Delphine Antoine-Mahut, professor of modern philosophy history at ENS de Lyon, and Samuel Lézé, senior lecturer in anthropology of science at ENS de Lyon, both members of IRHIM, have published Metaphysics and the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century France.
Metaphysics and the Sciences in Nineteenth-Century France
Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Samuel Lézé
Brill's Series in Philosophical Historiographies, Volume: 3
Brill
This book offers the first in-depth study of the style of thinking characteristic of philosophy in 19th-century France. The various chapters examine how philosophers of that era responded, often in a scattered manner, to a central question: how to organise the sciences, and in particular, how to articulate the relationship between metaphysics and the so-called ‘positive’ sciences (such as physics or biology)?
Following the irregular evolution of knowledge, these reflections echo, in their own way, Condillac's criticisms of Descartes' proposed order between metaphysics and science. Between radical separation and attempts at reconciliation, the book traces the history of these philosophical efforts to conceive of either a break or an alliance between the disciplines.
Over the course of the century, these exchanges gave rise to original and mixed forms of thought, which sought to define what could be called a ‘French philosophy,’ still under construction and debate.