Science

Summary

Dominique Pagani defines science by three conditions, which he restates from one session to another: a proper object, universal and necessary laws, and statements formulated so as to lend themselves to experimental verification involving measurement12. There is science, he says, only of the measurable: it turns qualities into quantitative differences and first removes any subjective contribution, as the slow elaboration of the notion of temperature shows. With Bachelard, he states that it simplifies the real and complicates reason. It deals with the true and the false, with what is, while good and evil belong to ends and values3. He distinguishes the rigour of the natural sciences, which study necessity, from that of the human sciences, which belong to legislation through freedom. Against neopositivist relativism, he maintains that the latter can be just as rigorous, while saying that they do not yet exist in actuality4. Science also serves the philosopher in answering the sceptic. Finally, in a 2023 session devoted to Clouscard, he presents it as one of humanity's highest gifts.

1. 1#8 Benefits and harms of amnesia…10 Dec 2020 · 9:30
2. 2#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard17 Mar 2021 · 7:34
3. 3#14 Caves of yesterday and today: from Plato to modernity10 Jun 2022 · 1:12:23
4. 4#10 The two Klemperers and Bruno Walter in Wagner18 Jan 2021 · 28:23

Summary produced automatically from 16 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.