Edgar Morin

See also: Morin

Edgar Morin , of its true name Edgar Nahoum (נחום), born with Paris the July 8th 1921, is a Sociologue and Philosophe French.

Biography

Of Jewish origin Séfarade, descendant of a commercial father Jewish of Salonique but declaring laic (it describes itself like identity néo- Marrane), and only sons, his/her mother dies whereas it is 10 years old. He obtains a license in History and Geography and a License in right (1942), he enters then the Résistance of 1942 to 1944: lieutenant of the fighting French Forces. He plays there an active role and he meets in particular François Mitterrand. He then adopts the Pseudonyme of Morin , which he keeps thereafter. Attache with the Staff of the 1st French Army in Germany (1945), then Chief of the office " Propagande" with the French military Government (1946). With the Release, he writes year zero of Germany where he describes the situation of the German people of this time. This book was appreciated in particular by Maurice Thorez which invites it to write in the review French Lettres . Starting from 1949, it moves away from the party Communiste from which it is excluded a little later as resisting anti-Stalinist. In 1955, it animates a committee against the Guerre of Algeria. It defends, in particular, Messali Hadj.

On the councils of Georges Friedmann which it met during the Occupation and with the support of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, of Vladimir Jankélévitch and Pierre Georges, it enters to CNRS (1950), it led there in 1965 in particular a multi-field study on a common in Brittany, published under the name of the Metamorphosis of Plozevet (1967) . It remains there nearly one year. It was one of the first Essai S of Ethnologie in the French company contemporary.

It is interested very quickly in the practices Culture lles which still emergent and are badly considered by the intellectual : the Spirit of time (1960), the Rumor of Orleans (1969). It Co-founds the review Arguments in 1956. It founds (deputy manager of 1973 to 1989) and directs the CECMAS Center of Studies of the Communications of Mass, which publishes research on the Télévision, the Chanson in the re-examined Communications which it directs and which appears still today.

During the Sixties, it leaves nearly two years to Latin America where it teaches with the Latin-American Faculty of social sciences. In 1969, it is invited to the Institut Salk of San Diego. It meets Jacques Monod there, the author of the Hasard and the Need and designs there the bases of the complex thought and of what will become its Méthode .

Today highly skilled research director at CNRS, Edgar Morin is doctor honoris causa several universities throughout the world. Its work exerts a strong influence on the contemporary reflection, in particular in the Mediterranean world and in Latin America, and as far as China, Korea, Japan. It created and chairs the Association for the thought complexes , the APC.

He is member of the committee of sponsorship of the French Coordination for the Decade of the culture of peace and non-violence. He supports, since his creation in 2001, the funds associative Non-Violence XXI.

Morin wrote several works reconsidering its past, of which Autocritique in 1959, Vidal and them his on his/her father in 1989 and Itinérance published in 2006.

It gave its support for the candidature of Christian Garino, candidate with the candidature for the French presidential election of 2007 for the movement Esperanto-Freedom.

It also took part, during the interval turns of the elections, with a debate on the topic of non-violence to the Comité 748 - Desires with a future on Second Life.

Distinctions

  • highly skilled Research director at the National center of the scientific research (CNRS),

  • President of the European Agency for the culture (UNESCO)
  • President of the Association for the thought complexes

  • Laus honoris causa of the Institute Piaget in Portugal
  • Colegiado de Honor of the Council of the Higher education of Andalusia (Spain)

  • European Price of the test Charles Veillon (1987)
  • Price international Viareggio (1989)
  • Price Media (culture) of the Association of the European journalists (1992)
  • Price Internacional Catalunya (1994)
  • Medal of the House of Commons of the Republic Italian, (international Scientific committee of the Foundation Piu Manzu)
  • Gold medal ( Aristote of gold ) of UNESCO
Member of the committee of sponsorship of association Marianne of diversity

Work

The complex thought

Edgar Morin stuck in all its work to put in obviousness the Complexité world and of the man and to propose a method to conceive it. The term of complexity is taken within the meaning of its etymology " complexus" who means “what is woven together” in a tangle of interlacings (plexus).

Edgar Morin invites to reform the thought and to enter a Paradigme of complexity or to obtain a epistemology complexes.

In the short article “For a reform of the thought”, he explains what he understands by the " thought of the complexité" :

“The thought of the Complexité arises (…) like a building on several floors. The base is formed starting from the Information theory, the cybernetics and system theory and comprises the necessary tools for a theory of the organization. Then a second stage with the ideas comes from John von Neumann, Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine on the Car-organization. At this building, I wanted to bring additional elements, in particular, three principles which are the dialogical principle, the principle of recursion and the principle hologrammatic.

