La lettre d'information des Archives Poincaré (février 2019)

• Journée "Jules Vuillemin et la philosophie analytique", 6 février 2019, Nancy, MSH Lorraine [en savoir plus]
• Journée sur les Expériences de pensée (dans le cadre du projet FFIUM), 13 février 2018, Nancy, MSH Lorraine [en savoir plus]
• Séminaire "Epistemology of Theism", 18-20 juin 2019, Nancy, MSH Lorraine

Hors les murs

• 5 février, Martina Schiavon et Laurent Rollet : "Bilan et perspectives du projet ANR « Le Bureau des longitudes (1795-1932) : de la Révolution française à la Troisième République » (Septembre 2016-Janvier 2019)", Bureau des Longitudes, Paris
• 8 février, Samuel Provost, avec Daniela Gallo, France Nerlich et Marie-Anne Sarda : présentation de l'ouvrage collectif Paris-Nancy 1871-1939 (éditions des Cendres), Paris, INHA, salle Vasari, 18h
• 9 février, Anne-Françoise Schmid : The triptychs of the non-philosophy", colloque "François Laruelle and Non-Standard Philosophy — The Path of Least Resistance", Université libre de Bruxelles, Research Centre for East Asian Studies (EASt) & Centre Interdisciplinaire d'Etude des Religions et de la Laïcité (CIERL)
• 11-12 février, Baptiste Mélès : "Principle of abstraction and philosophical systems in Jules Vuillemin", Colloque "The theory of definitions by abstraction: roots, history, contemporary developments", Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3
• 14 février, Martina Schiavon et Laurent Rollet : "Une institution scientifique internationale dans l’après-guerre : le Bureau des longitudes en 1919", séminaire de l’Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, ENS, Paris

Du côté des projets

The research project that I pursue at the Archives Poincaré concerns the relation between the capitalist relations of production and value-production, on the one side, and production of scientific knowledge, on the other.

The core aim of this research project is to constitute an understanding of (scientific) knowledge which is immediately related to the totality of the mode of human activity and the historically-specific capitalist relations of production. Such a relation is not considered as one between the relations of production as “substructure” or “base” and science and knowledge as “super-structural” and ideological worldview (Weltanschaaung). Rather, knowledge-production is considered as a form of existence of human’s productive activity and her material exchange with nature under capitalism.

An emphasis on the form of knowledge-production activity is required in order to clarify both the social characteristic of scientific knowledge-production (knowledge as a “social kind”) and the specific (universal and “abstract”) form it has to attain under capitalism. What is determining in this process is the specific form knowledge-producing activity attains with the rise of modern science that facilitates large-scale knowledge-production, where the produced knowledge is considered universally valid, and, necessarily, universally applicable—knowledge-production as a large-scale industry.

At the present stage of my research I aim at furthering the understanding of the process of scientific knowledge-production as a large-scale industry that deploys specific means, that is, conceptual machines. To this end, the myth of knowledge as an individually-owned system of beliefs invented/discovered by and stored in someone’s head, brain, or mind will be made subject to criticism. Drawing on Ilyenkov in particular, I try to show that a proper reconstitution of this question requires the analysis of the relation between concepts, thinking, and knowledge since knowledge (particularly, theoretical knowledge) is actualized in the form of conceptual tools and incarnated through sign systems. To this end, three questions are considered: 1. What is thinking? 2. What are concepts? 3. Where are concepts? I intend to show that concepts and conceptual machines are tools for groping reality and that the knowledge produced with their help resides in the social universe. Concepts are meaningful only within socially-specific activity just as machines are significant in the process of production. Out of their use in the social universe, scientific conceptual tools turn into mere things devoid of any significance just as idle machines turn into rusting insignificant material.