├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── fra-dimanche-de-ma-vie.md
├── fra-verbatim-leila-schneps.md
└── french.txt


/LICENSE:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 | Creative Commons Legal Code
  2 | 
  3 | CC0 1.0 Universal
  4 | 
  5 |     CREATIVE COMMONS CORPORATION IS NOT A LAW FIRM AND DOES NOT PROVIDE
  6 |     LEGAL SERVICES. DISTRIBUTION OF THIS DOCUMENT DOES NOT CREATE AN
  7 |     ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. CREATIVE COMMONS PROVIDES THIS
  8 |     INFORMATION ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. CREATIVE COMMONS MAKES NO WARRANTIES
  9 |     REGARDING THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT OR THE INFORMATION OR WORKS
 10 |     PROVIDED HEREUNDER, AND DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM
 11 |     THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT OR THE INFORMATION OR WORKS PROVIDED
 12 |     HEREUNDER.
 13 | 
 14 | Statement of Purpose
 15 | 
 16 | The laws of most jurisdictions throughout the world automatically confer
 17 | exclusive Copyright and Related Rights (defined below) upon the creator
 18 | and subsequent owner(s) (each and all, an "owner") of an original work of
 19 | authorship and/or a database (each, a "Work").
 20 | 
 21 | Certain owners wish to permanently relinquish those rights to a Work for
 22 | the purpose of contributing to a commons of creative, cultural and
 23 | scientific works ("Commons") that the public can reliably and without fear
 24 | of later claims of infringement build upon, modify, incorporate in other
 25 | works, reuse and redistribute as freely as possible in any form whatsoever
 26 | and for any purposes, including without limitation commercial purposes.
 27 | These owners may contribute to the Commons to promote the ideal of a free
 28 | culture and the further production of creative, cultural and scientific
 29 | works, or to gain reputation or greater distribution for their Work in
 30 | part through the use and efforts of others.
 31 | 
 32 | For these and/or other purposes and motivations, and without any
 33 | expectation of additional consideration or compensation, the person
 34 | associating CC0 with a Work (the "Affirmer"), to the extent that he or she
 35 | is an owner of Copyright and Related Rights in the Work, voluntarily
 36 | elects to apply CC0 to the Work and publicly distribute the Work under its
 37 | terms, with knowledge of his or her Copyright and Related Rights in the
 38 | Work and the meaning and intended legal effect of CC0 on those rights.
 39 | 
 40 | 1. Copyright and Related Rights. A Work made available under CC0 may be
 41 | protected by copyright and related or neighboring rights ("Copyright and
 42 | Related Rights"). Copyright and Related Rights include, but are not
 43 | limited to, the following:
 44 | 
 45 |   i. the right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, display,
 46 |      communicate, and translate a Work;
 47 |  ii. moral rights retained by the original author(s) and/or performer(s);
 48 | iii. publicity and privacy rights pertaining to a person's image or
 49 |      likeness depicted in a Work;
 50 |  iv. rights protecting against unfair competition in regards to a Work,
 51 |      subject to the limitations in paragraph 4(a), below;
 52 |   v. rights protecting the extraction, dissemination, use and reuse of data
 53 |      in a Work;
 54 |  vi. database rights (such as those arising under Directive 96/9/EC of the
 55 |      European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal
 56 |      protection of databases, and under any national implementation
 57 |      thereof, including any amended or successor version of such
 58 |      directive); and
 59 | vii. other similar, equivalent or corresponding rights throughout the
 60 |      world based on applicable law or treaty, and any national
 61 |      implementations thereof.
 62 | 
 63 | 2. Waiver. To the greatest extent permitted by, but not in contravention
 64 | of, applicable law, Affirmer hereby overtly, fully, permanently,
 65 | irrevocably and unconditionally waives, abandons, and surrenders all of
 66 | Affirmer's Copyright and Related Rights and associated claims and causes
 67 | of action, whether now known or unknown (including existing as well as
 68 | future claims and causes of action), in the Work (i) in all territories
 69 | worldwide, (ii) for the maximum duration provided by applicable law or
 70 | treaty (including future time extensions), (iii) in any current or future
 71 | medium and for any number of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever,
 72 | including without limitation commercial, advertising or promotional
 73 | purposes (the "Waiver"). Affirmer makes the Waiver for the benefit of each
 74 | member of the public at large and to the detriment of Affirmer's heirs and
 75 | successors, fully intending that such Waiver shall not be subject to
 76 | revocation, rescission, cancellation, termination, or any other legal or
 77 | equitable action to disrupt the quiet enjoyment of the Work by the public
 78 | as contemplated by Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose.
 79 | 
 80 | 3. Public License Fallback. Should any part of the Waiver for any reason
 81 | be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, then the
 82 | Waiver shall be preserved to the maximum extent permitted taking into
 83 | account Affirmer's express Statement of Purpose. In addition, to the
 84 | extent the Waiver is so judged Affirmer hereby grants to each affected
 85 | person a royalty-free, non transferable, non sublicensable, non exclusive,
 86 | irrevocable and unconditional license to exercise Affirmer's Copyright and
 87 | Related Rights in the Work (i) in all territories worldwide, (ii) for the
 88 | maximum duration provided by applicable law or treaty (including future
 89 | time extensions), (iii) in any current or future medium and for any number
 90 | of copies, and (iv) for any purpose whatsoever, including without
 91 | limitation commercial, advertising or promotional purposes (the
 92 | "License"). The License shall be deemed effective as of the date CC0 was
 93 | applied by Affirmer to the Work. Should any part of the License for any
 94 | reason be judged legally invalid or ineffective under applicable law, such
 95 | partial invalidity or ineffectiveness shall not invalidate the remainder
 96 | of the License, and in such case Affirmer hereby affirms that he or she
 97 | will not (i) exercise any of his or her remaining Copyright and Related
 98 | Rights in the Work or (ii) assert any associated claims and causes of
 99 | action with respect to the Work, in either case contrary to Affirmer's
100 | express Statement of Purpose.
101 | 
102 | 4. Limitations and Disclaimers.
103 | 
104 |  a. No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned,
105 |     surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.
106 |  b. Affirmer offers the Work as-is and makes no representations or
107 |     warranties of any kind concerning the Work, express, implied,
108 |     statutory or otherwise, including without limitation warranties of
109 |     title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non
110 |     infringement, or the absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or
111 |     the present or absence of errors, whether or not discoverable, all to
112 |     the greatest extent permissible under applicable law.
113 |  c. Affirmer disclaims responsibility for clearing rights of other persons
114 |     that may apply to the Work or any use thereof, including without
115 |     limitation any person's Copyright and Related Rights in the Work.
116 |     Further, Affirmer disclaims responsibility for obtaining any necessary
117 |     consents, permissions or other rights required for any use of the
118 |     Work.
119 |  d. Affirmer understands and acknowledges that Creative Commons is not a
120 |     party to this document and has no duty or obligation with respect to
121 |     this CC0 or use of the Work.
122 | 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/README.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 | # Will we continue scientific research? Alexander Grothendieck
   2 | 
   3 | - Talk given at CERN on January 27, 1972.
   4 | - Original transcription by Jacqueline Picard from the magnetic recording[^6].
   5 | - Translated from French by Peio Borthelle from web sources[^3][^4].
   6 | 
   7 | I've always been bothered by the fact that during my research activities this
   8 | influential name—Alexander Grothendieck—started becoming a common noun (as
   9 | in "the Grothendieck construction" or "Grothendieck fibrations", two very
  10 | common objects in categorical logic among other fields). As a matter of fact my
  11 | first encounter with his name was not in the context of mathematics but
  12 | listening to the speech transcribed below. A friend of mine—fellow student
  13 | with whom I regularly talked about the social impact of the academic
  14 | science—stumbled upon it shortly after Grothendieck's death in 2014 which
  15 | generated a short burst of media interest and shared it with me.
  16 | 
  17 | Talking with French and international colleagues I realized that in general,
  18 | little was known about the interesting end of Grothendieck's career as a
  19 | mathematician. Most commonly one would hear that "he left academia abruptly",
  20 | that "he went to live alone secluded from society" or with uncomfortable
  21 | amusement that "he refused any form of publication of his later works" (how
  22 | childish can this be?). This depoliticization and "mad mathematician" trope is
  23 | quite notable as his turnaround was very much in phase with the ecological and
  24 | societal critics at the time (onward 1968 mobilizations). These ideas are still
  25 | very relevant and active today, perhaps tagged as radical ecology.
  26 | 
  27 | Recently I had these discussions again and realized that an English translation
  28 | of this talk was nowhere to be found online. The following aims to correct this
  29 | fact. Please send me any mistake you can find and feel free to reproduce the
  30 | translation with or without attribution to me. Copyright of the original audio
  31 | files appears to be held by CERN.
  32 | 
  33 | – Peio Borthelle
  34 | 
  35 | ## Transcription
  36 | 
  37 | ### Introduction by Daniel Dekkers
  38 | 
  39 | Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
  40 | 
  41 | In the ten years we've been organizing our lecture series, we've periodically
  42 | asked scientists to come and give us their thoughts on science—on the
  43 | responsibility of the scientist—and I think it's particularly necessary to do
  44 | so because we have a tendency at CERN to think of ourselves as extraordinary
  45 | people doing theoretical things that aren't dangerous at all within an
  46 | exceptional European collaboration. So always caught up in these fine ideas
  47 | we tend—perhaps a little too much—to be satisfied with them and not to
  48 | ask ourselves deeper questions. It's precisely in order to go a little deeper
  49 | that it's useful to have speakers like Mr. Grothendieck, whom we have with us
  50 | this evening, and to whom I'd like to hand over the floor immediately.
  51 | 
  52 | ### Alexander Grothendieck
  53 | 
  54 | I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to speak at CERN. For many people,
  55 | including myself, CERN is one of the few citadels, so to speak, of a certain
  56 | science, in fact a cutting-edge science: nuclear research. I've been proven
  57 | wrong. It seems that at CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear
  58 | Research—one doesn't do nuclear research. Be that as it may I think that in
  59 | many people's minds CERN does.
  60 | 
  61 | Nuclear research is indissolubly associated, for many people too, with military
  62 | research, with A and H bombs, and also with something whose drawbacks are only
  63 | just beginning to emerge: the proliferation of nuclear power plants. In fact,
  64 | the concern that nuclear research has provoked since the end of the last world
  65 | war has faded somewhat as the A-bomb explosion on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has
  66 | receded into the past. Of course, the accumulation of destructive A- and H-type
  67 | weapons kept a lot of people worried. A more recent phenomenon has been the
  68 | proliferation of nuclear power plants to meet the growing energy needs of
  69 | industrial society. However, it has become clear that this proliferation has a
  70 | number of—to put it euphemistically—"extremely serious" drawbacks, and
  71 | that it poses some very serious problems. The fact that cutting-edge research
  72 | is associated with a real threat to the survival of mankind, a threat even to
  73 | life itself on the planet, is not an exceptional situation, it's the rule. In
  74 | the one or two years I've been wondering about this, I've come to realize that
  75 | ultimately, in each of the major issues that currently threaten the survival of
  76 | the human species, these issues would not arise in their current form—the
  77 | threat to survival would not arise—if the state of our science were that of
  78 | the year 1900, for example. I don't mean to imply that science is the sole
  79 | cause of all these ills and dangers. There is of course a combination of
  80 | several things, but science, the current state of scientific research,
  81 | certainly plays an important role.
  82 | 
  83 | First of all, perhaps I could say a few personal words. I'm a mathematician.