The Information theory makes it possible to enter a universe where there are at the same time order (the redundancy) and disorder (noise) - and to extract some from new, i.e. information itself, which becomes organizing (programmatrice) then of a cybernetic machine. The information which indicates, for example, the winner of a battle, solve an uncertainty; that which announces the sudden death of a tyrant brings the unexpected one, at the same time as the innovation.

The Cybernétique is a theory of the autonomous machines. The idea of feedback, which Norbert Wiener introduces, breaks with the linear law of causality by introducing that of causal loop. The cause acts on the effect, and the effect on the cause, as in a heating system where the thermostat regulates the walk of the boiler. This mechanism known as of “regulation” is here what allows the autonomy of a system, the thermal autonomy of an apartment compared to the external cold. The loop of feedback (called feedback) plays the part of an amplifying mechanism, for example, in the situation of the rise to the extremes of an armed conflict. The violence of a protagonist involves a violent reaction which, in its turn, involves a reaction even more violent. Such stabilizing feedbacks, inflationists or, are legion in the phenomena economic, social, political or psychological.

The system theory provides the foundations of a thought of the organization. The first systemic lesson is that “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”. That means that there exist emergent qualities, i.e. which are born from the organization of a whole, and which can retroact on the parts. Thus water has emergent qualities compared to the hydrogen and the oxygen which constitute it. In addition, the whole is also less than the sum of the parts because the parts can have qualities which are inhibited by the organization of the unit.

For these three theories, it is necessary to add the conceptual developments brought by the idea of Car-organization . Here, four names must be mentioned: those of John von Neumann, Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine. (…)

Living being (…) is enough autonomous to draw energy in its environment, and to even extract some from information and to integrate organization of it. It is what I called the car-éco-organization .

The dialogical principle links two antagonistic principles or concepts, which apparently should push back one the other, but which is indissociable and essential to include/understand the same reality. The physicist Niels Bohr recognized the need for thinking the physical particles at the same time like corpuscles and waves. Blaise Pascal had said: “The opposite of a truth is not the error, but a contrary truth”; Bohr translates it the made-to-order: “The opposite of a commonplace truth is a stupid error, but the opposite of a major truth is always another major truth.” The problem is to link antagonistic concepts to think the organizing and creative processes in the complex world of the life and the human history.

The principle of organisational recursion goes beyond the principle of feedback (feedback); it exceeds the concept of regulation for that of self-production and car-organization. It is a generating loop in which the products and the effects are themselves producers and causal of what produces them. Thus, us individuals, let us be the products of a system of reproduction resulting from the bottom of the ages, but this system can reproduce only if ourselves become the producers about it by coupling us. The human individuals produce the company in and by their interactions, but the company, as all emerging, produces the humanity of these individuals in their bringing the language and the culture.

The “hologrammatic” third principle finally, highlights this apparent paradox of certain systems where not only the part is in the whole, but the whole is in the part: the totality of genetic inheritance is present in each individual cell. In the same way, the individual is part of the company, but the company is present in each individual as all, through his language, its culture, its standards. ”

the Method

" Méthode" is its major work. Including/understanding six volumes on the whole, one could qualify it encyclopedic : the method is unrolled there in a cyclic way, not to say repetitive, applying to many concepts of which some are taken again hereafter. It should be noted that the first four volumes were not written after from/to each other. Consequently, it is not useful to stick to read them in the order.

The first volume, heading " The nature of the nature" , presents the method by adopting a physical point of view of where the concepts of Ordre and Désordre are treated, of Système, Information etc

The second, heading " Life of the vie" , approaches living it, the Biologie.

The third and the fourth volume could be gathered in only one since they approach the topic of the Connaissance, true (chief of) work of epistemology.

Third " is entitled; The knowledge of the connaissance" and the knowledge from the anthropological point of view approaches.

The fourth tome cheese of the Method " Idées" , according to the words of Edgar Morin, " could also be the premier" about it;. Indeed, " it constitutes the easiest introduction to " the knowledge of the connaissance" and in a way inseparable to the problem and the need from a thought complexe". It supplements the epistemological work of the third volume by approaching the knowledge from the collective point of view or sociétal (" the organization of the idées"), then on the level of the " life of the idées" , that it calls the Noologie. It treats in particular in this final chapter of the philosophical concepts of Langage, Logique and Paradigme, to which it applies its method superbly.

