Henri Atlan – författare

The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan's magnum opus, develops his whole philosophy with a highly impressive display of knowledge, wisdom, depth, rigor, and intellectual and moral vigor. Atlan founds an ethics adapted to the new power over life that modern scientific knowledge has given us. He holds that the results of science cannot ground any ethical or political truth whatsoever, while human creative activity and the conquest of knowledge are a double-edged sword. This first volume, Spermatic Knowledge, begins with the Talmudic tale about the prophet Jeremiah's creation of a golem, or artificial man. Atlan shows that the Jewish tradition does not demonize man for creating and changing living things—a charge often leveled at promoters of advanced technologies, like biologists, who are accused of "playing God." To the contrary, man is depicted as being the co-creator of the world.Although Atlan believes that the fabrication of life "from scratch" will take place in the near future, he posits that this achievement will not really amount to creating life current biology and biotechnologies have demonstrated that there is no absolute distinction between life and non-life, no critical threshold whose crossing would be taboo. He also debunks and demystifies our belief in free will and our conviction, of theological origin, that there would be no possibility for ethics if free will were shown to be an illusion. Throughout, he combines science, religion, and ancient and modern philosophy in unexpected and inspired ways. His radical, uncompromising Spinozism allows him to propose a complete revision of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, while showing that their current impasses stem from remnants of traditional dualism. From his brilliant reflections on time, he also derives exciting considerations for medicine and epidemiology.

In this second volume of The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan pursues his investigation of human life, which he grounds in a distinctive intermingling of the biological and cognitive sciences and traditions of Jewish thought. The Atheism of Scripture offers up a paradox: its audacious thesis is that the Word or revealed scripture can be better understood without God. It must be decrypted or analyzed atheistically, that is, not as divine revelation, but in and of itself. The first part of the book addresses contemporary science. It puts the evolution of ideas about life and knowledge as conceived by today's biological and cognitive sciences into perspective and shows how the genealogy of ethics must be approached in a new way. The second part takes up this challenge by putting classical philosophy in dialogue with the Talmud and the Kabbalah to advance a non-dualistic anthropology of the body and the mind.

In this second volume of The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan pursues his investigation of human life, which he grounds in a distinctive intermingling of the biological and cognitive sciences and traditions of Jewish thought. The Atheism of Scripture offers up a paradox: its audacious thesis is that the Word or revealed scripture can be better understood without God. It must be decrypted or analyzed atheistically, that is, not as divine revelation, but in and of itself. The first part of the book addresses contemporary science. It puts the evolution of ideas about life and knowledge as conceived by today's biological and cognitive sciences into perspective and shows how the genealogy of ethics must be approached in a new way. The second part takes up this challenge by putting classical philosophy in dialogue with the Talmud and the Kabbalah to advance a non-dualistic anthropology of the body and the mind.

The Sparks of Randomness, Henri Atlan's magnum opus, develops his whole philosophy with a highly impressive display of knowledge, wisdom, depth, rigor, and intellectual and moral vigor. Atlan founds an ethics adapted to the new power over life that modern scientific knowledge has given us. He holds that the results of science cannot ground any ethical or political truth whatsoever, while human creative activity and the conquest of knowledge are a double-edged sword. This first volume, Spermatic Knowledge, begins with the Talmudic tale about the prophet Jeremiah's creation of a golem, or artificial man. Atlan shows that the Jewish tradition does not demonize man for creating and changing living things—a charge often leveled at promoters of advanced technologies, like biologists, who are accused of "playing God." To the contrary, man is depicted as being the co-creator of the world.Although Atlan believes that the fabrication of life "from scratch" will take place in the near future, he posits that this achievement will not really amount to creating life current biology and biotechnologies have demonstrated that there is no absolute distinction between life and non-life, no critical threshold whose crossing would be taboo. He also debunks and demystifies our belief in free will and our conviction, of theological origin, that there would be no possibility for ethics if free will were shown to be an illusion. Throughout, he combines science, religion, and ancient and modern philosophy in unexpected and inspired ways. His radical, uncompromising Spinozism allows him to propose a complete revision of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, while showing that their current impasses stem from remnants of traditional dualism. From his brilliant reflections on time, he also derives exciting considerations for medicine and epidemiology.