  84 | I've devoted most of my life to mathematical research. As far as mathematical
  85 | research is concerned, both the research I've done and that done by colleagues
  86 | with whom I've come into contact, it seemed to me to be far removed from any
  87 | kind of practical application. For this reason, for a long time I felt
  88 | particularly disinclined to ask myself questions about the ins and outs of this
  89 | scientific research, and in particular its social impact. It's only quite
  90 | recently, in the last two years, that I've gradually begun to ask myself
  91 | questions on this subject. In the future, I'll only do what's strictly
  92 | necessary to support myself, since until proven otherwise I have no other
  93 | profession than mathematician. I know I'm not the only one to have asked this
  94 | question. Over the last year or two, and even over the last few months, more
  95 | and more people have been asking key questions on this subject. I'm quite sure
  96 | that at CERN too, many scientists and technicians are starting to ask them. In
  97 | fact, I've met some of them. What's more, I and others know people at CERN, for
  98 | example, who have "extremely serious" ideas about the so-called peaceful
  99 | applications of nuclear energy; but who dare not express them publicly for fear
 100 | of losing their position. Of course, this atmosphere is not specific to CERN. I
 101 | believe it's an atmosphere that prevails in most academic or research
 102 | organizations, in France, in Europe, and even, to a certain extent, in the
 103 | United States, where people who take the risk of openly expressing their
 104 | reservations—even on a strictly scientific level, about certain scientific
 105 | developments—are still a tiny minority.
 106 | 
 107 | So, for the past year or two, I've been asking myself questions. And not just
 108 | to myself. I've also been asking them to colleagues and, particularly over the
 109 | last few months, six months perhaps, I've been taking every opportunity to meet
 110 | scientists, whether in public discussions like this one or in private, and
 111 | raise these questions. In particular: "Why do we do scientific research?". A
 112 | question that is virtually the same perhaps, in the long run at least, as the
 113 | question: "Are we going to continue scientific research?". The extraordinary
 114 | thing is to see how incapable my colleagues are of answering this question. In
 115 | fact, for most of them, the question is simply so strange, so extraordinary,
 116 | that they refuse even to contemplate it. In any case, they are extremely
 117 | reluctant to give any kind of answer. When we manage to elicit an answer in
 118 | public or private discussions, what we generally hear is, in order of frequency
 119 | of response: "Scientific research? I do it because it gives me pleasure,
 120 | because it gives me intellectual satisfaction". Sometimes people say, "I do
 121 | scientific research because I have to make a living, because I get paid for
 122 | it."
 123 | 
 124 | As far as the first motivation is concerned, I can say that it was my main
 125 | motivation during my life as a researcher. Indeed scientific research gave me
 126 | pleasure and I didn't ask myself many questions beyond that. In fact if it gave
 127 | me pleasure, it was largely because social consensus told me that it was a
 128 | noble, positive activity, one worth undertaking; by the way without any detail
 129 | on how it was positive, noble, etc. Obviously direct experience told me that
 130 | with my colleagues we were building something, a certain edifice. There was a
 131 | sense of progress that gave a certain feeling of achievement... of plenitude,
 132 | and at the same time a certain fascination with the problems at hand.
 133 | 
 134 | But all this, in the end doesn't answer the question: "What is the social
 135 | purpose of scientific research?". Because, if its sole purpose were to give
 136 | pleasure say to a handful of mathematicians or other scientists, society would
 137 | doubtless hesitate to invest considerable funds in it—in mathematics they're
 138 | not very considerable but in the other sciences they can be. Society would also
 139 | be reluctant to pay tribute to this type of activity whereas it is rather
 140 | silent about activities that may require just as much effort, but of a
 141 | different type, such as playing marbles or similar. We can develop to the
 142 | extreme certain facilities, certain technical faculties, be they intellectual,
 143 | manual or other, but why is there this emphasis on scientific research? It's a
 144 | question worth asking.
 145 | 
 146 | Talking to many of my colleagues over the past year, I've come to realize that
 147 | in fact this satisfaction that scientists are supposed to derive from
 148 | exercising their cherished profession, is a pleasure... which is not a pleasure
 149 | for everyone! I was astonished to discover that for most scientists, scientific
 150 | research is felt to be a constraint, a servitude. Doing scientific research is
 151 | a matter of life and death for any considered member of the scientific
 152 | community. Scientific research is a prerequisite for getting a job, once you've
 153 | embarked on this path without really knowing what it's all about. Once you've
 154 | got your job, it's an imperative to move up the ladder. Once you've moved up
 155 | the ladder, even assuming you've made it to the top, it's an imperative to be
 156 | considered in the running. You're expected to produce. Scientific
 157 | production—like any other kind of production in the ambient civilization—is
 158 | considered an imperative in itself. The remarkable thing about all this is that
 159 | in the end, the content of research becomes a second thought. It's all about
 160 | producing a certain number of "papers". In extreme cases, a scientist's
 161 | productivity is measured by the number of pages they publish. Under these
 162 | conditions, for a large number of scientists—certainly for the overwhelming
 163 | majority, with the real exception of a few who are fortunate enough to have an
 164 | exceptional gift or to be in a social position and disposition that enables
 165 | them to free themselves from these feelings of constraint—for most,
 166 | scientific research is a real constraint that kills the pleasure one can have
 167 | in carrying it out.
 168 | 
 169 | This is something I discovered with amazement, because we don't talk about it.
 170 | Between my students and myself, I thought there was a spontaneous and
 171 | egalitarian relationship. In fact, it was an illusion in which I was trapped.
 172 | Without even realizing it there was a real hierarchical relationship. The
 173 | mathematicians who were my students or who considered themselves less well
 174 | placed than me and who felt alienated in their work, would never have had the
 175 | idea of talking to me about it until of my own accord, I left the scientific
 176 | ghetto in which I was confined and tried to talk to people who weren't from my
 177 | milieu. That milieu of esoteric scientists who did high mathematics.
 178 | 
 179 | To illustrate this point I'd like to give a very concrete example. Two weeks
 180 | ago I went on a tour of Brittany. Among other things, I had the opportunity to
 181 | visit Nantes where I met friends and spoke at a Maison de Jeunes et de la
 182 | Culture \[MJC, youth cultural center\] about the kind of issues we're
 183 | discussing today. I was there on Monday. As my colleagues from the University
 184 | of Nantes had been warned of my arrival, they had asked me in extremis to come
 185 | and give a talk on mathematical subjects with them the following afternoon. As
 186 | it happened, on the very day of my visit one of the Nantes mathematicians, Mr.
 187 | Molinaro, committed suicide. So because of this unfortunate incident the
 188 | mathematical talk that had been planned was cancelled. Instead I contacted a
 189 | number of colleagues to ask if we could get together to talk a little about
 190 | mathematical life within the mathematics department at the University and also
 191 | to talk a little about this suicide. There was an extremely revealing session
 192 | that afternoon in Nantes where everyone present—with one exception I'd
 193 | say—clearly felt that this suicide was very very closely linked to the kind
 194 | of things we'd been discussing the evening before at the MJC.
 195 | 
 196 | In fact, I'll perhaps give one or two details. It so happened that Molinaro had
 197 | two students working on post-graduate theses—I don't think they were state
 198 | theses. These theses were not considered to be of sufficient scientific value.
 199 | They were judged very harshly by Dieudonné, who is a good colleague of mine and
 200 | with whom I wrote a major treatise on algebraic geometry. So I know him very
 201 | well, he's a man of very sound scientific judgment, who is very demanding when
 202 | it comes to the quality of scientific work. As a result, when these theses were
 203 | being discussed by the Commission for inclusion on the list of candidates for
 204 | higher education posts, he undermined them and their inclusion was refused.
 205 | This of course was felt as a kind of personal affront by Molinaro who had
 206 | already had difficulties before, and he committed suicide on these
 207 | circumstances. In fact I had a mathematician friend called Terenhöfel who also
 208 | committed suicide. I know a number of mathematicians—I'm talking mainly about
 209 | mathematicians here, since that's the milieu I've known best—who have gone
 210 | mad.
 211 | 
 212 | I don't think that's something peculiar to mathematics. I think that the kind
 213 | of atmosphere that prevails in the scientific world—whether mathematical or
 214 | not—a kind of atmosphere with extremely rarefied air, and the pressure that
 215 | is exerted on researchers have a lot to do with the evolution of these
 216 | unfortunate cases.
 217 | 
 218 | Concerning the pleasure we take in scientific research, I believe there can be
 219 | enjoyment. But I've come to the conclusion that the enjoyment of some—the
 220 | enjoyment of those in high places, the enjoyment of the brilliant—comes at
 221 | the expense of genuine repression of the average scientist.
 222 | 
 223 | Another aspect of this problem which goes beyond the limits of the scientific
 224 | community as a whole is the fact that these high flights of human thought take
 225 | place at the expense of the population as a whole which is dispossessed of all
 226 | knowledge. In the sense that in the dominant ideology of our society the only
 227 | true knowledge is scientific knowledge, which is the prerogative of a few
 228 | million people on the planet, perhaps one person in a thousand. All the others
 229 | are supposed to "not know" and in fact when you talk to them they have the
 230 | impression that they "don't know". Those who do know are the ones up there in
 231 | the high sciences: the mathematicians, the scientists, the very knowledgeable
 232 | and so on.
 233 | 
 234 | So I think there's quite a lot of critical comment to be made on the pleasure
 235 | we get from science and its side effects. This pleasure is a kind of
 236 | ideological justification for a certain course that human society is taking and
 237 | as such I think that even the most disinterested science that is being done in
 238 | the current context, and even the most remote from practical application, has
 239 | an extremely negative impact.
 240 | 
 241 | It's for this reason that personally I currently refrain as far as possible
 242 | from taking part in this kind of activity. I'd like to clarify why I initially
 243 | interrupted my research activity: it was because I realized that there were
 244 | such urgent problems to be solved concerning the survival crisis that it seemed
 245 | madness to waste forces on abstract scientific research. At the time I made
 246 | this decision I was thinking of spending several years doing research,
 247 | acquiring some basic knowledge of biology, with the idea of applying and
 248 | developing mathematical techniques, mathematical methods, to deal with
 249 | biological problems. It's an absolutely fascinating thing for me and from the
 250 | moment some friends and I started a group called *Survivre*
 251 | \[surviving\]—precisely to deal with questions of survival—from that moment
 252 | on, overnight, the interest in disinterested scientific research completely
 253 | vanished for me and I've never had a minute's regret since.
 254 | 
 255 | Then there's the second motivation: science, scientific activity, allows us to
 256 | earn a living. This is actually the main motivation for most scientists,
 257 | according to the conversations I've had with many of them. There's a lot to be
 258 | said for that too. In particular for the young people who are currently
 259 | embarking on a career in science—those who study science under the assumption
 260 | that they will find a ready-made job that will provide them with security. I
 261 | think it's generally well known that this is a great illusion. By dint of
 262 | producing highly qualified people we've really produced too many since the
 263 | great boom in the production of young scientists—since Sputnik some fifteen
 264 | years ago—and there's more and more unemployment in scientific careers. The
 265 | problem is becoming increasingly acute for a growing number of young people,
 266 | especially young scientists. In the USA we must produce something like 1000 or
 267 | 1500 theses a year in mathematics alone and the number of job openings is about
 268 | a third of that.
 269 | 
 270 | On the other hand the fact remains that when science enables us to earn a
 271 | salary and support ourselves, the links between our work and the satisfaction
 272 | of our needs are practically cut and dried. The link is practically formed by
 273 | the salary but our needs are not directly linked to the activity we perform. In
 274 | fact—and this is the remarkable thing—when the question is asked: "What is
 275 | the social purpose of science?", practically nobody is able to answer. The
 276 | scientific activities we engage in don't serve to directly fulfill any of our
 277 | needs, any of the needs of our loved ones, of people we may know. There's a
 278 | perfect alienation between ourselves and our work.