In a note of reading, Jean-Louis Moigne stresses the importance of the final chapter of this volume 4 qu ' E. Morin devotes to " The Paradigmatologie " : " still a new neologism will one say? Undoubtedly, but it seems to me so fertile to enable us to hear the richness of the thinkable universe without starting by impoverishing it in the simplifiant". Jean-Louis Moigne quotes to conclude Edgar Morin: " We are with the preliminary in the constitution of a Paradigme of complexity itself necessary to the constitution of a paradigmatology. It is not of the individual task of a thinker but about the historical work of a convergence of pensées".

The fifth " volume; The humanity of humanity, the Identity humaine" is devoted to the question of the Identité.

The Method ends in a sixth volume entitled " Éthique" who devotes himself to this philosophical concept and preaches an ethical comprehension.

Planetary conscience

With " Ground-Patrie" , written in 1993, (with Anne-Brigitte Kern), Edgar Morin calls of it with an awakening of the community of the terrestrial destiny , true planetary conscience.

It is in California, in 1969-1970, that scientific friends of the university of Berkeley woke up me the ecological conscience pays it, before being alarmed Three decades later, after the draining of the sea of Aral, the pollution of the lake Baïkal, the acid rains, the catastrophe of Tchernobyl, the contamination of the ground water, the ozone hole in the Antarctic, the Katrina hurricane in New-Orleans, the urgency is larger than ever .

In 2007, he is the author of " Year I of the ecological era: The Earth depends on the man who depends on Terre". The book comprises a dialog with Nicolas Hulot.

This conscience must be accompanied for Edgar Morin by a political news by civilization , to leave this planetary age of iron… prehistory of the human spirit .

Art critic

Edgar Morin was also interested in painting of the École of Paris, and, for this reason, he commented on the work of Gaëtan de Rosnay.

Contribution of the Method

Throughout its work, Edgar Morin employed its method to treat key concepts of philosophy such as for example: the ethical , the Knowledge, the Language, the Logical , the Information.

Ethics

noncomplex morals obeys a binary good/, just/unjust code badly. Complex ethics conceives that the good can contain an evil, the evil a good, the Juste of unjust, the unjust one of the Juste.

Knowledge

For Morin, there is not " not of Knowledge without knowledge of knowledge " (The Method, volume 3).

Connaître it is computer (the Method, volume 3), Edgar Morin proposes knowledge of a computic type - a computation, being written Morin, an operation on/via signs/symbols/forms whose whole constitutes translation/construction/solution - which takes the form of a " complex producing organizer/of cognitive nature comprising an informational authority, an authority symbolic system, a mémorielle authority and an authority logicielle" (Rene Barber).

Any knowledge (and conscience) which cannot conceive the individuality, the subjectivity, which cannot include the observer in its observation, is crippled to think all problems, especially the ethical problems. It can be effective for the domination of the material objects, the control of energies and handling on the alive one. But it became short-sighted to apprehend human realities and it becomes a threat for the human future.

To answer criticisms in Relativisme or nihilism, it advances: the bottom of the contemporary nihilism, I surmount it by saying that if there does not exist base of certainty from which one can develop a true knowledge, then one can develop a knowledge like a symphony. One cannot speak about the knowledge as of an architecture with a basic stone on which one would build a true knowledge, but one can launch topics which between-will tie themselves.

If there is no base with knowledge, Morin identifies, following Humberto Maturana, an original source in the " computo" to be it cellular, which is itself " indissociable of the quality of living being and individual-sujet" (Rene Barber, idem).

Language

It is thus judicious to think that it is the Langage which created the man, and not the man the language, but on the condition of adding that the hominien created the language.

the language is in we and we are in the language. We make the language which makes us. We, in and by the language, are opened by the words, are locked up in the words, are opened on others (communication), closed on others (lie, error), opened on the ideas, locked up in the ideas, opened on the world, closed in the world.

Logic

A contrario logical Positivism and Circle of Vienna, for Edgar Morin (the Method, volume 4) it is necessary to give up any hope to base the Raison on only the Logique and it is necessary to recognize what it calls a logical principle of uncertainty.

Indeed, to begin logic meets the Contradiction at the basic level like illustrates it the paradox of Crétois, highlighted as of antiquity by the crétois Épiménide, which declares that all the crétois are liars. Then, the Theorem of incomplétude of Gödel watch which logic cannot find in itself a base absolutely some , while the Quantum physics - with the paradoxical recognition of at the same time undulatory and corpuscular behavior of any particle (Dualité wave-corpuscle) - led to think that certain aspects of reality microphysics do not obey deductive-identity logic .

