Ecology
of Epistemic Transfers
in the Design of a History of Humanity
First Seminar on the Generalized Science of Humanity
organized under the Convention of Scientific Cooperation between ILCAA & MSH.
| Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) 54 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris |
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) Asahicho, Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan |
Hideaki Nakatani (ILCAA/TUFS) & Dominique Lestel (ENS)
Room 214, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
Tuesday 25 March
10:00 H. Nakatani (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Corporal Activities and Contact with Nature proposed by the Buddha
11:00 D.Lestel (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
What is an Ecology of Epistemic Transfers ?
12:00 H. Ichikawa (University of Tokyo)
Modern Significance of the Traditional Commonsense:
Case study of Judaism and Buddhism
Lunch
14:30 P.Picq (Collège de France)
Reconstructing Human Origins after the Ecology of Human Evolution
15:30 T.Maruyana (Nanzan University, Nagoya)
Situation Focus Character of the Japanese Language
--- in Comparison with Major European Languages
16:30 Discussion
Wednesday 26 March
10:00 J.P.Changeux (Institut Pasteur, Collège de France)
Genetic and Epigenetic Developments of Human Neural Networks
11:00 J.L.Dessalles (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télcommunications, Paris)
What is It That People call Knowledge?
12:00 Discussion
Lunch
14:30 J.C.Galey (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
A Methodological Reconsideration on the Generalized Science of
Humanity
15:30 General discussion
Premier Colloque SGH de Paris :
Ecologie des transferts épistémiques dans la constitution d’une Histoire de l’Humanité
Hideaki Nakatani (RILCAA/TUFS) & Dominique Lestel (ENS)
Une question qui se trouve au cœur du projet d’une Histoire Générale de l’Humanité est celle de savoir comment des spécialistes de disciplines aussi différentes que les neurosciences ou l’histoire des religions peuvent coopérer ensemble pour produire un savoir qui relève de la conjonction de leurs connaissances respectives et comment le spécialiste d’une discipline peut « identifier » le savoir de collègues de disciplines très éloignées de la sienne et en donner une interprétation qui lui permet de l’assimiler dans sa propre pratique de recherche. Le problème rencontré est moins celui de la transdisciplinarité, de la multidisciplinarité ou de l’interdisciplinarité que celui d’une véritable /écologie des transferts de savoirs/ – aussi bien d’une discipline à une autre, que d’une culture à une autre ou même d’une période historique à une autre. Cette écologie des transferts épistémiques doit de surcroît se doubler d’une visibilité mutuelle des pratiques (en particulier de laboratoire, de terrain ou d’archives) qui conduit à la production des savoirs concernés. Elle doit enfin être consciente des savoirs innovatifs qui se développent en marge des paradigmes dominants et mettre en place des procédures d’évaluation qui tiennent compte des principaux experts des domaines concernés mis ne s’y réduisent pas. Tout champ d’expertise fait l’objet de stratégies de pouvoir des spécialistes concernés. Cette politique épstémique ne concerne pas le chercheur extérieur au domaine (il ne cherche lui-même à y occuper aucune position) mais doit le préoccuper au plus haut point (les travaux pour lui les plus intéressants d’un domaine sont peut-être occultés ou sous évalués pour des raisons qui n’ont rien à voir avec leur valeur intrinsèque). En fin de compte, ce qui est en jeu est de savoir comment un spécialiste peut s’approprier efficacement le savoir d’un spécialiste d’une autre discipline de façon à la fois créative, méthodologiquement rigoureuse et politiquement prudente. L’objectif de ce symposium, en d’autres termes, est donc de poser pour la première fois les bases d’une véritable écologie fonctionnelle des approprations épistémiques, et de penser ce phénomène à partir du projet d’une Histoire Générale de l’Humanité – biologique et culturelle.
Ecology of Epistemic Transfers
in the Design of a History of Humanity
First Seminar on the Generalized Science of Humanity
organized under the Convention of Scientific Cooperation between ILCAA & MSH.
Hideaki Nakatani (ILCAA, TUFS, Tokyo) & Dominique Lestel (ENS Ulm, Paris)
[Prospectus]
Question of epistemic transfers have become more and more important in contemporary intellectual space for at least three reasons: 1) Multiplication of specialities and the strictly disciplinary training of the researcher; 2) The growing necessity to constitute meaningful intellectual and scientific synthesis; and 3) The availability of new information technologies such like internet. More than an epistemology, we think that such an approach requires a authentic ecology of knowledge and epistemic practices. The wish to elaborate an Generalized History of Humanity constitutes an interesting challenge. From that point of view, the talk will discuss these issues and will try to characterize what could be such an ecology of epistemic transfer.