 279 | 
 280 | It's not a phenomenon peculiar to scientific activity; I think it's a situation
 281 | concerning almost all professional activities within industrial civilization.
 282 | It's one of the great failings of industrial civilization.
 283 | 
 284 | As far as mathematics in particular is concerned, for the last few months I've
 285 | been really trying to discover a way in which mathematical research—that
 286 | which has been carried out over the last few centuries, I'm not necessarily
 287 | talking about the most recent mathematical research, in which I was still
 288 | involved at a fairly recent date—could be of use from the point of view of
 289 | satisfying our needs. I've been talking to all kinds of mathematicians about
 290 | this for the last three months. No one has been able to give me an answer. In
 291 | audiences like this or smaller groups of colleagues nobody knows. I wouldn't
 292 | say that any of this knowledge isn't somehow capable of being applied to make
 293 | us happy, to allow us greater fulfillment, to satisfy certain genuine desires,
 294 | but so far I haven't found it. Had I found it I would have been much happier,
 295 | much more content in some respects, at least until recently. After all I'm a
 296 | mathematician myself and it would have pleased me to know that my mathematical
 297 | knowledge could be used for something socially positive. However in the two
 298 | years I've been trying to understand a little bit about the course society is
 299 | taking, the possibilities we have to act favorably on this course—in
 300 | particular the possibilities we have to enable the survival of the human
 301 | species and to enable life to evolve in a way that's worth living, that's worth
 302 | surviving—my knowledge as a scientist hasn't served me once.
 303 | 
 304 | The only point on which my training as a mathematician served me was not so
 305 | much my training as a mathematician as such, nor my name as a mathematician, it
 306 | was that since I was a well-known mathematician I had the opportunity to be
 307 | invited by quite a few universities all over the world. This gave me the
 308 | opportunity to speak with many colleagues, students and people from all over
 309 | the world. This happened for the first time last spring when I toured Canada
 310 | and the United States. In the space of three weeks I visited around twenty
 311 | campuses. I benefited enormously from these contacts; my ideas and my vision of
 312 | things have evolved enormously since then. But it's only incidentally that my
 313 | mathematical background came in handy. In any case my mathematical knowledge
 314 | really didn't help.
 315 | 
 316 | I might add that since last spring, when I receive an invitation to give a
 317 | mathematical talk somewhere and when I accept it, I make it clear that I'm only
 318 | interested in it insofar as it gives me the opportunity to discuss more
 319 | important problems such as the one we're talking about here. In general it also
 320 | gives me the opportunity to talk with non-mathematicians, with scientists from
 321 | other disciplines, and also with non-scientists. That's why I ask my fellow
 322 | mathematicians to have at least one person from the department take charge of
 323 | organizing such debates. This has been the case for example for all the
 324 | conferences I've given in Canada and the USA. To date no one has ever once
 325 | refused this proposal to organize non-technical, non-purely mathematical
 326 | debates on the bangs of the mathematical invitation in the traditional sense.
 327 | In fact since then I've also modified my practice a little by introducing,
 328 | shall we say, preliminary comments into the mathematical presentations
 329 | themselves so that there isn't too sharp a cut-off between the mathematical
 330 | part of my stay and the other.
 331 | 
 332 | So not only am I announcing the more general public debate that takes place
 333 | afterwards but I'm also distancing myself from the very practice of inviting
 334 | foreign speakers to perform a certain ritual—namely to give a high-profile
 335 | lecture on a great esoteric subject in front of an audience of fifty or a
 336 | hundred people, perhaps two or three of whom can painfully make some sense of
 337 | it while the others feel genuinely humiliated because, effectively, they feel a
 338 | social constraint placed on them to go. The first time I asked the question
 339 | clearly was in Toulouse a few months ago, and I actually felt a kind of relief
 340 | that these things were being said. For the first time since I've been doing
 341 | this kind of lecture, spontaneously, without anything having been agreed in
 342 | advance, after the mathematical lecture which was indeed very esoteric and
 343 | which in itself was very tedious and burdensome—I had to apologize several
 344 | times during the lecture because really it was quite intolerable—well
 345 | immediately afterwards an extremely interesting discussion took place precisely
 346 | on the theme: "What's the point of this kind of mathematics?" and "What's the
 347 | point of this kind of ritual of giving lectures to people who have absolutely
 348 | no interest in it?".
 349 | 
 350 | My intention was not to create some kind of anti-science theory. I can see that
 351 | I've barely scratched the surface of some of the problems associated with the
 352 | question "Are we going to continue with scientific research?", even among those
 353 | indicated on this flyer, a copy of which I've seen. For example about the
 354 | possibilities of developing a scientific practice entirely different from
 355 | current scientific practice and about a more detailed critique of that
 356 | practice.
 357 | 
 358 | Instead I spoke in fairly concrete terms about my personal experience—about
 359 | what was passed on to me directly by others—for half an hour. That's probably
 360 | enough; perhaps it would be preferable for other points to be dealt with in a
 361 | little more depth during a general discussion.
 362 | 
 363 | Before I finish my introductory speech I'd just like to say that I've brought
 364 | back a few copies of a magazine we publish called *Survivre et Vivre*[^13]
 365 | \[surviving and living\]. This is the group I mentioned at the beginning, which
 366 | changed its name a few months ago. Instead of "surviving", after a rather
 367 | significant and characteristic change of perspective it has become "surviving
 368 | and living". In the beginning we started out with the fear of a possible end of
 369 | the world where the essential imperative for us was the imperative of survival.
 370 | Since then, through a parallel process for many of us and others outside the
 371 | group we've come to a different conclusion. At first we were overwhelmed by the
 372 | multiplicity of extremely tangled problems in such a way that it seemed
 373 | impossible to touch any one of them without at the same time bringing on all
 374 | the others. In the end we would have given in to a kind of despair, a black
 375 | pessimism, had we not made the following change of perspective: within the
 376 | usual system of reference in which we live—within the given type of
 377 | civilization, let's call it western civilization or industrial
 378 | civilization—there is no possible solution; the interweaving of economic,
 379 | political, ideological and scientific problems is such that there are no
 380 | possible outcomes.
 381 | 
 382 | At the beginning we thought that with scientific knowledge—by making it
 383 | available to enough people—we'd be able to better grasp a solution to the
 384 | problems at hand. We've come back from that illusion. We now believe that the
 385 | solution will not come from more scientific knowledge or more techniques but
 386 | from a change in civilization. That's where the extremely important change of
 387 | perspective comes in. For us the dominant civilization—industrial
 388 | civilization—is doomed to disappear in a relatively short time, in perhaps
 389 | ten, twenty or thirty years... one or two generations, in that order of
 390 | magnitude; because the problems currently posed by this civilization are
 391 | effectively insoluble problems.
 392 | 
 393 | We now see our role in the following direction: to be ourselves an integral
 394 | part of a process of transformations—of ferments of transformations from one
 395 | type of civilization to another—which we can begin to develop right now. In
 396 | this sense the problem of survival for us has been superseded, it has become
 397 | the problem of life, of the transformation of our lives in the immediate
 398 | future; so that they become ways of living and human relations that are worthy
 399 | of being lived, and also, are viable in the long term and can serve as a
 400 | starting point for the establishment of post-industrial civilizations, of new
 401 | cultures.
 402 | 
 403 | For subscriptions, please write to my address: 21, avenue Kennedy, 91 Massy;
 404 | conditions are indicated in the journal.
 405 | 
 406 | ### Discussion session
 407 | 
 408 | > I'd love to know what you think makes life worth living.
 409 | 
 410 | Actually, up until now, the activity, the life I've had, I've considered it
 411 | worthy of living. I had the feeling of a certain type of self-fulfillment that
 412 | satisfied me. Now, looking back, I see my past life in a very different light;
 413 | in the sense that I realize that this fulfillment was at the same time a
 414 | mutilation. Indeed it was an extremely intense activity, but in an excessively
 415 | narrow direction. In such a way that all other possibilities are not covered.
 416 | For me, there's absolutely no more doubt about it. The kind of activity I'm
 417 | doing now is infinitely more satisfying and rewarding than the one I had during
 418 | my twenty or twenty-five years as a mathematical researcher. This is a very
 419 | personal point, as far as my own life is concerned.
 420 | 
 421 | On the other hand, when I speak of a life worth living, I'm not just talking
 422 | about my own life, it's about everyone's life. And I realize that the
 423 | fulfillment I've been able to achieve in a very limited direction was at the
 424 | expense of other people's possibilities for fulfillment. If some people have
 425 | found themselves under such psychological pressure to the point of suicide,
 426 | it's because of the prevailing consensus that a person's worth was judged, for
 427 | example, by their technical virtuosity in proving theorems, i.e. to perform
 428 | excessively specialized operations—when, the rest of the person was left
 429 | completely in the shadows. This is something I've experienced time and again.
 430 | When we're talking about a certain person and I ask, "Who is he?", I'm told,
 431 | "He's a jerk." This meaning, among mathematicians, that it's a guy who either
 432 | demonstrates theorems that aren't very interesting, or demonstrates theorems
 433 | that are false, or doesn't demonstrate theorems at all!
 434 | 
 435 | So I've defined rather negatively what I mean by a life worth living. I think
 436 | that, for everyone, there's the possibility of fulfillment without being judged
 437 | by others, by such narrow, simplistic, criteria. In fact, I think this scale of
 438 | values has a direct mutilating effect on the possibilities for
 439 | self-fulfillment. Well, this is an aspect, I don't pretend to answer the
 440 | question raised here, which is a very vast one. But from the point of view
 441 | we're taking here, based on scientific practice, it's the most immediate thing
 442 | I can think of as an answer.
 443 | 
 444 | > What are your views on the structure of scientific research in the People's
 445 | > Republic of China?
 446 | 
 447 | Until quite recently, let's say about three months ago, I was rather closed to
 448 | any information that came from China because it was wrapped up in such jargon
 449 | that, a priori, you felt like questioning it—you didn't want to take it
 450 | seriously. Jargon, let's say, of an unbridled cult of Mao Tse Tung's
 451 | personality, a sort of hagiography that accompanied it, meant that I read these
 452 | publications quite often, but they fell out of my hands of discouragement: it
 453 | just wouldn't do. Then, three months ago, I met the *New Alchemists*[^1] who made
 454 | me realize the possibility of a scientific practice entirely different from
 455 | that which currently prevails in all the sciences that are at universities and
 456 | research institutes. From that moment, I took a renewed interest in what was
 457 | happening in China, and I was motivated to go beyond, let's say, the frills of
 458 | style, and try to get to the bottom of things. As a result, I became convinced
 459 | that there are some extremely interesting things happening in China too,
 460 | precisely in the direction of developing a new science. In any case, China is
 461 | the only country where the myth of the expert is officially shattered. Where
 462 | people are told: "Don't trust the experts. Don't wait for the government to
 463 | send you competent folks to solve them for you. Solve them yourself with
 464 | whatever means you can find on the spot."
 465 | 
 466 | Whether we're university professors, workers or farmers, we're all capable of
 467 | creative initiative, of inventing something. I think the most striking way in
 468 | which these—let's call them watchwords—or this new movement has
 469 | materialized, is in the development of Chinese medicine. Particularly since the
 470 | Cultural Revolution. This is precisely an example of science getting out of the
 471 | hands of a certain caste to become the science of all, and it is only by
 472 | becoming everyone's science can it become science for everyone. In fact,
 473 | practically anyone can become a doctor, whatever their cultural background.
 474 | This vast movement of *barefoot doctors*[^11] has mobilized an impressive
 475 | number of people—but I'm no good at statistics and can't say how many—who
 476 | travel the countryside for all kinds of simple medical procedures that would
 477 | only be admitted after years and years of medical study in a social context
 478 | like ours. Whereas over there, after just a few months' preparation, you can
 479 | practice certain medical activities.