Thus it stresses that the thought would lose the creativity, the invention and complexity if logic could control it.

But he does not propose therefore to banish logic, he adopts a moderate position:

the use of logic is necessary to intelligibility, the going beyond of logic is necessary to the intelligence. The reference to logic is necessary to the checking. The going beyond of logic is necessary to the Vérité.

And if logic cannot found the reason is that the true rationality recognizes its limits and is able to treat them (méta-point of sight), therefore to exceed them in a certain manner while recognizing beyond a irrationalisable .

Information

Edgar Morin brings two fundamental ideas to supplement the Information theory of Shannon:

  • the concept of Information cannot be dissociated from the physical support carrying this information: information has a reality Physique.

  • the direction of information is independent of the information theory, and is carried by the anthropo-social sphere.

Details by quotations of Method 1, ED Points Tests.

" Information must always be carried, exchanged, and paid physically. (...) Information enracine in the Physis, but without one being able to reduce it to the Master-concepts of traditional physics, Masse and energy. (...) The most remarkable features and strangest of information can be included/understood physically only while passing by the idea of the Organization . " (ib p.307)

For example, " The direction information functions apart from the theory the information of Shannon" (The Method 1,3.2.I). In fact, " The information theory Shannon occults the anthropo-social metasystem which it supposes and in which it takes its sens." (ib.)

But especially, " To conceive information in its physical plenitude, one should not only consider its interactions with energy and Entropie; one should not only consider together Néguentropie and information, it is also necessary to consider information unit, néguentropie, and organization, by including information in the néguentropie and the néguentropie in the information." (ib p.307) ".

" The physical reality of information is not isolable concretely. I want to say that there is not, to our knowledge and on our planet, of extra-biological information. Information is always related to the organized beings néguentropiquement which are the alive ones and the beings metabiotic which nourish life (companies, ideas). Moreover, the concept of information is anthropomorphic which seems to me not éliminable." (ib p 316)

And finally " The concept of information is necessarily associated with the concept of Redondance and Bruit " (The Method 1,3.2.I).

Its international implication

Edgar Morin also counts among the founding members of the ethical, political and scientific Collegium international, association which wishes to bring answers intelligent and suitable until the people of the world vis-a-vis the new challenges of our time wait.

Works

There are translations of the books of Edgar Morin at least in 28 languages and in 42 countries.

  • 1951, the Man and death, the Threshold

  • 1956, the cinema or the imaginary man , Editions of midnight
  • 1957, the Stars
  • 1959, Self-criticism , the Threshold
  • 1962, the Spirit of time , Editions Grasset Fasquelle
  • 1967, Common in France. The metamorphosis of Plozevet , Beech, Paris, 1967,287 p.
  • 1969, the Rumor of Orleans
  • 1969, Introduction to a policy of the man, the Threshold
  • 1970, Newspaper of California
  • 1973, the lost paradigm: human nature
  • the Method (6 volumes)
    • 1977, the Nature of nature (T. 1), the Threshold, New edition, coll Points, 1981
    • 1980, Life of the life (T. 2), the Threshold, New edition, coll Points, 1985
    • 1986, the Knowledge of knowledge (T. 3), the Threshold, New edition, coll Points
    • 1991, the Ideas (T. 4), the Threshold, News edition, coll Points, 1996
    • 2001, the Humanity of humanity (T. 5), 1. The human identity, Paris, the Threshold
    • 2004, Ethics complexes (T. 6), the Threshold

  • Self-criticism the Threshold - (its catch of distances with the Communist party)

