12 / 92
37 38
12
La Lettre
© B.Eymann - Académie des sciences
Catherine Bréchignac
Secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des Sciences, Ambassador
for Science, Technology and Innovation
"
All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of
this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their
use we esteem them for their own sake
.” Such is the
beginning of Aristotle’s first book of
The Metaphysics
, in
which he examines the construction of knowledge from
experience. He makes a distinction there between art, in
its first sense of know-how, and science. “
Art is produced
when, from many notions of experience, a single
universal judgement is formed. Science [...] is concerned
with the primary causes and principles.
”
More than two thousand years have passed and this reflection remains fully relevant. Aristotle dissociates
the know-how, which is grounded on empirical knowledge, from science, which is based on theory. This
distinction reflects the activity of the brains, which, besides emotion, works, to answer questions, either
by comparison – it then draws analogies from all the experiences stored in its memory – or by theoretical
deduction. It sometimes rely on a combination of the two. The comparative mode, often called “intuitive”,
is generally quicker than the deductive mode.
As far as we may trace back human knowledge, what progress has we achieved?
The rock paintings that have withstood tens of thousands years to reach us are as moving as paintings by
Dufy, Kandinsky or Franz Mark; between them, no progress. Even if we did not knew their meaning, it is
their ability to move us that matters. True, painting has a history. Over successive periods of time, artists
have displayed on canvas their beliefs, environments, impressions, symbols, abstractions; such history is
however not similar to progress. There is no doubt that the mastery of perspective allowed the Renaissance
painters to perfect the representation of landscapes; nevertheless, in itself, this is no progress. There is no
progress in art, because there is no progress in aesthetics: beauty remains a subjective value, a personal
The march of knowledge