Ecology of Epistemic Transfers
in the Design of an History of Humanity
First Seminar on the Generalized Science of Humanity
organized under the Convention of Scientific Cooperation between ILCAA & MSH.
Room 214, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
Tuesday 25 March
10:00 H. Nakatani (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Corporal Activities and Contact with Nature proposed by the Buddha
1. The crucial point for the realization of the GSH should be to know how a specialist can understand the information provided by another specialist of different field. We have therefore chosen this question as the theme of this seminar. This question could be considered as a part of the more general question to know how to promote understandings for the peoples of different cultures.
2. The way of understanding of one person could depend on the genetic conditions created at a certain stage of the evolution of living beings, or on the cultural backgrounds formed at the infant or adult period. In these conditions, we should know if it is possible, and if possible how and to what extent, to free ourselves from such conditions or backgrounds in order to arrive at a new understanding of the others’ thinking.
3. In the 5th century B.C., the Buddha, after elaborate examinations of the human perception, concluded that our consciousness as well as our perceptions and our views are, in general, accompanied by desires, and that it is not possible for humans to free themselves only by the reasoning, from those contaminated perceptions that are the causes of all human affliction. Instead, throwing away all our views is possible by knowing this mechanism of our consciousness and, at the same time, by solitary wanderings without any possessions.
4. The method of the Buddha seems to me to have more chance to be efficient than those that have recourse only to reasoning or logic. Corporal activities and contact with nature seem to be items to be considered more completely in our investigation of the ecology of epistemic transfers, all the more because our brain, always engaged in processing of information both aware and not aware, seems to develop the neural networks when used, and to diminish those when not used. Corporal activities and contact with nature could recover our natural mental equilibrium with its full nature as it has been since hundreds thousands of years.
11:00 D.Lestel (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris)
What is an Ecology of Epistemic Transfers ?
Question of epistemic transfers have become more and more important in contemporary intellectual space for at least three reasons: 1) Multiplication of specialities and the strictly disciplinary training of the researcher; 2) The growing necessity to constitute meaningful intellectual and scientific synthesis; and 3) The availability of new information technologies such like internet. More than an epistemology, we think that such an approach requires an authentic ecology of knowledge and epistemic practices. The wish to elaborate a Generalized History of Humanity constitutes an interesting challenge. From that point of view, the talk will discuss these issues and will try to characterize what could be such an ecology of epistemic transfer.
12:00 H. Ichikawa (University of Tokyo)
Modern Significance of the Traditional Commonsense:
Case study of Judaism and Buddhism
1) Traditional common sense and encounter with the Western science
Before the modern era, religion had played a decisive role in establishing the common sense of each civilization and had given its people the system of values and the exemplary ways of living. Educational institution of each religion developed its own way of learning and established the ways of transmitting the value system. The mission of these institutions was not only to teach special knowledge but mainly to attain human perfection according to each religious theory. We can mention such schools as Academia, Lyceion, Yeshivah, Madrasse, Sanga, Monastery, and College. The question is how the traditional knowledge of each civilization, with the rise of modern science and the encounter with the West, would cope with the Western discipline of science and made its way through it.
2) Western science as Greek studies versus Talmudic dialectics as Jewish studies
In the sphere of religious studies, western scholars have become conscious of their Christian bias in that they used to see religious phenomena in non-Western cultures through their Christian preconception of definitions of religion. We may call the Western science and its discipline as Greek studies according to the terminology of Emanuel Levinas. After the Shoah, he has studied Talmud with a wandering Talmudic scholar named Shushani for about three years. Then he designated Talmudic dialectics as typical Jewish studies opposed to the Western ontology as Greek studies and has established his unique philosophy of the otherness as the basis of phenomenology. This is the foundation of his critical examination of Western philosophy. This tradition of Talmudic studies had been preserved in the East European Jewish communities and then regenerated in Lithuanian Yeshivot in 19th. century. So the dichotomy of Greek and Jewish studies of Levinas is the typical example of the first contact of the non-western civilization with the West. We can see in it a modern significance of the traditional common sense.
3) Lastly, I would like to show some characteristics of the traditional common sense of the Japanese Buddhist tradition compared with that of Judaism. Some elements are common, such as oral transmission, intimate personal relationship between master and disciple, lifelong apprenticeship, and human perfection as the ultimate end. And then I will consider the possibility of regeneration of the traditional common sense with a reference to the case of Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides in the Middle Ages.