 480 | 
 481 | Particularly noteworthy is the sensational development of Chinese acupuncture,
 482 | which has made it possible to cure certain ailments in previously unexpected
 483 | cases, or as an adjunct to certain medical techniques. We know the role
 484 | currently played by Chinese acupuncture in anesthesia. Acupuncture can also be
 485 | used to cure all kinds of ailments, including commonplace ailments such as
 486 | colds, but also, for example, very serious conditions such as pelvic organ
 487 | prolapse in very advanced states. I recently had the translation of a Chinese
 488 | newspaper article on this subject, which sheds some light on the differences
 489 | between scientific practice—in particular medical practice in Western
 490 | countries such as France or Switzerland—and practice in China, where an
 491 | entirely new technique for healing very advanced organ prolapse was found by a
 492 | young woman doctor who had very little formal education behind her, but who was
 493 | highly motivated to to heal a specific case. On the other hand, she found
 494 | herself in a cultural climate where it is not considered inadmissible,
 495 | unthinkable, that a person with little knowledge, and practically no
 496 | qualifications, could develop new techniques. She experimented with herself by
 497 | needling on her own lower vertebrae, since she knew, from the little elementary
 498 | things she had learnt, that there were direct nervous links between the pelvic
 499 | floor and these vertebrae. By force of experimentation on herself, she finally
 500 | found a point that caused her an extremely strong reaction that brought the
 501 | pelvic organs up inside her belly. Then, convinced that she'd found the correct
 502 | point, she performed the same operation on the patient she had in mind and the
 503 | patient was cured. Since then, according to this newspaper, some fifty other
 504 | cases have been treated, with forty-five cured.
 505 | 
 506 | Here we can see the fundamental difference between this kind of scientific
 507 | practice and scientific discoveries, and those prevailing in Western countries.
 508 | First of all, the patient is no longer an object in the hands of the doctor; it
 509 | is no longer the doctor who is the subject who knows and applies his knowledge
 510 | to the sick object. Here, in scientific investigation, the doctor is
 511 | simultaneously the object of experimentation, which at the same time enables
 512 | him to overcome this \[...\] \[inaudible\] \[...\] of the position,
 513 | intolerable for the patient, of being an object without will, without
 514 | personality, in the hands of the doctor. And at the same time allows, I
 515 | believe, a much more direct, much more intense understanding of what's going
 516 | on.
 517 | 
 518 | When you feel scientific research in your own flesh, when you feel for yourself
 519 | the body's reactions, it's a completely different kind of knowledge than if you
 520 | do something to a sick object with a few needles, or whatever, recording
 521 | reactions purely quantitatively. I think there's a whole set of factors here,
 522 | where the person's rational faculties are no longer separate from each other,
 523 | for example where they are no longer separate from direct sensory experience,
 524 | or from affective or ideological motivations, call them as you wish.
 525 | 
 526 | So I think there's a real integration of our different cognitive faculties, our
 527 | faculties of knowledge, which is really lacking in the dominant, Western
 528 | scientific practice. Here, on the contrary, we do everything we can to separate
 529 | the purely rational faculties and all the rest of our possibilities of
 530 | knowledge. This is, among other things, one of the factors that has led to a
 531 | sort of technological delirium, such, that scientists are able to be
 532 | fascinate by technical problems, such as those posed by the construction of
 533 | intercontinental missiles and the like, without even considering the atrocious
 534 | implications of the eventual use of what they are building.
 535 | 
 536 | > In your opinion, society should be transformed into a post-industrial society
 537 | > in ten or twenty years. I'll even give you fifty years. Let me ask you the
 538 | > following: suppose a fairy grants you unlimited power to persuade everyone to
 539 | > do what you think should be done. What will you do without causing a great
 540 | > catastrophe, say, famine, etc.?
 541 | 
 542 | I think there's already a basic misunderstanding. I didn't say that anyone in
 543 | particular—or anyone else, me, for example—should transform industrial society,
 544 | just like that, over the next ten, twenty or thirty years years into another
 545 | predetermined form of society. If a fairy were to invest me with discretionary
 546 | powers, I'd tell her I didn't want to. Indeed, I'm quite convinced that what I
 547 | could do would be nothing more than to create even more of a mery mess than
 548 | there already is. In fact, I'm entirely convinced that absolutely no one is
 549 | capable of, let's say, programming, of foreseeing the changes that are going to
 550 | take place. I think that the complexity of planetary problems is so great that
 551 | it absolutely defies mathematical or experimental analysis. We're in a
 552 | situation where the methods of experimental science are practically useless.
 553 | Because, after all, there's only one planet Earth, and a crisis situation like
 554 | we're in right now, happens only once in the history of evolution. So we don't
 555 | have an experience here that we can repeat at will to see what the consequences
 556 | of this or that operation will be, so that we can then optimize our operation
 557 | procedures. This is absolutely out of the question. This is a unique situation,
 558 | with a complexity infinitely beyond our possibilities for analysis and detailed
 559 | prediction.
 560 | 
 561 | All we can do, I'm convinced, is for each of us, in our own sphere of activity,
 562 | in our own environment, to try to be a of ferment of transformation in the
 563 | direction that, intuitively, seems most appropriate, starting with human
 564 | relationships with our family members, our children, our wives, our friends and
 565 | also our colleagues. I'm convinced that this is a first transformation that has
 566 | the advantage of being communicative, of communicating itself from one to
 567 | another.
 568 | 
 569 | Among the transformations to be carried out, there are in particular:
 570 | overcoming of competitiveness between people; overcoming the attitude or desire
 571 | of domination of one person over another, which in turn generates the desire of
 572 | submission to an authority, two aspects of the same tendency; and, above all,
 573 | the establishment of communication between people, which has become extremely
 574 | poor in our civilization. Quite recently, I took stock of my own life and the
 575 | human relationships I've had, and I was struck by how poor real communication
 576 | was. For example, in mathematical circles, between colleagues, conversations
 577 | are essentially about technical subjects connected to mathematics. I've had a
 578 | number of romantic relationships in my life, as I'm sure most of you have, and,
 579 | here too, I realized how much true communication, mutual understanding, was
 580 | poor. I'm quite convinced that this is not a personal characteristic of mine,
 581 | that I would personally be less gifted at communication than others. In
 582 | fact, this is a general phenomenon in our culture, and indeed, when talking
 583 | with many other people, I've made analogous observations. For myself, for
 584 | example, I've made the general decision to pursue romantic relations with a
 585 | woman only to the extent that it will appear to me as a vehicle of establishing
 586 | deeper communication. See, this is just one particular example of a way
 587 | in which each of us can immediately transform the way we approach others.
 588 | Similarly, I can tell you that my relationship with my children has changed, in
 589 | the sense that I realized that, on many occasions, I had been exercising a
 590 | rather arbitrary authority over them, let's say, on things which, in good
 591 | conscience, were their own responsibility. So these are things that can be
 592 | changed.
 593 | 
 594 | At first glance, one might wonder how this type of change is related to, say,
 595 | the global problems of survival. I'm convinced of it, but I can't prove it,
 596 | because nothing important can be proved; one can only feel it, guess it. But I
 597 | am convinced that these changes in human relations will be a determining
 598 | factor, perhaps the most important, in the changes we're going to see from one
 599 | mode of civilization to another. Once again, it has become quite clear to me
 600 | that these changes will not come about by virtue of technical innovation or
 601 | structural changes. The truly profound change that is going to take place is a
 602 | change in human mentalities and human relations.
 603 | 
 604 | > I'd like to come back to scientific research. Actually, you're talking about
 605 | > deviations in scientific research. I partly agree with some of your
 606 | > diagnoses: the fact that we're too interested in personal glory, subjugation
 607 | > to fashion, the abusive pretensions of certain scientists, etc. But is this
 608 | > inherent to science? In my opinion, science would like to construct a new
 609 | > vision of the world. What purpose would you give to another scientific
 610 | > practice?
 611 | 
 612 | When you say inherent to science: inherent to which science? I think it's
 613 | inherent to science as defined by the practice of recent centuries, as it has
 614 | developed since the beginning of the exact sciences. I think it's inherent in
 615 | the very method of these sciences. Among the distinctive features of this
 616 | scientific practice, the first is the strict separation of our rational
 617 | faculties from other modes of knowledge. Hence an instinctive distrust of all
 618 | that is, let's say, emotivity, of all philosophical or religious knowledge, of
 619 | all ethical considerations, anything that is felt, sensory, direct. In this
 620 | sense, we have more confidence in the indications of a needle on a dial, than
 621 | in what we feel immediately, directly.
 622 | 
 623 | The following example illustrates this mistrust of immediate experience; I
 624 | could cite many others, but this one is particularly striking to me. It is the
 625 | case of parents that go to consult a doctor with their child, saying: "We're
 626 | very unhappy, our child is becoming more and more impossible in class: he's a
 627 | kleptomaniac, he fights with everyone. At home, he sulks for days on end, wets
 628 | the bed, etc." And they ask the question, "Is our child sick?" So the
 629 | specialist, the person who knows, is asked to pronounce a ritual formula: "your
 630 | child ill" or "your child is well". In the case of "your child is ill", we
 631 | expect the specialist to prescribe a drug, a method of treatment, something
 632 | that will make him return to the other state, the "your child is well" case,
 633 | and that's that. But if, by any chance he says: "your child is well", the
 634 | parents, a little comforted, will go home and feel that there's no real
 635 | problem. This, I believe, is one way of illustrating this state of mind in
 636 | science, of wanting to disregard experience and state everything in terms of
 637 | purely rational standards that are expressed and embodied by specialists.
 638 | 
 639 | This brings us to the second point, the second flaw which is inherent in the
 640 | scientific method. It's the analytical attitude which, of course—as I'm well
 641 | aware—was necessary for the development of this type of knowledge. The
 642 | practice of dividing every piece of reality, every problem, into simple
 643 | components to better to solve them. And this tendency to specialization, as we
 644 | know, has become increasingly important. Each of us only grasps a tiny piece of
 645 | reality. As a result, each of us is perfectly powerless to grasp, to understand
 646 | and to take action in any of the important issues of ones life, the life of the
 647 | community or the life of the world. Because any important question has an
 648 | infinite number of different aspects, its division into small slices of
 649 | specialization is perfectly arbitrary, and what a single specialist can't do, a
 650 | symposium of a hundred specialists from different specialities will not be able
 651 | to do either.
 652 | 
 653 | In the end, through its own internal logic, through the evolution of the
 654 | analytical method, we've reached a point where, I believe, independently of the
 655 | ecological crisis, there is a crisis of knowledge. In this sense, I believe
 656 | that, if there hadn't been the ecological crisis, in ten or twenty years of
 657 | time we'd all have realized that there was a profound crisis of knowledge, even
 658 | in the sense of scientific knowledge. In the sense that we don't manage anymore
 659 | to integrate a vision of the world into a coherent image—since, after all,
 660 | that's what we want to achieve—into a vision of reality that enables us to
 661 | interact favorably with it from our own little slices of speciality. This is a
 662 | second aspect that seems to me to have become harmful.
 663 | 
 664 | There's a third, related to this one. It's that specialties order themselves
 665 | spontaneously, according to objective criteria of subordination to one another;
 666 | so that we see a stratification of society, starting with the stratification of
 667 | science, according to so-called objective criteria of subordination of
 668 | specialties to one another. In this sense, science, in its current practice as
 669 | it has developed over the last three or four hundred years, seems to me to be
 670 | the main ideological support for the stratification of society, with all the
 671 | alienations that this implies. I believe that, in this respect, the scientific
 672 | community is a kind of microcosm that fairly accurately reflects the trends
 673 | within global society.