We can calculate financial fraud, but how do we measure bad faith? How can we evaluate the words of the pharmaceutical industry or of eco-scientific ideologies, or the subtle deception found in political scheming? Henri Atlan sheds light on these questions through the concept of ona'ah, which in Hebrew refers to both fraud in financial transactions and the verbal injury inflicted by speech. The world of ona'ah is a world of an "in-between," where the impossible purity of absolute Platonic truth gives way to a more relative notion—the near-theft, the quasi-lie. Today it seems that no discourse is safe from fraudulent excesses, be they intentional or no. As both philosopher and biologist, Atlan works on several registers. He forges links between the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and the big questions of our time, multiplying the bridges between science, philosophy, and current ethical dilemmas. In a context of financial and moral crises that appear to be weakening our democracies, Henri Atlan's work allows us to rethink the status of fraud in the contemporary world.

We can calculate financial fraud, but how do we measure bad faith? How can we evaluate the words of the pharmaceutical industry or of eco-scientific ideologies, or the subtle deception found in political scheming? Henri Atlan sheds light on these questions through the concept of ona'ah, which in Hebrew refers to both fraud in financial transactions and the verbal injury inflicted by speech. The world of ona'ah is a world of an "in-between," where the impossible purity of absolute Platonic truth gives way to a more relative notion—the near-theft, the quasi-lie. Today it seems that no discourse is safe from fraudulent excesses, be they intentional or no. As both philosopher and biologist, Atlan works on several registers. He forges links between the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and the big questions of our time, multiplying the bridges between science, philosophy, and current ethical dilemmas. In a context of financial and moral crises that appear to be weakening our democracies, Henri Atlan's work allows us to rethink the status of fraud in the contemporary world.

Published in France in 2018, Henri Atlan's book Cours de philosophie biologique et cognitiviste: Spinoza et la biologie actuelle (Odile Jacob, 2018) represents a turning point in Spinoza's interpretations of contemporary life sciences. Henri Atlan is the first in this field of research, of applied epistemology and ontology, to effectively address contemporary questions in biology and cognitive sciences. Atlan presents us with a genuine understanding of Spinoza's monism, which is neither materialistic nor idealistic, and with an expertise in contemporary life sciences that will open an entire new field of research in Spinoza scholarship as well as in philosophy of sciences. Readers will better understand the connection between Spinoza's Ethics, his ontology and epistemology, and modern life sciences, allowing us to rethink the relationship between ethics and modern sciences.

Published in France in 2018, Henri Atlan’s book Cours de philosophie biologique et cognitiviste: Spinoza et la biologie actuelle (Odile Jacob, 2018) represents a turning point in Spinoza’s interpretations of contemporary life sciences. Henri Atlan is the first in this field of research, of applied epistemology and ontology, to effectively address contemporary questions in biology and cognitive sciences. Atlan presents us with a genuine understanding of Spinoza’s monism, which is neither materialistic nor idealistic, and with an expertise in contemporary life sciences that will open an entire new field of research in Spinoza scholarship as well as in philosophy of sciences. Readers will better understand the connection between Spinoza’s Ethics, his ontology and epistemology, and modern life sciences, allowing us to rethink the relationship between ethics and modern sciences.

Les avancées de la biologie contemporaine posent de façon nouvelle des problèmes philosophiques anciens, tels que ceux des rapports entre le vivant et l’inanimé, entre le corps et l’esprit, l’erreur et la vérité. La philosophie de Spinoza, bien que datant du XVIIe siècle, apporte à ces problèmes des solutions plus pertinentes que la plupart des philosophies plus récentes, développées dans les siècles qui l’ont suivie. En retour, les acquis actuels des sciences physiques et biologiques, notamment des neurosciences cognitives, permettent de porter un nouveau regard sur certaines notions propres à la philosophie de Spinoza, telles que sa « petite physique », la nature cause de soi, la notion de matière, l’essence des choses, les genres de connaissance, qui acquièrent de ce fait un surcroît d’actualité. Une approche tout à fait nouvelle de la philosophie, et de Spinoza en particulier, grâce à la biologie et aux sciences cognitives. Henri Atlan est à la fois médecin, biologiste et philosophe. Ancien chef de service à l’hôpital de l’Hôtel-Dieu à Paris, il est professeur émérite de biophysique, fondateur et ancien directeur du Centre de recherche en biologie humaine à l’hôpital universitaire Hadassah de Jérusalem. Il est également directeur d’études en philosophie de la biologie à l’EHESS. Il a notamment publié Entre le cristal et la fumée, Les Étincelles de hasard, ainsi que, aux éditions Odile Jacob, Le Vivant post-génomique, qui ont été de grands succès.