14:30 P.Picq (Collège de France)
Reconstructing Human Origins after the Ecology of Human Evolution
In every past and actual culture there is a myth about the beginning of the world: the origins. Is it possible to reconstruct a universal and scientific story for all the living human beings? The scientific quest started about 150 years ago in Europe in a very controversial context beyween sciences and religions. Then, during the XXth century the scientific approach anchored on the theory of evolution has accumulated an outstanding set of biological and paleontological evidences. It mainly remained an occidental affair until the 1950’s, even if finally the search for the geographical cradle of the human kind moved from Europe to Asia before ending in Africa. Nowadays, the scientific community is composed by world class researchers originating from all continents.
The project for a general science of humanity (SGH) is not quite new like, for example, the meeting held at Royaumont in France during the early 1970’s with the publishing of the collective bood “the Unity of Man: for a science of Man” under the direction of Edgar Morin. Unfortunately, this interdisciplinary project did not know a real development. The reason is that in the french culture, and consequently inside the university and the main scientific institutions, les sciences humaines are reluctant to accept the theory of evolution. They stand on the philosophical believe that Man is only a cultural being without any biological constraint. Not surprinsingly, there no real research programm in ethology in France. This is a very good example of the difficulty to build such a project. We start from a universal question: where are we coming from? We try to construct a universal response, especially in a culture which still pretends that all its values are universal. But we fail because this culture is unable to question its own mythological and ideological assessments (Picq, 2005).
We can recall a fascinating example about sciences and myths. A half a century ago our Japanese colleagues observed that the macaques living on the Khoshima Island were able to invent new behaviors, especially potatoes washing. The ethologists published there observations and they proposed the concept of protoculture. The occidental scientific community has contested this hypothesis for decades. Why? Symply because the main posture of the occidental culture is that human have a distinct ontological status, which is not the case in the Japanese culture, as in many other cultures in the world. As a matter of fact, if one of the main epistemological concepts of the scientific method is refutability, it is worth noting that the occidental cutlure which is so proud of its scientific heritage is unable to question concepts coming from other ways to think the world originating from its own culture, i.e. myths, philosophies and religions.
Following Michel Serres and its project for Le grand Récit, the SGH project has to begin by our common origins has given by the growing knowledges in paleoanthropology, which is built on contributions coming from many scientific fields – paleontology, genetics, ethology, archeology, linguistics … - produced by a very large community of female and male scientists over the world, in other words issued from different cultures. It is a universal approach which nature is quite the revese of the myhtological response. While the scientific endeavour is to complete an uncomplete paradigm because constantly questionned, the myths propose a full narrative which is not supposed to be questionned. The project forwarded by Michel Serres begins by the paleoanthropological commun origins of all human cultures, meaning before the emergence of the linguistic and cultural diversity of modern humanity, in order to reconstruct how our evolutionnary history has given such a cultural diversity.
The idea of a unique cradle for the human kind or monogeny is also deeply rooted in the occidental myth. Nowadays, all nations supporting a research program in anthropology accept this idea, but with different interpretations which are also based on current scientific discussions, especially about the very controversial topic of modern human origins (Picq, 2003). Whatever the issue, any evolutionary story is based on a structural approach which lies on comparaison and classification. It calls for sets of criteria or characters in comparative anatomy, linguistics, ethology, ethnography, archeology, mythology and history. A huge and fairly recent research program, even in evolutionary biology before the acceptance of the cladistic method or phylogenetic systematic. On an epistemological basis, these structural methods lead naturally to the concept of unique origins or phylgenetic trees. The tree analogy is one of the most universal concept: the cosmic tree appears in almost all narratives on origins (cosmogonies) and also to represents the relationships between the numerous fieds of knowledge (préambule de l’encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert) or the phylogentic relationships inbetween species. As a matter of fact, the evolutionary theory arose from the interpretation of the classifications built on the structural method of systematic studies.
As recalled by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the modern human biological and cultural diversity is the consequence of a natural history: the dispersal of modern human populations out from Africa. We are still able to reconstruct this great history owing to this diversity. The structural approach is possible because we can compare and put in order this diversity. The second step of the Grand Récit deals with historical sciences - paleontology, historical genetics, archaology and history – in order to recover the way our actual biological and cultural diversity has been achieved. We have a community of origins, which is an evolutionary fact which means we have no influence on that fact but only on the way we are able to reconstruct and to accept this natural fact. Now, looking forward, we have a community of destiny and we are responsible for that. This is the real meaning of Hominization. In passing from the scientific history of SGH to the concept of Hominization we deal with the possible project to build a universal ontology. This is not going to be evident according to the raise of religious fundamentalism all around the world and particularly in the monotheistic religions (Picq, 2007).
____________________
Pascal PICQ. Au Commencement était l’Homme. Odile Jacob, 2003.
Pascal PICQ. Nouvelle Histoire de l’Homme. Perrin, 2005.