 674 | 
 675 | Furthermore, fourth point, is the separation in science between knowledge on
 676 | the one hand, and desires and needs on the other. Scientific knowledge is
 677 | developed according, supposedly, to an internal logic of knowledge, according
 678 | to so-called objective criteria for the pursuit of knowledge. But in fact, it
 679 | moves further and further away from our true needs and desires. The most
 680 | striking thing in this respect seems to me to be the state of relative
 681 | stagnation in which agriculture has found itself in the four hundred years
 682 | since the development of the exact sciences, when compared with fast-growing
 683 | branches such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and, more recently, biology.
 684 | Agriculture, after all, has been the basis of our so-called civilized societies
 685 | for ten thousand years. It is truly society's basic activity, from which we
 686 | derive most of the resources we need to satisfy our material needs. One might
 687 | have thought that, with the development of new knowledge methods, they would be
 688 | applied to agriculture as a matter of priority, freeing us, to some extent,
 689 | from having to work excessively to satisfy our basic needs. This has not been
 690 | the case. Even today, I believe that for most of us, agriculture is not
 691 | considered a science. It would seem unworthy of a brilliant mind to care about
 692 | agriculture. Now precisely, with new scientific techniques, the first thing to
 693 | ask is "What's the use of science, the content of the science we're
 694 | developing?" I believe that among the most important topics to be studied by a
 695 | new science will be the development of new agricultural techniques that are
 696 | much more efficient and, above all, much more viable in the long term than the
 697 | techniques that have been used until now.
 698 | 
 699 | Here are a few criticisms of current scientific practice. Based on what I've
 700 | heard of some innovative attempts, I'm convinced that we can overcome these
 701 | limitations of current science, and that we can therefore develop a science that is
 702 | directly and constantly subordinated to our needs and desires; in which there is
 703 | no longer an arbitrary separation between scientific activity and all our modes
 704 | of knowledge; where there is no longer any arbitrary separation between science
 705 | and our lives. At the same time, the human relations promoted by scientific
 706 | activity would change completely. Science would no longer be the property of a
 707 | caste of scientists, science would be science of all people. It would not be
 708 | done in laboratories by certain highly regarded individuals to the exclusion of
 709 | the vast majority of the population. It would be done in the fields, in the
 710 | gardens, at the bedside of the sick, by all those who take part in production
 711 | in society, that is, the satisfaction of our real needs—in other words, by
 712 | everyone.
 713 | 
 714 | So science truly becomes everyone's science. For the *New Alchemists*, this
 715 | group I've already alluded to, it's even a technical necessity. Indeed, their
 716 | intention, their starting theme, was to develop biotechnologies which would
 717 | allow, with extremely rudimentary means that don't call on the industrial and
 718 | technological hyperstructure, to create artificial ecosystems highly productive
 719 | in food. Technological means in the ordinary sense—such as the introduction of
 720 | a continuous source of energy (electricity), or the supply of food by chemical
 721 | industries (the fertilizers or feed for livestock or fish)—can be replaced by
 722 | a sophisticated and comprehensive knowledge of the natural phenomena within
 723 | these artificial ecosystems. To achieve this, they convinced themselves that
 724 | this could not be achieved within existing academic structures. In fact, it
 725 | wasn't even possible to do it inside closed laboratories, it could only
 726 | be done in the field, because the development of these techniques had to take
 727 | into account subtle ecological factors that vary enormously from one ecological
 728 | microsystem to another—of which there are thousands and tens of thousands of
 729 | them in a country like the United States, where they pursue their operations.
 730 | 
 731 | So, to develop these methods, we need to develop them in the field and everyone
 732 | must join in virtually. The *New Alchemists* are in contact with millions of
 733 | Americans interested in agrobiology, organic gardening and farming, through the
 734 | intermediary of their *Organic Gardening and Farming* magazine[^10]. Among them
 735 | are thousands of small people, small farmers, small gardeners, who have written
 736 | to them to join their research into the development of such ecosystems. So,
 737 | currently, it's not just a matter of ideas in the air, but of things that are
 738 | being done in a country as radically opposed to this kind of spirit as the
 739 | United States. Once again, by cause of concrete details that John Todd, one of
 740 | the founders of the *New Alchemists*, told me, it's absolutely impossible to
 741 | promote this kind of research within existing academic structures. They've
 742 | tried, but it's impossible.
 743 | 
 744 | > Although 99% of the population doesn't have access to science, it should be
 745 | > noted that they have a greater respect for it than you do, and this is based
 746 | > on a fact that is not simply due to ignorance. For example, we could ask the
 747 | > question: How many people in this room owe their lives to the fact that there
 748 | > was this science you decry, that there have been spin-offs in medicine, for
 749 | > example? Which are not acupuncture, which are not the repositioning of pelvic
 750 | > organs, but simply penicillin and a number of other decisive things that led
 751 | > to an increase in the world's population. A number of us, we're living—your
 752 | > group is called *Vivre*—we're living because of this cursed science.
 753 | >
 754 | > It's true that we're at risk of destruction, and it's only natural that we
 755 | > should reflect on what science is today, in the hands of guys who seem to
 756 | > have come from the depths of time, because they are barbarians who are ready
 757 | > to use it to destroy humanity. And that's true. But I find that part of this
 758 | > consideration is destroyed by the kind of absolute nihilism, absolute negation,
 759 | > that you profess with regard to science. I noted a number of peremptory
 760 | > assertions in your presentation that take away some of the weight of your
 761 | > position.
 762 | >
 763 | > You have expressed the doubt, based on your relations with certain people at
 764 | > CERN, that the research done, for example by us, that we think that it has no
 765 | > military application; this is something that can perfectly be doubted. Maybe
 766 | > we're all idiots, but I don't think so. Really, I don't think any colleague
 767 | > would take the slightest risk in coming to us and saying: What are the
 768 | > concrete risks for what you're doing to have military applications?
 769 | >
 770 | > And that brings me to something something that seems essential to me. You
 771 | > asked the question: what's the point of mathematics? We must continue: what
 772 | > is music for? What's the purpose of a number of activities that people do
 773 | > simply for pleasure? Seriously, what is your conception of the human? It's
 774 | > true that a certain number of people have activities that the masses don't
 775 | > have access to, but I don't think that by deciding that Mr. Einstein
 776 | > shouldn't do research, or that Mr. Evariste Galois shouldn't do research,
 777 | > that you'll succeed in enriching the lives of people who are neither Galois
 778 | > nor Einstein. There are indeed problems for people who are neither Galois nor
 779 | > Einstein and who are part of large institutions, where the industrial
 780 | > organization of research poses considerable problems and considerable
 781 | > anxieties. But I find that in your total rejection of science, you're joining
 782 | > *Planète*[^7], you join a certain number of, you know what I'm thinking of,
 783 | > you're joining a certain number of obscurantists.
 784 | >
 785 | > I apologize, as I'm receiving you in the stomach for the first time, I can't
 786 | > criticize your positions, but there's a lot about you that merits debate.
 787 | 
 788 | If you'll allow me, I'd like to say a few words about your intervention.
 789 | 
 790 | You accuse me of anti-science nihilism. In fact, it's true that insofar as by
 791 | science we mean scientific activity as it is practiced today, I've come to the
 792 | conclusion that, in many respects it is one of the main negative forces at work
 793 | in today's society. This was probably not the case two hundred years ago, and
 794 | perhaps not even even a hundred years ago. Today, I believe the situation has
 795 | greatly changed. But then again, as I said earlier, I think that today's
 796 | scientific activity is likely to change very, very profoundly. I don't think
 797 | this will happen without most of the current scientific sectors simply
 798 | withering away. I'm absolutely convinced that current research—which involves
 799 | cataloguing elementary particles corresponding to such and such operators in
 800 | the Hilbert space, or the mathematical research I've been involved in so
 801 | far—will wither away, not by an authoritarian decree from me or anyone else,
 802 | but spontaneously. And this, when the current structures of society will
 803 | collapse, when the cogs no longer work, because the mechanisms of industrial
 804 | society are self-destructive—they destroy the environment, and fortunately
 805 | for us I'd say. So they can't go on working indefinitely, they set irreversible
 806 | processes in motion. So that there will be a collapse of our current lifestyles.
 807 | When our cities, for example, collapse, when no one pays the wages that have
 808 | enabled us, thanks to esoteric scientific activity, to buy in the shops the
 809 | groceries we need, to buy clothes, to pay our rent and so on—and even if we
 810 | had the money, it would be of no use to us, because we'll have to dig it out of
 811 | the ground ourselves, because there won't be enough left—at that exact point,
 812 | the incentive to study elementary particles will disappear entirely.
 813 | 
 814 | I myself was quite fanatical, if you will, about research. I was really very
 815 | captivated; there are noble passions. But even supposing physicists
 816 | remain—despite the extremely strong pressure of material necessities of
 817 | survival—who would dream of continuing their research, we mustn't forget that
 818 | a particle accelerator isn't made from a few pieces of wood. It's something
 819 | that requires considerable social effort, and I doubt very much that the other
 820 | members of society will be willing to distract themselves from the activities
 821 | that are really necessary to establish a world worth living in, to rebuild
 822 | particle accelerators and the like. In any case, I believe that, for
 823 | accelerators and other such devices, the general public has never been
 824 | consulted. Moreover, I would add that if it had been, it would probably have
 825 | been consulted in such a way as to ensure that it would have said "Amen!"
 826 | 
 827 | After the lessons, that each of us who survives, will be able to draw from the
 828 | events accompanying the collapse of industrial society, I believe that
 829 | mentalities will have profoundly changed. That's why scientific research will
 830 | cease, it won't be because this or that person has decided that we will no
 831 | longer be doing scientific research from now on. It will simply cease, as
 832 | something that, by general consensus, has become entirely uninteresting. We
 833 | won't want, simply, I'm convinced, to do scientific research. That doesn't
 834 | mean we won't want to do any research at all. Research, our creative
 835 | activities, will go in completely different directions.
 836 | 
 837 | I'm thinking, for example, of the kind of research being carried out by the
 838 | *New Alchemists* with thousands of little people who have no university
 839 | training. These are fascinating things that will challenge the creativity of
 840 | each and every one of us in ways as profound and perhaps as satisfying as
 841 | ultra-specialized laboratory work is today.
 842 | 
 843 | We've been raised in a certain ambient culture, in a certain system of
 844 | references. For many of us, according to the conditioning from elementary
 845 | school onwards, we see society as we know it as the ultimate evolutionary
 846 | achievement, the *nec plus ultra*. At least, most scientists do. But we forget
 847 | that there were hundreds and thousands of civilizations before ours, with
 848 | cultures that were born, lived, flourished and died out. Our civilization—or
 849 | rather, industrial civilization, because I no longer consider it my own—will
 850 | be no exception.
 851 | 
 852 | One thing that goes beyond this remark, in my opinion, is to realize, that this
 853 | is a process that's really in front of of us, in which we're already engaged in
 854 | right now. In fact, the ecological crisis, the civilizational crisis is not
 855 | something to happen in another ten or twenty years: we're right in the middle
 856 | of it. In fact, I believe that more and more people are realizing this. It's
 857 | something that's struck me more and more over the last few weeks and months,
 858 | the extent to which people for whom we were least expecting it, started feeling
 859 | it. We scratch just a little bit underneath the superficial things they say,
 860 | and we notice there's a real sense of disarray about, let's say, the overall
 861 | sense of the ambient culture.
 862 | 
 863 | Here is to the accusation of nihilism. So, there's some truth in it if applied
 864 | to a certain form of scientific activity. I've somewhat forgotten the other
 865 | objections you were making?
 866 | 
 867 | > We owe life to science!
