Opening symposium 2011-2012
This colloquium will focus on the notion of Form in a multidisciplinary context, ranging from its definition in philosophy by Plato and Aristotle, its mathematical applications, its origins in the structure of the atom and the origin of life, its application to molecular and supramolecular chemistry, the morphogenesis of living organisms and its consequences in psychology and linguistics, anthropology and the arts. These debates will be the pretext for a re-examination of the question of "Intelligent design", Turing's laws, Lévi-Strauss's structuralism and Henri Focillon's words, from which the title "La vie des formes" is borrowed, as well as those of our late colleague André Chastel in "Fables, Formes, Figures".