That it is about the oriental philosophy or about the Judeo-Christian tradition, the author shows us straightaway that the pillars of the search for meaning or sense are universals: immanent if they became from the being, transcendent if the process is external, crosses the individual and brings the knowledge. The consequences of the adoption of the one or other one of these search modes lead irreparably to the scientific method in the first case and to the mystic approach or at least theological in the second. Yet, the paternal symbolism at the same time creative and oppressive calls on to the exogenous way thwarting the autonomy given by the logico-deductive thought. Where from the confrontation enters logos and the mythos raging today still as much in East as in West. It will lead Mariana Thiériot Loisel « to think about the place of the Father in the perlaboration of the knowledge, in the limits and in the consequences put by a knowledge inherited from the outside in a transcendental way, and also in the opening in the field of the possible, stemming from the truth in the test of the immanent real-life experience proposed by the persons who think in situation ». Through her readings, through Tao to the book of Job, but also surrounding areas of contemporary thinkers as Levin or Meirieu, her conclusions will concern the possible dialogue between the endogenous way of the subject and the exogenous way of elaboration of the knowledge father-son. Among these, the Zen way approached stage by stage by means of the « path in eight branches « , a legitimate interrogation beyond man, on the place made for women in the transmission of the knowledge and on the role of the interiority and the otherness in the plasticity of knowledge, and to finish on the dual place of the father, at the same time the parent and repressor of certain forms of knowledge or disclosure of the knowledge. In conclusion, a « laic » opening in the resumption of the dialogue enters the homo sapiens and the homo ludens according to Barbier and could allow to free itself from the divine influence of the father …