 868 | 
 869 | I think there are some useful things to say on the subject. Assuming that some
 870 | people here owe their lives to science, it's fair to say that there are
 871 | hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam who also owe their deaths—and their
 872 | deaths under atrocious conditions—to this same science. This is a rather
 873 | facile argument because there are many people who say: "Science has been
 874 | misused, the remedy is to still do the same kind of science, but now to put it
 875 | in the hands of people who will use it well." We'll be told, for example, that
 876 | medicine, biological research, etc., is the kind of science that is mostly used
 877 | for good. Here again, there's an easy way to respond by saying: the same kind
 878 | of fundamental research in biology which, through engineering work will, for
 879 | example, be used to develop vaccines against polio or other diseases, this same
 880 | kind of fundamental research, through other engineering work, will be be used
 881 | to produce strains of highly pathogenic microbes, highly resistant to all
 882 | antibiotic agents, and will be used in bacteriological warfare. So, in the end,
 883 | research has no smell, and whatever the intentions of those promoting a certain
 884 | type of research—at least the type of research that is currently being
 885 | promoted within our traditional science—experience has shown that it is
 886 | always divertible and diverted.
 887 | 
 888 | As I've given the example of bacteriological warfare here, we could say that
 889 | the two examples are somewhat similar. In the sense that they can be linked to
 890 | an accident, namely the existence of military apparatuses, the existence of
 891 | antagonistic nations. But let's suppose that these difficulties are eliminated,
 892 | that the dream of the global citizens is realized, that there would be a world
 893 | government. Or suppose that the United States, Russia or China, as the case may
 894 | be, had absorbed the entire planet, that there was only one country left. Or
 895 | suppose that the planet is smaller than it is and that it solely consists of
 896 | the United States, or let's suppose that the United States, through an
 897 | extreme isolationist policy is able to live in closed loop, and let's look at
 898 | what's happening over there. I would argue that, in fact that the problems are
 899 | deeper than that, that the essential problems still arise even if there were no
 900 | longer any military problems.
 901 | 
 902 | Take, for example, the antibiotics, which you mentioned, precisely because they
 903 | effectively save human lives. What do we see about the use of of antibiotics? We
 904 | see that, when we have the slightest cold, any ailment whatsoever, we go to the
 905 | doctor. What does he prescribe? Antibiotics. In fact, for a simple case of
 906 | fatigue, very often he prescribes antibiotics. It seems he is under some kind
 907 | of social pressure, namely, his client expects him to prescribe each time the
 908 | remedy that is likely to bring about an improvement as quickly as possible. And
 909 | this, without prejudice to what will happen in the long term. Any biologist
 910 | will tell you, you don't need to be a genius to know that, and even I know that
 911 | while not a biologist, that the routine use of antibiotics is an absurdity.
 912 | Indeed, through this practice, we contribute to the formation of strains of
 913 | microbes in our bodies that will develop resistance, precisely to the
 914 | antibiotics we take. Such that, in truly serious cases where urgent
 915 | intervention using antibiotics could save our lives, we risk being left out in
 916 | the cold. Now, we're in a situation where it's difficult to assess the benefits
 917 | or advantages of antibiotic use. Which outweighs the other? Do the tens of
 918 | thousands of lives saved by the use of antibiotics outweigh, say, the millions
 919 | of organisms whose natural resistance to microbial agents has been weakened by
 920 | the indiscriminate use of antibiotics?
 921 | 
 922 | I'm not going to settle this issue, but I'd simply say that the question here
 923 | is not a question of technology, it's not a question of knowledge. It's quite
 924 | clear that biologists have the necessary knowledge to decide, right now, that
 925 | the use that doctors make of it, in the clinic and in their day-to-day
 926 | practice, makes no sense. It's a question of lifestyle. It's a question of
 927 | civilization. In fact, I'm not saying that we must necessarily ban antibiotics
 928 | in an future ideal society. Antibiotics are fungi that can be produced with
 929 | extremely rudimentary means, without using the large-scale hyperstructures of
 930 | heavy industry. Antibiotics could well be used in a highly decentralized
 931 | society of communities of a few hundred or a few thousand inhabitants living in
 932 | relative autarky. It is possible and probable that antibiotics will continue to
 933 | be used in post-industrial societies, at least in some of them. Just because
 934 | they were produced in our current Western scientific culture does not mean that
 935 | there should be a blanket ban on this kind of process. I think that we have to
 936 | judge on the evidence, and that it's not a matter of theoretical work to be
 937 | done now, namely: to separate the wheat from the chaff in the body of our
 938 | scientific knowledge and the techniques currently available. This is, I
 939 | believe, a job that will be done day-to-day, according to the needs of the
 940 | moment. In other words, it's a job that will not be done by a few specialists,
 941 | biologists, doctors, psychiatrists, physicists, etc. It will be done by
 942 | everyone, as and when the need arises. We'll see what we need from the great
 943 | mass of scientific knowledge—most of which I'm convinced is perfectly useless
 944 | and will wither away completely.
 945 | 
 946 | > What about relations between CERN and the military?
 947 | 
 948 | I have no secret information on this subject. I wasn't claiming to be talking
 949 | about, let's say, any real, official, or occult relations, between CERN and the
 950 | military apparatus. I have no knowledge of such things. I wanted to talk about
 951 | the image that the name CERN has on a large part of the more or less educated
 952 | public, myself included. The name itself: Centre Européen de Recherche
 953 | Nucléaires \[European center for nuclear research\]; the fact that it's an
 954 | organization that brings together a number of countries; the prestige attached
 955 | to it, which I'm sure you won't deny; the fact that it's research concerns at
 956 | least the atom, even if it's not "nuclear research"; and that, linked to the
 957 | public's growing preoccupation with, precisely, the atom, including the
 958 | peaceful atom. All this creates a certain resonance with CERN that cannot be
 959 | denied. Except that, as far as I'm concerned, in any case, the kind of
 960 | research, the kind of scientific practice that is pursued at CERN—as at any
 961 | other scientific institution today, but even more so because of the general
 962 | connotations of atomic research with the perils to our survival—all this has
 963 | the effect of creating discomfort, for many people I believe, and for me in
 964 | particular.
 965 | 
 966 | > What about Evariste Galois?
 967 | 
 968 | He's dead, poor fellow.
 969 | 
 970 | > You've pointed out a lot of bad things and I agree with you that they should
 971 | > be changed. The question is: what does this have to do with science? You
 972 | > point out that many scientists are greedy, honor-seeking, hierarchical and so
 973 | > on. Is this really different among artists, farmers, politicians and others?
 974 | > Similarly, you point out many deplorable things on a human level: people are
 975 | > committing or about to commit suicide, have nervous breakdowns. Here again,
 976 | > is it any different among politicians, businessmen, etc.? And is science
 977 | > responsible for these misfortunes? Is it only science that makes people
 978 | > greedy or suicidal?
 979 | >
 980 | > To take one example, there have been poets who have written some very
 981 | > beautiful things without having any communication with, say, their wives. Do
 982 | > you think that science is really responsible for this lack of communication?
 983 | > I think it's instead a specificity of human nature, and I think it's bad. We
 984 | > have to fight against it, but it has nothing to do with science.
 985 | >
 986 | > And finally, about wars, about Vietnam. We all agree that it's a tragedy. But
 987 | > is science responsible? What I mean is, three thousand years ago, do you
 988 | > think it was fundamentally different? Thank you.
 989 | 
 990 | I fully agree with you that most of the aspects of scientific practice that
 991 | I've highlighted—at least some of them—are not specific to the world of
 992 | scientific research. I don't think that there are necessarily more suicides,
 993 | say, among mathematicians than in other professions. Why did I talk about it?
 994 | It's simply because, despite everything, we talk better about the world we know
 995 | first-hand. And I mentioned it, because there's a certain myth, that things are
 996 | better in the scientific community, that, for example, scientific activity is
 997 | necessarily a source of satisfaction, pleasure and joy. Meanwhile, in a number
 998 | of cases, it can be shown that it is precisely scientific activity that is a
 999 | source of constraint, repression and drama. I know of other cases in my
1000 | personal practice that are, let's say, less extreme than this one. But it's in
1001 | order to counter certain myths that I mentioned these cases. Otherwise, I
1002 | totally agree with your objection. So, in the end, I think there's a
1003 | misunderstanding, not an important difference in vision.
1004 | 
1005 | As for the other question, I don't think science is the only cause of the
1006 | rather catastrophic situation we find ourselves in. I said at the outset that
1007 | it was one of the causes. In any case, if this cause didn't exist, the problems
1008 | linked, let's say, to man's survival would not exist today. They might arise in
1009 | a few centuries' time, but they wouldn't arise now. Of course wars like the one
1010 | in Vietnam could very well take place, and have taken place without the current
1011 | development of science. What's striking, I think, for a scientist, is the
1012 | extent to which the most modern techniques are applied in this war. I went to
1013 | North Vietnam and I was able to talk to the people concerned about the various
1014 | fragmentation bombs, for example. The fragments, balls, rotate very quickly, so
1015 | that they can tear flesh more easily, and also so that they can penetrate the
1016 | air-raid shelters which are dug out all along the streets and roads, for
1017 | perhaps no care had been taken to close them. And finally, they explode in the
1018 | air to better hit the civilian population. Moreover, despite the instructions,
1019 | most Vietnamese, because they want to see what's going on, don't close the
1020 | holes. So when the bombs go off, these shelters are rendered more or less
1021 | illusory. Similarly, metal balls have been replaced by plastic ones to make
1022 | their detection by X-ray impossible. New techniques must therefore be developed
1023 | to extract these beads from the shredded flesh. The military technology
1024 | employed in Vietnam is geared more towards mutilating the population than
1025 | direct extermination, because a mutilated person requires the care of many
1026 | other people to keep them alive, whereas a person who has been killed requires
1027 | very little. So there are a number of quite atrocious aspects of technology
1028 | really linked to research, to the current state of science.
1029 | 
1030 | One thing I didn't realize when I started thinking about these issues, is that
1031 | virtually every major American firms are directly involved in the manufacture
1032 | of armaments. This is true to a lesser extent for French firms. I don't know
1033 | about Swiss firms. At the time when I left the institute where I was
1034 | working—because 5% of the budget was of military origin—I had no problem
1035 | with the fact that most of the funds came from companies such as Esso,
1036 | Saint-Gobain and others. But since then, I've discovered that these firms are
1037 | very directly involved in the manufacture of armaments, all of them having
1038 | major contracts with the army. In such a way that, in the end, it becomes
1039 | impossible to distinguish between military research and research *per se*, and
1040 | even between, say, general-purpose firms and firms involved in the
1041 | proliferation of military devices. Eventually, I came to realize that
1042 | everything was inextricably linked.
1043 | 
1044 | By the way, I realize there's a question I haven't answered, perhaps related to
1045 | Galois. It was the assertion that it was good to pursue scientific research for
1046 | its own sake, for the pleasure of knowledge, in the same way as one pursues an
1047 | artistic activity. So there are perhaps one or two things to be said here.
1048 | 
1049 | The first is that, in order to understand and appreciate the kind of
1050 | mathematics that I was doing, for example, just three years ago—even if you
1051 | bypass the usual channels in teaching, if you go straight to the point, to the
1052 | essentials—you're looking at something like five to ten years of specialized
1053 | training. But it's clear that such training is, in the current state of things,
1054 | the appanage of a tiny minority of the population. Likewise, hundreds of other
1055 | mathematicians are doing equally esoteric things in their own corners. So that
1056 | in the end, those who manage to understand the kind of thing I was
1057 | doing—something I'd been pursuing intensely for a few years—are, what do I
1058 | know, maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty people in the world, something like
1059 | that. So, the importance that mathematical activity can have from an artistic
1060 | point of view... let's say, mathematical activity is very different from the
1061 | importance of music, for example. To feel music, we don't need long training.
