Plastir Number 9 – 12/2007

MORPHOGENESIS : THE FORM AS IT IS DEPLOYED AND IT LIVES

Louis-José LESTOCART is an art critic and an archaeologist. He carried out a careful thought on the virtual cognitive systems and on complexity. He animates the workshop 36 named « To hear aesthetics in his complexities » from the MCX association for this reason and he is consultant at the College of France (Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action). Louis-José described to us the territories where Homo virtualis sails with many details in Plastir n°6. He focuses in this paper on the morphogenesis which surround us, introducing a field that we appreciate: the plasticity of the forms. This plasticity is shown there in its universal ability when it concerns the bios, with an enthralling description of the growth of plants, of auto-organized systems described by Goethe, Varela or Arcy Thomson, all plasticians in the direction where we hear it at PSA (i.e. not divided men, but asserting their plastic approach of the events as much under the angle of science that that of poetry). The author shows us by a double reading this advance of the man who observe, theorize and the matter which grows, which follows its own metalogics by which the morphogenic incidences astonish us as at the first day. He reports to us also its intimate history: from the naturphilosophie to the semiology of forms, from the structures of Turing to the epigenetic of Waddington, from the evolutionary strategies to the formal languages of Lindenmayer, for finally approaching the virtual creatures. He very precisely concludes that these forms « are themselves a knowledge, as they are developing (in the two directions of the term) under our eyes. Such as a thought is building itself where the intelligence builds itself in its own gropings « The intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself » (Piaget).

IN CONNECTION WITH THE AGED LEARNING PEOPLE – A CONTRIBUTION TO DEMOLISH THE MYTHS WHICH SURROUND OLD AGE –

Madeline DERIAZ is a painter, teaching in visual arts and a future doctor in andragogy at the University of Montreal. She contributes to Plastir n°3 by treating of creativity, artistic education, personal and cognitive development. In this article, she opens us to knowledge by the means of a demystification of the world of the elder ones. The course is meticulous, supported and very convincing. It shows the social movement which accompanies the rise to power by a new age: that of the great maturity. An age which has forces and a great brittleness, which does not hesitate any more to transgress the physical limits and the borders of always renewed knowledge. Madeline Deriaz describes us this training, the theoretical contribution of new teaching fields of research like the gerontagogy (in opposition to the gerontology) in the universities of the 3rd age and especially this inextinguishable thirst for knowledge of the elder ones. This design is opposed to the « oldness » and loneliness, to the inescapable vision of decline maintained by our Western companies. She forces the respect and calls with a collective start, to a new educational data in a world where it will be necessary to take into account the seniors.

TO THINK TIME

Marc-Williams DEBONO, researcher in neurosciences and editor of the Plastir review tackles in this number the enigmatic question of the nature of time from physics to psychology. The principal question put in this paper is: how to think about a time whose paradoxical nature, origin and direction are so much the object of controversy in the field of experimental physics ? The dynamics of non-linear systems, and of living systems in particular, as well as brain plasticity open up enough research pathways on the intrinsic nature of time. We explore in this paper the apparent contradiction between the subatomic time and the biological time, through quantum mechanics discoveries. This approach shows to what extent natural systems and the human apprehension of the arrow of time are impacted by the consequences of these discoveries. How and to what extent the brain integration participates to our understanding of the world ? What is the role of brain correlates of consciousness ? The plasticity of time plays a key role at the level of the individual discharges of neurones, of brain pacemakers and of brain memories. Moreover, it acts at the level of the subjectivity of singular cognitive experiences. Three modes of interactions are evaluated: physical versus biological time, objective versus subjective time and emotive versus constructive time. The temporo-spatial geometry of the brain is so compared to the other modes of data processing. The complementarity seems to be a common answer to these various fields of the brain sphere. However numerous questions about the paradoxical nature of time and our ability to think it stay without answers. Only transdisciplinary works in the field of biophysical and cognitive sciences opened to the phenomenology of time could give some serious arguments to direct the debate. The psychological time have also to be more interrogated knowing that qualia and unconscious processes are badly known. With regard to the final answer about the intrinsic nature of time, it is probably to be found in man himself, with his multiple role of observer, subject of experience and interactive consciousness of the universe.

DIALOGUES OF THE HERMENEUTICS OR DIALOGUES OF THE PHILOSOPHIES OF THE WORLD

Jean-Yves LELOUP is a doctor in philosophy, theology and psychology. He teaches in philosophy or anthropology in several universities all over the world and wrote around fifty books making dialogue between cultures, religions and the approaches of spirituality. As much to say that his approach of the hermeneutics results at the same time from a meeting of the knowledge and a lived transdisciplinarity. From this strong experience, the author describes to us the richness of these intimate dialogues about the three intellects (superior, passable and weak), the limpidity with which Gampopa, wise and Tibetan philosopher of the twelfth century analyses these items through the author and the way in which they are perceived in Occident and in Orient. The body text gives the word to Gampopa, while a parallel is outlined with the three Yanas or three vehicles of the Buddhist Tibetan tradition. Each level of consciousness or reality approached leads us to question us on strict causality, the ratio and on the true intelligence of life. The ethical solution which emerges from this approach is at the same time transversal, meditative and relates to the becoming of men. Jean-Yves Leloup Blog.

Les commentaires sont clos.

  • NEWSLETTER

    Give your input !