Lecons Inaugurales

This long tradition would certainly not be a reason in itself to keep or restore the subject, had it not something to do with the subject itself. All of the associations between the past and literature, all of the signs that point towards an essential link between the notion of literature and a feeling for the past, are crystallized in medieval literature. The curiosity that medieval literature has aroused since it was rediscovered at the dawn of Romanticism presupposes such associations. The very forms of this literature bear indications of them. They encourage us to consider jointly the interest of modern times in the medieval past and the signs of the past with which the Middle Ages marked its own literature. Even more, they invite us to seek in the relationship with the past a defining criterion for literature, a most necessary task with reference to a time when words are not understood in their modern sense, and there is no guarantee that a corresponding notion exists. The best reason to continue with this hundred-and-fifty-year-old teaching is that its object may not even exist.

Le temps et les événements, au cœur de l’informatique moderne : Gérard Berry, pionnier de la discipline, explore comment ces notions redéfinissent la programmation, des circuits embarqués à la création musicale.

L’Asie centrale, bien au-delà de la Route de la soie : Refocusing Central Asia de Frantz Grenet redéfinit une région méconnue, entre archéologie, langues oubliées et héritages culturels.

L’Asie centrale comme vous ne l’avez jamais vue : à travers le regard expert de deux spécialistes, découvrez les enjeux géopolitiques, historiques et culturels d’une région au cœur des tensions mondiales.

From the infinitely small to the infinitely big, covering over 60 spatial orders of magnitude, quantum theory is used as much to describe the still largely mysterious vibrations of the microscopic strings that could be the basic constituents of the Universe, as to explain the fluctuations of the microwave radiation reaching us from the depths of outer space. Serge Haroche tells us about the scientific theory that revolutionised our understanding of nature and made an extraordinary contribution to our means of acting on and gaining information about the world.

C'est avant tout en historien, préoccupé par les données concrètes de l'évolution de la société chinoise, que je compte aborder l'histoire des idées, des conceptions et des courants intellectuels en Chine. Le temps n'est plus où l'on se représentait l'histoire de la Chine comme une longue suite uniforme de périodes pratiquement interchangeables. L'histoire de la Chine a un sens, au même titre que la nôtre. Elle a été marquée par des ruptures et elle a connu des époques d'évolution très rapide. Pour qui admet que les hommes sont le produit de leur société et de leur histoire, les XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles chinois constituent une période de recherches privilégiée. Les bouleversements et les transformations sociales, économiques et politiques qui se sont produits au cours de ces trois siècles, la richesse et la diversité de la vie intellectuelle, l'évolution des idées, le grand nombre des esprits indépendants et des personnalités remarquables en font l'intérêt exceptionnel.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions: the extent of certain recent natural disasters and their dramatic consequences have reminded us of the power of terrestrial phenomena and of the need for scientific research to understand the Earth's dynamics more fully. Over the last twenty years the study of the Earth's interior has witnessed a real revolution, owing in particular to the development of increasingly sophisticated seismic tomography techniques and the powerful computations made possible by progress in numerical methods and computer technology. Barbara Romanowicz presents us with the current progress and challenges of global seismology.

Since the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, much scholarly work has been done on "thinking China". A result has been the most contradictory representations which attempt to reconcile "philosophical China" with "Oriental despotism", or an eternal aesthetic and consensual China with a more unpredictable and disturbing vision of the country. To break free of these tenacious clichés, Anne Cheng proposes that we listen carefully to what Chinese authors actually have to say. After all, is China not herself able to think and conceive of her own reality?

En l'espace d'une génération, nous avons plus détruit que ne l'avaient fait, depuis les invasions de la fin de l'Antiquité, toutes les générations qui nous ont précédés. Je me sens solidaire de cette longue chaîne d'hommes et de femmes venus de la nuit des temps qui nous ont transmis un héritage - des constructions, des objets, des écrits et tous les témoignages que l'on extrait de la terre. Ce sont ces documents que j'appelle nos « Antiquités nationales ». Il faut laisser à nos contemporains et à ceux qui viendront après nous une chance de connaître ce que ce fut la Gaule, et, à partir de l'indispensable travail de terrain, en s'appuyant aussi sur les travaux novateurs en sciences humaines, de restituer un sens à des existences passées. Nos Antiquités nationales nous apprennent ce que furent nos prédécesseurs et ce que nous sommes.

La révolution moléculaire en biologie comprend quatre volets : l'identification chimique du matériel héréditaire en tant qu'acide nucléique polymérisé, l'élucidation des structures des macromolécules biologiques, la preuve que la structure et la biosynthèse des protéines - en particulier des enzymes - sont gouvernées par des gènes spécifiques ; plus récemment, enfin, la découverte et l'analyse des circuits de régulation. Rarement courant de doctrines scientifiques s'est montré si rapidement fécond, si « conquérant » selon le qualificatif bernardien. La découverte de ces horizons nouveaux constitue, sans doute, l'un des événements les plus marquants de la science moderne, comparable au renouvellement que subit la physique en 1915.

Comment le Coran a-t-il transformé à jamais la langue et la littérature arabes ? Langue et littérature arabes classiques d’André Miquel, spécialiste reconnu.