Pascal PICQ. Lucy et l’obscurantisme. Odile Jacob, 2007.
15:30 T.Maruyana (Nanzan University, Nagoya)
Situation Focus Character of the Japanese Language
--- in Comparison with Major European Languages
I. Description and interpretation
a. Car wash and rain
b. Heavy snow and divorce
II. Impersonal subject, person focus and situation focus
a. Impersonal subject and person focus character of European languages
b. “Subjectlessness” and situation focus character of Japanese
――― Situation focus and the tradition of HAIKU
I. Distribution and interpretation
1. Describe something as it is, although we are restrained by the limitation of a specific language. (We are always bound to the language we use. Consequently it is necessary for us to discuss with people of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.)
2. If there are any distributions corresponding to each other, there is some room for interpretation.
3. We cannot prove interpretations, but we can understand them.
4. What we can do at most is to describe a given situation as precisely as possible using a given language, to identify corresponding distributions, to describe in-between distributions or conditions if any, and to interpret.
5. Basically we should be ready to admit the possibility of any kind of interpretation.
For example: “As for myself, whenever I wash and clean my car, it rains on the following day even if only a little. This is almost like a rule at home.” I remember my daughter having asked me not to wash my car on the day before her school athletic meeting. In this case the two distributions at different times correspond to each other – the washing of the car and the rain. It is possible for my daughter to interpret this correspondence even if it seems to be utterly ridiculous to others. However, we can investigate the possibility of in-between conditions like high humidity before rain and its impulsive power forcing me to wash my car, etc. Still it cannot be proved, but only to be interpreted and understood.
One more example: “In Japan the distribution of a high divorce rate and that of heavy snow areas once corresponded to each other.” This is an example of the corresponding distributions at different spaces. If we try to directly relate these two, it may seem ridiculous. However, as long as there is a corresponding distribution, there is room for interpretation. In this case, in-between conditions like the high rate of three generations living together, the longer time of wife being together with her mother-in-law at home because of snow etc. might be a key to interpretation.
II. Impersonal subject, person focus and situation focus
The impersonal subject is required or obligatory in the expressions below, for example, only in a few languages (including English, French and German) even in Europe. Outside Europe, I believe, very few languages requires this kind of impersonal subject for weather expression.
1. It rains. 2. Il pleut. 3. Es regnet. ⇔ 4. Chove. (Portuguese)
We should keep in mind that even in English, French and German, this impersonal subject was introduced only in the medieval period. In other words, in old English, old French or old German, not to mention ancient Greek or Latin, there were not impersonal subjects. Why they were introduced in these neighboring languages at a certain period of time is a very interesting topic. This must surely have had something to do with the medieval European tendency of distinguishing doers from actions in verbal expressions , or the “person focus character” of modern European languages. Furthermore it might even have something to do with the eventual later emergence of the Cartesian philosophy which distinguishes soul from body, or a person’s thinking from that person’s doings. The cultural and geographical shift from ancient to medieval times was from the eastern Mediterranean Egypt, Mesopotamia Persia and Greece to the Western Europe France, Germany and the British Isles. Moreover all the political happenings and cultural circumstances in medieval Europe cannot be discussed without including the background of Christianity. The concept of the “individual”, for example, is said to have appeared in twelfth-century Western Europe owing to the custom of Catholic confession and the birth of city life. Catholic confession originated with group confessions in the sixth century but developed to private confidential confession in the twelfth century.
Wednesday 26 March
10:00 J.P.Changeux (Institut Pasteur, Collège de France, France)
Genetic and Epigenetic Developments of Human Neural Networks
11:00 J.L.Dessalles (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télcommunications, Paris)
What is It That People call Knowledge?
What is it that people call knowledge? If we adopt a relativist view of human cognitive achievements, considering that human minds are entirely conditioned by their cultures, then a general science of humanity (GSH) cannot be anything else than an heterogeneous juxtaposition of mutually unintelligible chapters. Not only would the collective products of minds from various parts of the world be impossible to compare or to connect to each other, but there would be no possible agreement on what should count as such product: here a novel, there a myth, here a practical know-how, there an equation, here a culinary habit, there a taboo, here an accent, there a way of singing specific words, here a way of behaving when eating, there the memory of some past hero. If we adopt a nativist view of human nature, then GSH will be limited to general common principles. Language would be reduced to general mechanisms such as recursion, and differences between languages will be regarded as anecdotal. Religion will be seen as a mere balance between sacrificial rituals, taboos about blood or food and political deference to a dominating non-existing figure, while specific religions would be ignored as accidental variations on this universal theme.
14:30 J.C.Galey (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
A Methodological Reconsideration on the Generalized Science of Humanity