  • 1981, to leave the 20th century , Nathan. New edition, Threshold, coll
  • 1982, Science with conscience , Beech, New altered edition, coll Points, 1990
  • 1983, Of the nature of the USSR , Beech
  • 1989, Vidal and them his
  • 1990, Introduction to the thought complexes , the Threshold
  • 1993, Ground-fatherland (with the collaboration of A.B. Kern), the Threshold, New edition coll Points, 1996
  • 1994, My demons , Stock, coll With sharp the
  • 1994, human Complexity , Texts chosen, Flammarion Fields, coll Essence
  • 1997, To include/understand complexity in the organizations of care , (with Jean-Louis Moigne), ASPEPS ED.
  • 1999, Intelligence of complexity, (with Jean-Louis Moigne), ED. Harmattan
  • 1999, To connect knowledge , the Threshold
  • 1999, the Head well done , the Threshold
  • 2000, Seven knowledge necessary to the education of the future , the Threshold
  • 2001, Newspaper of Plozévet, Brittany , 1965 (Prepared and prefaced by Bernard Paillard), the Tower the Acute ones, the Paddle
  • 2002, For a policy of civilization , Paris, Arléa, 79 p.
  • 2002, Dialog on knowledge. Discussions with high-school pupils (talks conceived and animated by Alfredo Pena-Vega and Bernard Paillard), the Tower the Acute ones, the Paddle, 70 p.
  • 2003, the Violence of the world (with Jean Baudrillard), Edition of Cat-like, 92 p.
  • 2003, To educate for the planetary era, the complex thought like method of training in the error and human uncertainty (with Raul Motta, Émilio-Roger Ciurana), Balland, 158 p.
  • 2003, University, which future? (with Alfredo Pena-Vega), 120p., Editions Charles Léopold Mayer, ISBN 2-84377-074-2;
  • 2003, Children of the sky: between vacuum, light, matter (with Broken Michel), Odile Jacob, 142 p.
  • 2004, To enter the 21e century , republication of to leave the 20th century published in 1981, the Threshold, 400 p.
  • 2006, Itinérance , Arléa, transcription of a discussion with Marie-Chritine Navarro in 1999 on France-Culture, recalling its career.
  • 2006, the modern world and the Jewish question , the Threshold. ISBN 2020907453
  • 2007, year I of the ecological era (with the collaboration of Nicolas Hulot), Tallandier, 127 p. ISBN 2847344411
  • 2007, Towards the abyss , Herme, 181 p. ISBN 9782851976925

Catalog of films

  • 1966 : a certain glance. The cinema truth , of Edgar Morin, realization Alexis Klémentieff and Jacques Prayer (ORTF)

  • (2004) Glance on Edgar , talks sets of themes granted to Samuel Thomas, in DVD with the Editions Montparnasse (267 mn)

See too

Related articles

  • Business Morin: They are the debate and the legal continuations which followed an article Co-writing by Edgar Morin entitled “ Israel-Palestine: Cancer ”, published on June 4th 2002 in the daily newspaper Le Monde . This business will finish on July 12th, 2006, the judgment of Edgar Morin for racial slandering being broken by the Court of appeal.

External bonds

  • Association for the Complex Thought: APC whose Edgar Morin is the honorary president and who includes/understands several cards of reading

Vidéos

  • Vidéos d' Edgar Morin realized by Denis Failly around " Intelligence of the complexité" resulting from the Conference of Cerisy
  • Video '' '' Complexity, 1994

Texts and articles

  • Article “For a reform of the thought”
  • Many quotations
  • Universidad Mundo Real Edgar Morin (REAL) - Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico City: University Real-world Edgar Morin (REAL) in Hermosillo, Mexico. Epigraph: “Edgar Morin El pensador planetario of mow luciernagas más luminosas”. Avec service of automatic translation of the pages in Spanish on the site.
  • '' seven knowledge necessary to the education of the future '', in several languages, on the site of the UNESCO
  • Charter of Transdisciplinarité
  • Text of Rene Barber on Edgar Morin and knowledge

Notes of reading

  • Page devoted to Edgar Morin with several cards of reading
  • Note of reading on '' Ground-Fatherland '' on the site of Association for the Thought Complexes
  • Note of reading on volume 4 of the Method on the site of Association for the Thought Complexes
  • Note of enlightened and critical reading of volume 5 of the Method by Jean-Paul Baquiast (re-examined Automates Intelligent)
  • Compte-rendu of reading: Edgar Morin, '' Journal of Plozévet. Brittany, 1965 '' by Laurent Gall in '' Ruralia '' “Re-examined Association of the French ruralists” - Mention standardized of bond on the page: < Newspaper of Plozévet. Brittany, 1965 , the Turn-D' Acute, Editions of the Paddle, 2001,390 p.”, Ruralia line, 2002-10/11 - Varied, Mis on line it: January 22nd, 2005 Available on: http://ruralia.revues.org/document320.html. Reference of: August 18th, 2005 >>

Talks

  • Discussion with Edgar Morin: '' Science, Poetry, Société ''
  • Entretien with Edgar Morin with Daniel Mermet on France-Inter
  • Entretien of the November 9th 2004 for SaphirNews.com (Ex-Saphirnet.info) Edgar Morin lengthily speaks there its relation with the judeity

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