Comment les physiciens ont-ils révolutionné notre compréhension de l'atome ? Physique atomique et moléculaire de Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, prix Nobel de physique, retrace l'aventure scientifique qui a conduit à la mécanique quantique.

It was when I was preparing this lecture that I discovered that roboticists had a god: Hephaestus. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was a talented craftsman. Enamoured with Athena, he attempted to woo her, in vain. The goddess of knowledge withstood the advances of the god of doing. Robotics stems from this tension. Although the myth contradicts a current tendency to confuse science and technology, it nevertheless reflects my experience with innovation.

Since Antiquity, humans have used processes to transform the materials of their environment to suit their needs. Solid-state chemistry, initially a series of recipes, became a real science of matter and its transformations following nineteenth-century scientific discoveries. It is now used to develop efficient and eco-compatible materials to transport or store energy. Solid-state chemistry thus plays a crucial role in finding the answers that science will have to bring to humanity's new concerns, particularly surrounding environmental issues.

Where is medieval philosophy going? It is going to where philosophy is. And it is there where philosophy is going. It became medieval once the Middle Ages were over. It was only philosophy when the Middle Ages were still saeculum modernorum, the "century of the Moderns", for those living in it. Today, it is going there where she or he who wants to recount, that is, to relate its history, must go. The archaeology of the subject draws us, in any case, through space and time, from the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) to 18th-century Scottish philosophy, then to 19th-century Austrian philosophy, and finally to the 3rd-millenium "deconstruction of the deconstruction". It is an Averroist project for post-post-modernism.

By combining a method - comparative studies - with an ongoing process - the internationalization of law, that is, its extension beyond national borders - this Chair looks to the future, as uncertain as it may be. Of course current events tragically highlight the absence of a real legal world order. The collective security system of the Charter of the United Nations has shown its weaknesses and law has been unable to disarm force. Conversely, however, force cannot prevent this unprecedented extension of law, to the extent that no State can lastingly override it. In spite of appearances, it is no longer possible today to ignore the superposition of regional, national and global standards, nor the over-abundance of both national and international institutions and judges, with expanded jurisdiction. The new realities are causing law to evolve into complex and highly unstable interactive systems that are perhaps more symptomatic of profound change than of the defeat of law: we are faced with a change in the very conception of the legal order.

De l’âge de pierre à l’ère du numérique, les matériaux ont façonné l’histoire humaine. The Science of Materials retrace cette épopée scientifique et révèle comment, aujourd’hui.

It looks as though the anthropology of nature is an oxymoron of sorts, given that for the past few centuries, nature has been characterized in the West by humans' absence, and humans, by their capacity to overcome what is natural in them. But nature does not exist as a sphere of autonomous realities for all peoples. By positing a universal distribution of humans and non-humans in two separate ontological fields, we are for one quite ill equipped to analyse all those systems of objectification of the world in which a formal distinction between nature and culture does not obtain. This type of distinction moreover appears to go against what the evolutionary and life sciences have taught us about the phyletic continuity of organisms. Our singularity in relation to all other existents is relative, as is our awareness of it.

Along with the theoretical or traditionally historical question "What is literature?", the critical and political question "What can literature do?" begs an answer. What value do contemporary society and culture ascribe to literature? What utility? What role? "My confidence in the future of literature", wrote Italo Calvino, consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it". Is this still relevant to us today?

Life depends on the ability of living organisms to effectively harness the chemical potential of their environment, namely the sun, for energy, and a certain number of molecules which exist on the Earth's surface, such as water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, etc. These molecules need to be activated if benefit is to be derived from them, which requires profound electronic modifications that only metal ions can provide. Truly extraordinary metalloenzymes with highly subtle mechanisms are responsible for this activation. Bioinorganic chemistry straddles the disciplines of chemistry and biology and is in full expansion today. This discipline was born of the recent realisation that life is not solely organic but also "mineral", and that no life can exist without metals.

Notre corps abrite dix fois plus de bactéries que de cellules : une symbiose essentielle, mais aussi un champ de bataille invisible.

Le cerveau est une machine qui traite l'information, l'enregistre, donne des ordres à la manière d'un ordinateur. Toutes ses fonctions, aussi nobles soient-elles, résultent exclusivement de l'assemblage d'éléments cellulaires, de leurs interactions ainsi que des signaux reçus du monde extérieur par le canal des organes des sens. Mais quelle méthode suivre pour pénétrer dans une mécanique si désespérante par sa difficulté que d'aucuns, fort éminents, n'hésitent pas à la reléguer dans la catégorie des « boîtes noires » ?

Metaphysics has been proclaimed to be archaic or outdated. Actually, it never "died". It has even experienced considerable revival throughout the world, which in France we have yet to fully appreciate. Because, in both the most general and the most precise ways, it questions "what there is", it is essential to any knowledge-related undertaking, in the sense not of a recognition of eternal truths but of an enquiry on the world and on reality. In this lecture Claudine Tiercelin sets out the programme of a scientific and realist metaphysics rooted in the rationalist tradition and diametrically opposed to obscurantist spiritualism and post-modern relativism.