Science is a social activity. It cannot be separated from other
human activities, although it has its own rationality. The aim
of the Causeries du Jeudi (Thursday's chats) is to bring together
scientists, laymen, artists, lawyers, poets, philosophers, who
feel concerned by problems raised by biological knowledge (and
in general human knowledge) for discussions on the central concepts
that make Biology as we now know it.
Because when one departs strictly from the most esoteric science
language becomes important, the discussions use several tongues.
Started in French in the early nineties, they are now held mostly
in English (and in Cantonese!, when held in Hong Kong), but some
discussions still go on in French. It should be remembered here
that, in contrast to Anglo-American cultures, Latin civilisations
(especially in Italy and Portugal, but in France also) do not
make a clearcut separation between Science and Arts and Literature.
It is therefore natural that any ongoing reflection of the very
basis of Science (which is deeply rooted in language, and therefore
in semantics) is pursued not only in English, but in other languages
as well. It should be remembered that the 2000 Nobel Prize winner
in Literature Gao Xingjian 高行健, writes not only in Chinese, but
in French as well... Whereas radical empiricism fits well with
English (facts first, demonstration later), the basis of what
makes Science (a kind of rationalism build on hypotheses and
deductions) is hypothesis-driven, and in this endeavour languages
such as French, Greek or Italian (and in its own special way,
German) may appear to be much more appropriate. The case of Chinese
is very special there, and has to be entirely re-constructed,
from the holistic point of view which is its own original feature.
This is one of the endeavours of the Causeries.
These causeries are a revival of the discussions of the Centre
Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, created in the early
seventies mostly by Jacques Monod. This Centre unfortunately
disappeared after Monod's untimely death. This coincided with
the destruction, in most Western countries where it still existed,
of an education system based on Humanities. For this reason it
became incongruous, if not plainly obscene, to speak of philosophy
(or poetry) inside a "hard-science"
laboratory. However, in the early nineties, there was a first
hint that young scientists became interested again in the reasons
underlying their own endeavours. This is what prompted the organisation
of a weekly meeting in the Regulation of Gene Expression Unit
at the Institut Pasteur of Paris, where people interested in
the nature of Science would come and discuss general issues.
This was at a time when a programme with Chinese Universities,
as well as the University of Bologna in Italy, were experimenting
an unorthodox exploration of anthropological
studies of the West by Non-Westerners. For two years, the discussion was centered
on a presentation of the Presocratic
Philosophers,
starting with the observation that the quotation
of Democritus which made the title of the famous book of
Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity, was apocryphous,
and entirely foreign to the Greek spirit. Subsequently,
the major theme of the Causeries was the concept of function.
The discussion was initiated by Yves Brette, a former manager
of the Bull Company, who spoke about the nature of the functions
of human artefacts. From then on the discussion focused on many
topics, ranging from Aristotelian philosophy, Cassirer, Leibniz,
to concrete issues in functional genomics, and genome annotation.
At the onset of the creation of the HKU-Pasteur Centre the discussion
was transferred to Hong Kong, where it began with a discussion
about the nature of Science, knowledge in Europe and in Eastern
countries.
During years 2001-2002 and until march 2003, the causeries are
held at the Department of Mathematics
of the University of Hong Kong, as Working Seminar - Conceptualized
Biology: first steps to define what life is (2nd Series -
2002-2003). They started again at the Institut Pasteur de Paris
in Paris in october 2003. In Paris, this working seminar is temporarily
interrupted. Several ongoing efforts are nevertheless developing
in paralle: the conference Le
Logique et le Biologique held at the University Paris I on
april 22nd 2005 is an illustration (summarized in
our presentation). Since
2006 the discussions have resumed a more regular course, with
conferences, seminars and discussions in Paris and in Hong Kong.
A central focus at the time is Symplectic
(Synthetic) Biology. This work is now followed up by the
creation of an open access journal, Symplectic
Biology. It is
possible to submit
articles to the journal, which will be peer-reviewed.
After each discussion a summary is written, sent by E-mail to
former participants as well as to persons interested in the discussion,
all over the world, who wish to participate.
The "causeries" are meant to be an open forum, but
not a chat group or a general unregulated forum where anybody
can attend. In fact, it is expected that there is some participation
of everybody in the discussion - more like mediaeval disputatii -
and we assume that there is some progress made in the definition
of "prospective" notions (to take the word of John
Myhill), coming out from our common work. For this reason, we
must be sure that people connected are really interested, and
that they have a constructive approach to the discussion. This
is why we ask everybody to register, and we discuss whether we
accept any newcomer in the discussion group. It is also admitted
that not all summaries, contents etc will be in English: multilingual
discussions are encouraged... When accepted, the participant
will receive a password permitting her or him to have access
to the content of the summaries of the discussions. It must also
be understood that, because some may be interested for a while,
then no longer interested, we shall from time to time (usually
one year) change the password attributed to each member of the
discuss ion group. Continuation to participate will require to
use the new password (and therefore to have contacted us).
Note that a public (copyright)
summary of the causeries is regularly updated (on a monthly basis).
This summary begins with the text of the comments on the Presocratic
philosophers discussed in the early nineties (in French), as
well as a summary of the discussion on the scientific method
(in English, and hopefully, in Chinese when the text will be
available).