Joël de Rosnay
Joël de Rosnay
February 24, 2006
Biography:
Joël de Rosnay
, Doctor of Sciences, is Executive President of Biotics International and Advisor to the President of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie de la Villette, where he was Director of Foresight and Evaluation until July 2002. Between 1975 and 1984, he was Director of Research Applications at the Institut Pasteur.
A former researcher and teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of biology and computer science, he was successively Scientific Attaché to the French Embassy in the United States and Scientific Director at the Société Européenne pour le Développement des Entreprises (a venture capital company).
He is particularly interested in advanced technologies and in applications of systems theory. Author of: "Le Macroscope" (1975, Prize of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), "les Chemins de la Vie" (1983), "le Cerveau Planétaire" (1986), and of several reports, notably: "Biotechnologies et Bio-Industrie" (1979), an appendix to the report "Sciences de la Vie et Société" by Professors Gros, Jacob and Royer, as well as the report that led to the creation of CESTA (Centre d'Etudes des Systèmes et des Technologies Avancées, 1982).
He was a science columnist at Europe1 from 1987 to 1995 and author of several scientific works intended for a wide audience, including "Les origines de la vie" (1965), "La Malbouffe" (1979), "La révolution biologique" (1982), "Branchez-vous" (Grand Prix de la littérature Micro-informatique Grand Public 1985), "l'Aventure du vivant" (1988), "L'avenir en direct" (1989). "Les Rendez-vous du Futur" (1991). "L'homme symbiotique, regards sur le troisième millénaire", Seuil, 1995.
"La plus belle histoire du monde", with Yves Coppens, Hubert Reeves, and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 1996.
"Une vie en plus, la longévité pourquoi faire ?" with Jean-Louis, Servan-Schreiber, François de Closets and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 2005.
Joël de Rosnay is a laureate of the 1990 Prize for Scientific Information of the Académie des Sciences and of the 1994 Benjamin Constant Prize for the Arts of Communication of the Société d'Encouragement de l'Industrie Nationale.
Joël de Rosnay
, Doctor of Sciences, is Executive President of Biotics International and Advisor to the President of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie de la Villette, where he was Director of Foresight and Evaluation until July 2002. Between 1975 and 1984, he was Director of Research Applications at the Institut Pasteur.
A former researcher and teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the field of biology and computer science, he was successively Scientific Attaché to the French Embassy in the United States and Scientific Director at the Société Européenne pour le Développement des Entreprises (a venture capital company).
He is particularly interested in advanced technologies and in applications of systems theory. Author of: "Le Macroscope" (1975, Prize of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), "les Chemins de la Vie" (1983), "le Cerveau Planétaire" (1986), and of several reports, notably: "Biotechnologies et Bio-Industrie" (1979), an appendix to the report "Sciences de la Vie et Société" by Professors Gros, Jacob and Royer, as well as the report that led to the creation of CESTA (Centre d'Etudes des Systèmes et des Technologies Avancées, 1982).
He was a science columnist at Europe1 from 1987 to 1995 and author of several scientific works intended for a wide audience, including "Les origines de la vie" (1965), "La Malbouffe" (1979), "La révolution biologique" (1982), "Branchez-vous" (Grand Prix de la littérature Micro-informatique Grand Public 1985), "l'Aventure du vivant" (1988), "L'avenir en direct" (1989). "Les Rendez-vous du Futur" (1991). "L'homme symbiotique, regards sur le troisième millénaire", Seuil, 1995.
"La plus belle histoire du monde", with Yves Coppens, Hubert Reeves, and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 1996.
"Une vie en plus, la longévité pourquoi faire ?" with Jean-Louis, Servan-Schreiber, François de Closets and Dominique Simonnet, Seuil, 2005.
Joël de Rosnay is a laureate of the 1990 Prize for Scientific Information of the Académie des Sciences and of the 1994 Benjamin Constant Prize for the Arts of Communication of the Société d'Encouragement de l'Industrie Nationale.
My comment:
I will make only one, not knowing the man in the deployment of all his activities, very diverse and titled (President, Attaché, Author, Columnist, Director...). He collaborated with Hubert Reeves and Yves Coppens, where all three are interviewed by Dominique Simonet, a journalist. Book published by Seuil in 1996. This work entitled "la plus belle histoire du monde" is a vibrant plea for all the surrounding conformisms. The theme is as follows. Simonet announces, right from the start, that humanity is on the point of reconstructing the history of the universe "from the quark to man". Each therefore plays his part. Reeves takes charge of "origins". That was before the Big Bang model was seriously shaken by observations, which were however already known at the time. Our three Panglosses nevertheless assure us "that all is for the best in the best of possible universes".
De Rosnay follows by hammering home the dominant scientific vision concerning the origin of life on Earth, whereas more and more we are called upon to seriously revise our copy. But never mind, all the clichés of evolution are trotted out and de Rosnay reassures us by telling us that it is now only a question of time and that the rare obscure points of the scenario that we are trying to reconstruct will soon be clarified.
Coppens is more "coated". He begins his speech with a joke, recalling a sentence from his grandmother:
*- You, you may be descended from the monkey, but not me. *
To him falls the task of playing the last Pangloss, that of paleoanthropology. He therefore unfolds his thesis of the appearance of man in the African Rift, where the change of biotope suddenly imposed standing upright. See in this dossier what I think of it. In passing he carefully avoids defining what "a man" is as well as the pitfalls named "conscience", and "moral sense", as if these "attributes" were logical consequences of evolutionary, Darwinian processes.
The whole does not constitute, despite an immense bookstore success, a truly memorable work, given that on all sides, today, all these theses are taking on water. What is astonishing are the certainties of some and others, at least these displayed certainties. Since then, Coppens has admitted that his thesis of hominization through the australopithecine, the fruit of a change in the biotope of an arboreal being, had lived, after the discovery of numerous australopithecines in arboreal surroundings, well to the west of the Rift. Reeves prefers to take the position of an ecologist, after having said "that despite some defects the standard model, modulo a few adjustments, still had some fine days ahead of it".
De Rosnay undoubtedly never wished to find himself in retreat vis-à-vis current events. Intelligent, he has always perceived very early a number of technological qualitative leaps, which he highlighted in his time in successful works. Today Agoravox wants to be a sort of web-journal that is built with the contributions of individuals. I went to take a look. Presented thus, it is a formula which, we will say, is seeking itself.
If I wanted to summarize de Rosnay, I would do it in a joke:
All is for the best in the best of possible realisms ---
Return to Guide Return to Home page
**Number of consultations of this page since February 24, 2006 **: