Archimède

Summary

Dominique Pagani mainly brings up Archimedes through the lever formula: "Give me a fulcrum and I will lift the world." He comes across it in a text by Gracq, on which he comments several times12. He also puts it to conceptual use in ways that vary with the context: the image serves to designate dogmatism3, it serves as a comparison for common sense4, and later for Hegel's dialectic5. On the scientific side, he places Archimedes within the Greek share of the European heritage. He sees him as the summit of ancient mathematics6 and notes that his method of exhaustion is what comes closest to infinitesimal calculus before Leibniz and Newton. He stresses the advances made in physics as early as Antiquity and points out that Archimedes' principle already had the form of a law, in a reflection on whether sciences of history are possible. He illustrates it with the image of the ball pushed down into the water that jumps back into your face.

1. 1Hegel on the Beach 1/51 Feb 2016 · 2:28
2. 2#13 Return to the logics of the subject9 Jul 2020 · 13:58
3. 3#3.5 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 1:18:28
4. 4Cynicism of the extreme centre or epistemic heroism? The dialectic of the middle20 May 2021 · 1:00:55
5. 5The quest for the Grail, sanctimony or sacrilege?1 Apr 2024 · 1:19:11
6. 6Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative29 Jun 2023 · 1:23:25

Summary produced automatically from 13 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.