What understanding does the closure of constraints bring about a biological system in practices? Without discussing particular cases, one cannot answer this question. The goal of this workshop is to bring together and synthesize individual modeling experiences in physiology and ecology to establish perspectives of research collectively regarding organization in biology, sensu closure of constraints. This workshop is intended to a specialized audience. We encourage speakers to present models or modeling methods, and share critical reflections on their work and the difficulties encountered. Identifying achievements, open questions, perspectives, and experimental, conceptual or technical difficulties is the main goal of this meeting. Additionally to relatively short Q&A sessions, a general discussion will synthesize the main points raised during the day. This synthesis will be transcribed and shared with the participants after the workshop.
Politics is the fight for freedom; freedom does not exist outside of the struggles for it. Freedom is neither transcendent infinite being nor is it an Idea. Since the object of politics is not an Idea, there is no universal form for politics. The péjoration of politics, “politics” as a culture of lies and manipulations for gaining power, presupposes a non-political ideality or an anti-political totality. When philosophy commences otherwise than its ethno-history through an other beginning of philosophy politics is already opening a collective anticipation of freedoms unknown. For that very reason, unknown dangers await our political future.
In the last decade, the notion that new possibilities appear over time in biological phenomena has received renewed and growing attention. Kauffman approaches it as the adjacent possible, Sarti and Citti as heterogenesis, and Longo and Montévil as symmetry change and specific objects. Accordingly, there is a growing understanding that this notion is a significant shift and challenge in the way to do science. However, there has yet to be a systematic effort to bring together the different perspectives on this question in biology and in other fields confronted with it. In this conference, we intend to create bridges between the different perspectives that have been developed, mostly independently, on the question of changing possibility spaces in biology.
10h30-12h30, Salle des Actes, École Normale Supérieure
The other beginning of philosophy arrives through a rethinking of the very meaning of beginning. The beginning in this case involves those philosophical works and intuitions from out of which one begins. The political and ethical questions arose from within and from outside of the philosophical archives of the past that are also demanding a new sense for "the history of philosophy. The deepest pre-conceptions of metaphysics which informs the sciences are being evaluated from out of the stasis in which several of the scientific pursuits find themselves today. For these reasons, the meaning of beginning is nothing simple.
In this colloquium, we celebrate the 75th birthdays of Giuseppe Longo and Ana Soto. We have chosen to show their distinct trajectories and then how they intersect while working on the foundations of theoretical knowledge with a biology focus. In this respect, both Giuseppe Longo and Ana Soto maintain a close relationship with philosophy and philosophers. At the same time, both are also involved in “the life of the polis”, this is, addressing the repercussions of science in society and the environment, both as scientists and intellectuals.
The multiple crises of philosophy (conceptual, institutional, vocational, political, economic) which have constituted a situation of more than crisis—a criticalisation—from which philosophy will not be able to recover into anything resembling what it was in the past. However, these moments of crises also offer a chance to question what were properly philosophical evils and initiate an inventive era of philosophy which will be able to comprehend a new relation with other disciplines including the sciences, psychoanalysis, politics, and technology. The analytic of the stasis of philosophy began with the tradition of deconstruction through Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Bernard Stiegler. Today we already have glimpses of philosophy in anastasis, or the experience of philosophy coming over stasis. The four speakers will outline and discuss the other beginning of philosophy.
Private interests sometimes indulge in disrupting scientific knowledge. The study of these strategies with human sciences’ methods is called agnotology. In today’s event, we will discuss this matter from the perspective of scientists who were directly confronted with this kind of practice. We will also explore the notion that increasing theoretical accuracy in fields such as biology, especially molecular biology, would increase the resilience of the scientific endeavor when facing such disruptions.
