Pierre Thuillier (philosopher)
Pierre Thuillier (26 July 1932 – 29 September 1998)[1] was a French philosopher. A critic of the triumphant technocracy of the early 1970s, of scientism and pseudo-science, he published numerous books and articles on the relationship between science and society.
Contents
Biography
Born at Bois-Colombes, a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, Thuillier taught epistemology and history of science at the Paris Nanterre University[2] and then at Paris Diderot University. He participated in the editorial staff of the journal La Recherche, as head of section, from its creation (entitled Atomes until 1970) until 1994. He died of a heart attack on September 29, 1998.
Thought
The emergence of scientific discovery
An important part of Pierre Thuillier's writings is devoted to showing how the emergence of scientific discovery actually takes place. This discovery never occurs for perfectly rational reasons, contrary to the official discourse on the subject. On the contrary, it is punctuated by questions or religious or political preconceptions, various cheats, far-fetched theories and various errors. The most illustrative book of this reality is Le petit savant illustré (1980). This collection of articles is the first "classic" of the author, which contributed to make him known outside a circle of initiates. Several reasons explain the impact of this work:
The context of the time played an important role: many questions were being asked about the role of science (biology, genetic manipulation) or technology (nuclear power plants...), the debate on the New Right or sociobiology was making the headlines, and many works of reflection on science for the general public were being published in various collections, including the one in which Thuillier's book was published.
On the other hand, Le Petit Savant illustré is a book that approaches scientific practices from the "small end of the spyglass" and is therefore easily accessible. We discover, for example, how Cantor, the mathematician who invented transfinite numbers, felt the need to justify his work theologically, how Stéphane Leduc believed he could create life from osmotic productions, how René Blondlot discovered N-rays (which later turned out not to exist), or what were the many problems posed to various scientists Noah's Ark. The subject of the articles may seem light, but the questions raised by this way are real.
The book concludes with a long afterword entitled "Contre le scientisme" (Against scientism), which makes the issues explicit and remains one of Thuillier's fundamental texts. The author summarizes his point of view in an interview published at the time in Libération: "Yes, I want to criticize the myth of 'pure science'. According to this myth, science would be transcendent to other social activities; it would be an absolute, objective, neutral construction (...) For my part, I prefer a more realistic approach; [science] is all the same a human construction; it has a history and is rooted in a whole social context."
Social implications of science
Thuillier fought the idea that all science was necessarily neutral. He made a long effort to show the social implications of science in various works:
- L'aventure industrielle et ses mythes is entirely devoted to showing how the implementation of new techniques depends on the mentalities linked to a culture and an era.
- In Les passions du savoir, one finds articles on eugenics, on experimentation on humans, on Nazism and "Jewish science", on feminism and sexism...
- Several of these last themes, and others similar to them, are found in other collections.
Darwinism
Darwinism is an obviously important theme for Thuillier. As early as 1979, he positioned himself as a good connoisseur of the subject, notably in a series of interviews on France Culture hosted by Emile Noël, which were taken up in the form of a book entitled Le Darwinisme aujourd'hui. Thuillier participated in two interviews, namely "Darwin et le darwinisme" and "Alors, le darwinisme aujourd'hui?"
This last interview seems significant: after discussions with eight scientists who often disagree with each other, it is Thuillier who is asked to take stock. He does not, moreover, decide between the theses presented, but he brings a necessary distance. This distance is perhaps linked to the fact that Thuillier is not only interested in Darwinism as a scientific theory and contemporary "ideology", but also as a historian. This approach is characteristic in his book devoted to Darwin et Cie (1981): half of the articles concern the ideas of Darwin himself and his contemporaries (Galton, Agassiz). Thuillier also wrote the preface to Darwin's The Descent of Man, on the occasion of its republication.
Sociobiology
Thuillier was a virulent critic of sociobiology, which he took as an example of the scientism he was fighting. He devoted a complete book to it, Les biologistes vont-ils prendre le pouvoir?, as well as various articles, for example chapter 6 of Passions du savoir, or his article in "L'État des sciences".
From the critique of scientism to that of the West
Thuillier's evolution is visible in the titles and subtitles of his books. We can see that we start with amusing titles and move on to explicit titles and subtitles, ending with a rather provocative title. That corresponds to an effective evolution of the collections, in the course of which the questioning of the rationalist pretensions becomes more and more strong.
It is thus easier to understand Thuillier's most recent evolution, which has led him to criticize not only scientism, but all the pretensions of the West, especially that which consists in apprehending everything through rationality, and therefore in denying what lies outside (the "poetry", to use his term). This is what led him to write La grande implosion (1995). This essay, serious in its purpose, is built on a science-fictional framework: it is a report supposedly written by a working group and published in 2081, which therefore deals with a historical event, which takes place in our near future. And what an event! Nothing less than the implosion of the West. Among the authors quoted, a special place must be reserved for Professor Dupin, the inspirer of the Working Group and having lived in the first half of the 21st century, who can be considered as holding the role of spokesman for the author.
The central thesis is simple: the failure of the West is above all cultural, and it is about to die because of the blindness that blinds it to its own achievements. Science, technology, economics, urban life are among the main beliefs that Western civilization has proven unable to challenge. Thuillier quotes Durkheim: a society is constituted "above all by the idea it has of itself". According to him, the tragedy of Western society is that it has a radically false idea of itself. Thuillier insists, surprisingly at first, on the absence of spirituality and poetry in the contemporary West. He writes: "If the West had crumbled, if it had culturally decomposed, it was because it had finally lost all poetic sense". Or again: "Without poets, no myths; and without myths, no human society; that is to say no culture". And to qualify as poets authors such as Durkheim, Novalis or Albert Camus. The author quotes many "scientists" or "engineers", from the Middle Ages (Roger Bacon) to our days (Einstein), through the Renaissance (Galileo or Leonardo da Vinci), sketching a kind of history of the Western mentality, through the prism of science and technology. He believes that everything began in the seventeenth century, in the phenomena of urbanization that occurred at that time, with the appearance of a new social category: the "merchant". Which, associated with "the engineer", initiated this purely materialist approach of the world which developed in Occident, through in particular science and economy.
Works
- Israel Scheffler, Anatomie de la science. Études philosophiques de l'explication et de la confirmation (1966; translator)
- Socrate fonctionnaire. Essai sur (et contre) la philosophie universitaire (1969; 1982)
- Jeux et enjeux de la science (1972)
- Le petit savant illustré (1980)
- Les biologistes vont-ils prendre le pouvoir? La sociobiologie en question (1981)
- Darwin et Cie (1981)
- L'aventure industrielle et ses mythes. Savoirs, techniques et mentalités (1982)
- Les savoirs ventriloques. Ou comment la culture parle à travers la science (1983)
- La Recherche en histoire des sciences (1983; chapter)
- D'Archimède à Einstein. Les faces cachées de l’invention scientifique (1988; 1996)
- Les passions du savoir. Essais sur les dimensions culturelles de la science (1988)
- La grande implosion. Rapport sur l’effondrement de l’Occident 1999-2002 (1995; 1996)
- La revanche des sorcières. L’irrationnel et la pensée scientifique (1997)
- Sortir de l’imposture économique (1999; chapter)