1062 | In fact, we don't even need to be born yet, because even an embryo, in its
1063 | mother's womb, already reacts to musical stimuli. I think a lot of people have
1064 | experienced this, at least my wife did. When there was jazz music, when she was
1065 | five or six months pregnant, the baby danced in her belly. Of course, when I
1066 | talk about art here, I'm talking about elementary art, art that we can
1067 | appreciate, and even make ourselves: music, drawing, pottery, things like that,
1068 | which require relatively little training. But it's true that in the arts, as in
1069 | the sciences, as in virtually all human activity, including physical activity,
1070 | the sports, the competitive aspect is becoming increasingly important.
1071 | Nowadays, when almost anyone says art, the reflex is to think of people like
1072 | Rubinstein, Gieseking or Heifetz, or Picasso and so on. In other words, we
1073 | immediately think of the great virtuosos of art, those who have reached a
1074 | position of extraordinary prestige. Finally, art becomes the prerogative of a
1075 | very small number of people who make art for us, by proxy, because it's
1076 | absolutely out of the question for each and every one of us to do the same in
1077 | our own lives.
1078 | 
1079 | Now, this is another thing we could say on the question of what we mean by a
1080 | life worth living: it's a life which, precisely, contains its share of
1081 | creativity, including its share of artistic creativity. It's much more
1082 | important for each of us to be capable of being an artist in their own field
1083 | and at their own level, to produce music, to perform it on, say, a harmonica, a
1084 | piano or a guitar, and to derive direct pleasure from it. This pleasure, I
1085 | believe, will be infinitely more profound than the pleasure one might derive
1086 | from listening to a record by Heifetz or Gieseking. It's of a different nature,
1087 | in any case, it's at another level. Maybe one doesn't preclude the other, this
1088 | is is unclear. I have the impression that the kind of mentality that prevails
1089 | among the great virtuosos—which makes them perform, for example, five hours
1090 | of scales a day, day after day—ends up killing much of the joy they feel in
1091 | making music. And this is necessary if they are to keep up in the fierce
1092 | competition between virtuosos. I think it's more or less the same as the
1093 | competition, sometimes unconscious, between scientists. Competition, which means
1094 | that people I know, including myself, spend fifteen hours of their day, day
1095 | after day for a long time, trying to develop mathematical theorems increasingly
1096 | sophisticated, increasingly esoteric. I have the impression that this type of
1097 | mentality will disappear in the generations to come.
1098 | 
1099 | > You have realized that our world is a world where there is no dialogue. Or at
1100 | > least where there is a sad monologue under somewhat speculative appearance.
1101 | > You're calling on us to become aware of this world. Admitting we become aware
1102 | > of this world, like you do, let me ask you the following question. Don't you
1103 | > think there's something more, whatever the mode of civilization, something
1104 | > which is unique to humans: this unsettling freedom to ask questions, to ask
1105 | > why, for example, do the planets revolve around the sun in this way? Why does
1106 | > the seed grow? Why are we sick? Why are we unhappy? This great freedom seems
1107 | > to me to be condemned at the same time as science. Because, in fact, we also
1108 | > have this freedom to say that science is a misfortune. By making us aware
1109 | > that current science is bad, you may be taking away the freedom of others.
1110 | > Perhaps one day science might appear good. In a way, like a pendulum, man is
1111 | > simultaneously cohabited by the angel and the devil. You simply want him to
1112 | > be inhabited by the angel. I'd be delighted, but human history has often
1113 | > shown, hasn't it, that he oscillates between bad and good. Perhaps you're
1114 | > expecting the pendulum will swing in the right direction this time. I hope so
1115 | > with you, but I don't know if this pendulum will be stopped at that position
1116 | > in the future.
1117 | 
1118 | One of your questions is whether, by turning our backs on science as it
1119 | currently practiced, and, possibly, by taking away people's freedom to ask the
1120 | kinds of questions that current science is asking, we won't be at the same time
1121 | suppress freedom, or a substantial part of it.
1122 | 
1123 | I would like to say in this regard that myself and my friends at *Survivre et
1124 | Vivre* are not recommending coercive measures to prevent anyone from doing
1125 | science. That's not the point. If I predict that science, as it is currently
1126 | practiced, will wither away, that, for example, that the whole of mathematics,
1127 | more or less, will disappear in the next few generations, it will be a natural
1128 | decline, because people will no longer feel motivated to do it. So, to make a
1129 | parallel on a smaller scale—I believe it was in the first century of
1130 | our era—the science of hyperplane sections, conic sections and conic bundles
1131 | had reached such a degree of complexity that the mathematicians of the time
1132 | thought it was the end of mathematics, because, in any case, going further,
1133 | things would become so complex that it would be impossible for the human mind
1134 | to make sense of them. What happened was that, purely and simply, we dropped
1135 | this kind of speculation, and mathematics has continued along entirely
1136 | different paths, and it's clear that mathematics has not stopped producing new
1137 | facts to the present day. In the same vein, I think that the direction of
1138 | research that has developed over the last 400 years, let's say, in a certain
1139 | spirit, will wither away just alike, just as the human mind will take very
1140 | different avenues. Not in a coercive way, simply because it will no longer be
1141 | practiced. There will be other imperatives linked to our real needs.
1142 | 
1143 | I think that agriculture, stockbreeding, decentralized energy production,
1144 | medicine of a certain kind, very different from the medicine that prevails
1145 | today, will come to the fore. It's impossible to say which part purely
1146 | creative joy will play in these new developments. My hope is, it will be a
1147 | creative development in which there will be no essential difference between
1148 | conceptual activities and manual physical activities. When people become
1149 | masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their
1150 | creativity remains free—and this will take a time we can't predict, it may be
1151 | a generation, it may be ten, no one knows—at that point, anyone, not just a
1152 | certain scientific elite, will be able to devote a significant part of their
1153 | time to purely creative, purely speculative, purely playful research. Even if
1154 | we resume research directions that may have been abandoned in the meantime, for
1155 | example, certain directions in current mathematics or even physics—if society
1156 | is prepared to take them on, because today's physics isn't just done with your
1157 | head, it's done with serious instrumentation, with capital outlays, involving
1158 | the mobilization of significant collective energy—then I have no problem with
1159 | it; but I think it's absolutely impossible to predict it now. In any case, I
1160 | agree with you that freedom is an essential criterion for the directions to be
1161 | taken, well, for me it certainly is. I believe that nothing new will be created
1162 | without freedom, and even, once again, that the decline of present-day science
1163 | will increase our freedom, and this will not be at the expense of anyone's
1164 | freedom.
1165 | 
1166 | About your picture of the angel and the daemon, I don't believe in this
1167 | dichotomy of good and evil. I don't share that view, rather, there's a complex
1168 | mixture of two opposing principles. If you don't mind, I'd like to do a little
1169 | philosophical digression on the subject of mathematical thinking and its
1170 | influence on general thinking. One thing had already struck me before I came to
1171 | the overall criticism of science almost two years ago: the crudeness, shall we
1172 | say, of the mathematical mode of reasoning when confronted with the phenomena
1173 | of life, with natural phenomena. The models provided by mathematics, including
1174 | logical models, are a kind of Procrustean bed for reality. A special thing
1175 | about mathematics is that every proposition, putting the logical subtleties
1176 | aside, is either true or false; there is no middle ground between the two, the
1177 | dichotomy is total. Actually, this doesn't correspond at all with the nature of
1178 | things. In nature, in life, there are no propositions that are absolutely true
1179 | or absolutely false. In fact, to fully grasp reality, it is often necessary to
1180 | take into account seemingly contradictory aspects, or at any rate,
1181 | complementary aspects, and both are important. From a more elementary
1182 | standpoint, no door is ever completely closed or completely open, this doesn't
1183 | make sense. This dichotomy, which perhaps stems from mathematics, from
1184 | Aristotelian logic, has really permeated our way of thinking, including in
1185 | everyday life and in any debate about ideas or even personal life. This is
1186 | something I've often noticed when talking to people, whether in private or in
1187 | public. In general, people see two extreme alternatives and see no middle
1188 | ground between the two. If the person I'm talking to has chosen a certain
1189 | alternative and I have a vision that lies beyond the one they considers good,
1190 | they'll immediately accuse me of having chosen the opposite extreme alternative,
1191 | because they can't see the middle ground.
1192 | 
1193 | I think there's an inherent flaw in the mathematical way of thinking and I have
1194 | the impression that it's also reflected in this Manichaean vision of human
1195 | nature. On the one hand, there's the good, and on the other, the bad, and in
1196 | the best case scenario, we see both living side by side. I have the impression
1197 | that what we call bad is just a natural reaction to a certain number of
1198 | repressions we've been subjected to since birth; in a way, they're just as
1199 | natural, just as necessary as, for example, the appearance of fever: a sign
1200 | that our body is reacting to a microbial invasion. The doctor's task is not to
1201 | eliminate the fever, but to try to combat the microbial invasion with drugs.
1202 | This, at least, is the official thesis. Perhaps the task of the physician of
1203 | the future will be above all to understand the psychosomatic cause of microbial
1204 | proliferation at this time rather than another, since there are always microbes
1205 | in the environment, and we're exposed to them all the time: what are the real
1206 | causes? What stresses have we been subjected to that make us vulnerable? But
1207 | that's a different kettle of fish. So, I have the impression that the Manichaean
1208 | vision isn't very good. It's part of the air we breathe with the prevailing
1209 | culture, and I believe that this vision will continue to change.
1210 | 
1211 | > You think that this view of right and wrong is air we breathe and that it
1212 | > comes from mathematics. I think the opposite is true. Modern mathematics is
1213 | > younger than all our medieval philosophy or even theology. Because the idea
1214 | > that there's a good God and the Devil, the two adversaries, is very old. It
1215 | > may be that medieval mathematicians of the 15th and 16th centuries were so
1216 | > impregnated with this idea that it was natural to think like this.
1217 | >
1218 | > About the other example, the doctor, I think that before medicine got to
1219 | > where it is today, people also tried to expel evil spirits, the Devil. So it
1220 | > was the same idea. I just wanted to cast a doubt, I just see it backwards.
1221 | >
1222 | > The third point is the question: should we use digital or analog data? It's a
1223 | > question we ask ourselves at every level. By digital is meant binary, yes or
1224 | > no, and this is currently very fashionable. Maybe we can say that this idea
1225 | > came from ancient philosophy and infused mathematical language. Let's go for
1226 | > the other one, the analog, continuous scale, which you preferred before; but I
1227 | > wouldn't say that prevalence of digital thinking is a vice that's due to
1228 | > mathematics alone, I would say that mathematics may have inherited it from
1229 | > the past.
1230 | 
1231 | Bourbaki is not the originator of mathematics. Bourbaki traces it back to the
1232 | Greek mathematicians, let's say from Pythagoras onwards. So it's already a very
1233 | old tradition. Take Euclid, for example, who developed this systematic spirit
1234 | in absolutely perfect fashion, such as which was taught until not so long ago.
1235 | It's possible, then, that mathematics has something to do with this state of
1236 | mind; even if there isn't—I can't swear to it—a causal effect. Finally, the
1237 | fact that the two things go in the same direction, mathematical dichotomy and
1238 | Manichaeism, or this tendency to see only two extremes of an alternative, it
1239 | can hardly be chance. There's certainly a correlation between the two. These
1240 | things are linked in the dominant culture. This dominant culture, in any case,
1241 | is not new. I think it's been developing for over two thousand years. I'm not
1242 | very well versed in history, but, for example, people like Jacques Ellul and
1243 | Lewis Mumford[^5], for example, have precisely studied the ideological ins and
1244 | outs of science and technology from its very origins. As far as Mumford is
1245 | concerned, it seems to me that he dates it back already to the time of the
1246 | Pharaohs, of the great works of Egypt. So, I believe that our ancestors, in
1247 | this respect, go back quite a long way.