Comment des structures fonctionnelles aussi complexes que les virus et les réseaux de neurones émergent-elles ? Découlent-elles nécessairement d’un projet intentionnel, voire d’une volonté providentielle ? Ou bien ces ensembles complexes sont-ils capables de s’organiser eux-mêmes ? Henri Atlan tente, dans ce livre, de répondre à cette question fondamentale. Démontrant ici toute la richesse du concept d’auto-organisation, il fait apparaître les limites des modèles informatiques adoptés par la génétique depuis des décennies ; il fait émerger de nouvelles méthodes scientifiques pour modéliser le réel ; il bouleverse la façon dont inné et acquis se distinguent, se combinent et s’articulent. D’une redéfinition complète de la cellule à une analyse révolutionnaire des actions volontaires et à une nouvelle conception de l’unité entre le corps et l’esprit, Henri Atlan nous ouvre ici de nouvelles perspectives pour penser la complexité du vivant et de l’humain. Henri Atlan est à la fois médecin, biologiste et philosophe. Ancien chef de service à l’hôpital de l’Hôtel-Dieu à Paris, il est professeur émérite de biophysique et directeur du Centre de recherche en biologie humaine à l’hôpital universitaire Hadassah de Jérusalem. Il est également directeur d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). Henri Atlan a, en particulier, publié L’Organisation biologique et la Théorie de l’information, Entre le cristal et la fumée, Les Étincelles de hasard, qui ont été de grands succès.

For a long time, immunology has been dominated by the idea of a simple linear cause-effect relationship between the exposure to an antigen and the production of specific antibodies against that antigen. Clonal selection was the name of the theory based on this idea and it has provided the main concepts to account for the known features of the immune response. More recently, immunologists have discovered a wealth of new facts, in the form of different regulatory cells (helpers, suppressors, antigen presenting cells), genetic determinations of immune responses such as those involved in graft re­ jections, different molecular structures responsible for intercellular interactions such as interleukins, cytokins, idiotype-antiidiotype recognition and others. While furthering our understanding of the local interactions (molecular and cellular) in­ volved in the immune response, these discoveries have led to a questioning of the simplicities of the classical clonal selection theory. It is clear today that every single immune response is a cooperative phenomenon involving several different molecular and cellular interactions taking place in a coupled manner. In addition, cross reactivity to different antigens has shown that responses of the whole im­ mune system to different antigens are not completely isolated from one another and that the history of encounters with different antigens plays a crucial role in the maturation of the whole system. Thus, problems of complexity, generation of di­ versity and self-organization have entered the field of immunology.

For a long time, immunology has been dominated by the idea of a simple linear cause-effect relationship between the exposure to an antigen and the production of specific antibodies against that antigen. Clonal selection was the name of the theory based on this idea and it has provided the main concepts to account for the known features of the immune response. More recently, immunologists have discovered a wealth of new facts, in the form of different regulatory cells (helpers, suppressors, antigen presenting cells), genetic determinations of immune responses such as those involved in graft re­ jections, different molecular structures responsible for intercellular interactions such as interleukins, cytokins, idiotype-antiidiotype recognition and others. While furthering our understanding of the local interactions (molecular and cellular) in­ volved in the immune response, these discoveries have led to a questioning of the simplicities of the classical clonal selection theory. It is clear today that every single immune response is a cooperative phenomenon involving several different molecular and cellular interactions taking place in a coupled manner. In addition, cross reactivity to different antigens has shown that responses of the whole im­ mune system to different antigens are not completely isolated from one another and that the history of encounters with different antigens plays a crucial role in the maturation of the whole system. Thus, problems of complexity, generation of di­ versity and self-organization have entered the field of immunology.