1248 | 
1249 | But there was another question I believe?
1250 | 
1251 | > \[inaudible\] \[...\] the part that serves of demystification or denunciation
1252 | > of the role of science and, above all, the motivation of the scientist, even
1253 | > if this is perhaps incomplete. I believe, for example, that we could discuss
1254 | > at length and note the important role that science plays, in my opinion, in
1255 | > preserving the very social structures of our society. I found a little
1256 | > worrying the sort of interpretation that could be derived from your
1257 | > presentation of the solution to this difficulty. The solution of withdrawing,
1258 | > let's say, from work—which is ultimately what society pays you for—is a
1259 | > luxury solution that can only be accessed by very few people, and cannot be
1260 | > erected as an answer. Materially, a worker cannot withdraw from work to
1261 | > develop his sensibility. In my opinion, if a worker doesn't cultivate
1262 | > himself, it's not because he doesn't want to, or doesn't understand what the
1263 | > real issues are; it's because the crushing weight of society—and, of the
1264 | > pace of work, the living conditions to which he is subjected—leave him no
1265 | > other choice. In my opinion, it's not the symptoms that need to be treated,
1266 | > it's the sickness, it's the disease itself. The disease is entirely based in
1267 | > the social structure. In my opinion, it's only by participating in these
1268 | > structural changes that we could one day envision finding a new role either
1269 | > for any individual's sensibility, or for science itself. It's not by a little
1270 | > theorizing—in this case, about the role of science—that we'll be able to
1271 | > find our place. I believe that participation in this struggle is difficult
1272 | > for a scientist, precisely because the fragmentation of social activities
1273 | > makes it difficult. I believe that participation in this struggle can only
1274 | > take place from one's own workstation because the workstation is everyone's
1275 | > weapon, and I don't see why it should be any different for a scientist.
1276 | 
1277 | I think there's a misunderstanding in that you think I'm advocating this or
1278 | that solution. In fact, I've spoken from my personal experience, my personal
1279 | practice, as an illustration of a type of action, of conclusions, that can be
1280 | drawn when confronted with certain contradictions. However, it is absolutely
1281 | not my intention to set myself up as a model for anyone. I realize that the
1282 | conditions are extremely different, both the so-called objective conditions,
1283 | and also the subjective conditions, let's say, the state of readiness required
1284 | to make draconian steps, such as the one I made when I left the institute where
1285 | I worked, and a little later when I decided to stop scientific research. Which,
1286 | by the way, doesn't mean I'm not still paid to teach, last year and this year,
1287 | very esoteric science at the Collège de France \[prestigious higher education
1288 | establishment\], and that next year I'll either be teaching at the Orsay
1289 | faculty of science or research director at the Centre National de Recherche
1290 | Scientifique \[CNRS, french national research agency\]. In other words, I won't
1291 | have escaped the contradiction of my scientific status.
1292 | 
1293 | In the end, what counts for me is not so much achieving the position of moral
1294 | purity, which is perfectly impossible within this society—that's one of the
1295 | many things I've learned over the last two years—what counts is that we are a
1296 | ferment of transformations, a factor of transformations wherever we find
1297 | ourselves. Of course, if we find ourselves in a certain professional
1298 | environment, it doesn't necessarily mean to leave that professional
1299 | environment. But what I'm convinced is that this transformation won't be
1300 | achieved by the magic virtue of joining a certain party or, from time to time,
1301 | handing out leaflets, join certain unions, or cast ballots. I'm entirely
1302 | convinced that this kind of transformation will start with personal
1303 | relationships. Insofar that if personal relationships don't change
1304 | profoundly, nothing will. If we think that personal relationships can only
1305 | change after structures have changed—which means that everything is postponed
1306 | until the big D day of the revolution—then the revolution will never come, or
1307 | the revolution that does come won't change anything. In other words, it will
1308 | put a technocratic management team in the place of another technocratic team,
1309 | and industrial society will walk its way just as before.
1310 | 
1311 | As an example of relationships that will have to change radically, I'm
1312 | thinking, for example, of the relationship between teachers and students. I'll
1313 | be confronted with this situation as early as this autumn. It's the first time
1314 | in my life that I'll be in a lecture hall with students to whom I should teach
1315 | for real the mathematics that will prepare them for certain exams, give them
1316 | certain diplomas, which I'm convinced are useless. First, they're of no use to
1317 | society as a whole, and second, it's not even clear that they're of any use to
1318 | those who will have these diplomas, because it's not at all clear that they'll
1319 | have a job afterwards. Even today, most scientists either refuse to see the
1320 | problem or, if they do, put a demure veil over it in their relations with
1321 | students. The relationships between students and scientists are hence
1322 | traditional teacher-student relations; in other words, they give a technical
1323 | lecture, the one they've been asked to give, and that's it. When,
1324 | exceptionally, students ask technical questions, we answer them as best we can,
1325 | and that's it. As far as I'm concerned, I've decided not to stick to this type
1326 | of relationship, to no longer separate mathematical teaching from a
1327 | cards-on-the-table discussion with students—or anyone else who wants to join
1328 | in—to review: why are we here? What are we going to learn together? Why? What
1329 | does the exam at the end of this year's program mean? What is its meaning? What
1330 | is our mutual role, me as teacher and you as students? And finally, deciding
1331 | together what we're going to do. No doubt, in the first few years, unless the
1332 | situation matures even faster than I anticipate, it's likely that the majority
1333 | of students insist that, once these discussions are over, we follow more or
1334 | less the traditional program and the customary ritual of the exams. It's also
1335 | possible that they'll decide otherwise, in which case I'll go along with their
1336 | opinion. In any case, there's the possibility of a dynamic exchange, and a
1337 | maturing of the general atmosphere.
1338 | 
1339 | In fact, I started putting these ideas into practice this very year at the
1340 | Collège de France, where I had announced, as the first part of the planned
1341 | mathematics course, a discussion on the same theme as today's discussion. This
1342 | proposal gave rise to a lively debate among my colleagues at the Collège de
1343 | France. For the vast majority of them, it was unthinkable that a mathematics
1344 | course could be partly and officially devoted to a question of this type. In
1345 | fact, the longer title was: "Science and technology in the current evolutionary
1346 | crisis. Will we continue scientific research?" So I was putting forward the
1347 | question of the crisis of civilization, which seems to me to be the urgent
1348 | issue to be debated at the moment. Now, as perhaps for the first time, or one
1349 | of the few times that, in this august institution, is raised a truly burning
1350 | question for the civilization in which we find ourselves, and that we propose
1351 | to discuss it publicly and in depth, it's practically the only time that the
1352 | assembled faculty has refused to give its approval to this course. In fact, the
1353 | vote was something like thirty-five against and nine in favor, and I myself was
1354 | surprised to find nine colleagues supporting my initiative. This surprise was,
1355 | I'm sure, much greater among the other thirty-five. From the tone in which this
1356 | discussion was taking place, it was clear that, for them, it was unthinkable
1357 | that a scientist in his common sense could fail to be shocked by the kind of
1358 | proposal I was making for this, supposedly, mathematics class.
1359 | 
1360 | This, of course, is just an example, not to say that anyone can do the same
1361 | thing, but as a concrete example of what, I personally, try to do, to make the
1362 | most of a simply contradictory situation. Instead of trying to hide these
1363 | contradictions, I try to explode them as brutally as possible, and this as a
1364 | way of maturing a certain situation.
1365 | 
1366 | > You've made constant reference to scientific research, but I have the feeling
1367 | > that you use the term too narrowly. It seems that for you it's mathematics of
1368 | > course, then physics, something like that, at a pinch medical research. But
1369 | > it seems to me that you're ignoring the fact that there's also research in
1370 | > the social sciences, research in the humanities. You talk in apocalyptic
1371 | > terms about what's about to happen to society, to civilization, as if it were
1372 | > fate, something that mankind can't control. I don't agree with you, because
1373 | > people already try to control this evolution. We can already observe the
1374 | > concrete work of advertising agencies, not to mention things much more
1375 | > serious than *Coca-Cola* consumption. You speak in apocalyptic terms about
1376 | > things that are bound to happen. I think you're wrong there, because if you
1377 | > want to change society in a certain sense—and I totally agree with you that
1378 | > it has to be changed, even if I'm not entirely sure it's in the same
1379 | > direction, but in any case we agree on the principle—I believe, we have to
1380 | > use this damned science, as the gentleman said, so that we too can control
1381 | > this evolution, that you describe with characteristics of fatalism.
1382 | > Additionally, when you say you're going to discuss with the students how
1383 | > you're going to relate to them, you're going to do human science. There are
1384 | > phenomena, called for example pedagogical communication, which one does
1385 | > study with scientific methods. It's not mathematics, but it's science. I'm
1386 | > afraid that inevitably you'll fall back into either religion or science,
1387 | > because either you're making apocalyptic prophecies or you're trying
1388 | > to reinvent with your students science that's already been done.
1389 | 
1390 | You speak of an apocalyptic vision of civilization, and this is a term that
1391 | comes up a lot when we talk about civilization. It's always this same
1392 | conditioning that makes us think there's only one civilization, as if there
1393 | weren't hundreds, and as if there won't be hundreds more to come. So, first of
1394 | all, a point I'd like to reiterate, in my vision at least: it's that we're
1395 | talking about a certain kind of civilization, which we can well and truly
1396 | reject, and which we can well and truly predict will disappear like many
1397 | others. When, almost two years ago, I envisaged the disappearance of
1398 | civilization, I was still too caught up in my own conditioning: I identified
1399 | civilization, the only one I knew, with humanity. The destruction of
1400 | civilization appeared to me as an apocalyptic image of the end of the human
1401 | species. However, half an hour or an hour ago, I explained that this vision has
1402 | now entirely changed. The collapse of this civilization is not an apocalyptic
1403 | vision; it is, let's say, something highly desirable. I even consider it our
1404 | great good fortune that there is, let's say, a biological basis of human
1405 | society that refuses to follow the path of the dominant industrial
1406 | civilization. In the end, the ecological crisis will force us, whether we like
1407 | it or not, to change our course and develop lifestyles and modes of production
1408 | radically different from those of industrial civilization.
1409 | 
1410 | Also, when you talk about the role of the human sciences, you're saying that
1411 | there's not only the so-called exact sciences; I'm well aware of that. You also
1412 | know as well as I do—and this is a very serious criticism that we can make of
1413 | the human sciences—that they are increasingly trying to mould themselves to
1414 | the model of the so-called exact sciences, mathematics in particular. In such a
1415 | way that, to the extent that the human sciences want to achieve true scientific
1416 | status—since only science according to universally accepted standards is
1417 | considered serious—these humanities are increasingly confined to a jargon
1418 | that is often mathematical. We know the influence of numerical tests and
1419 | quantitative methods, in psychology for example. We could also point out that
1420 | that a good number of economics treatises, big ones, begin, for two-thirds of
1421 | the book, with heavy mathematical formalisms whose only purpose is to make them
1422 | incomprehensible to mere mortals. A professor of economics in Bordeaux
1423 | literally told a friend of mine that the purpose of this mathematical formalism
1424 | in a book of his own was to hide the fact that the true scientific content
1425 | could be understood by anyone with the level of education of the Certificat
1426 | d'Études \[primary education certificate\]. We can thus make a very serious
1427 | reproach to the humanities in this respect.
1428 | 
1429 | Moreover, the human sciences are subject to misappropriation, and hence subject
1430 | to the same criticism as other sciences. For example, in the penultimate issue
1431 | of *Survivre*, we go into some detail about the use of anthropology in the
1432 | South-West Asian war. In fact, American anthropological science is largely at
1433 | the service of the military: in order to map out the indigenous populations in
1434 | South-West Asia; in order to study by computer the impact of such and such
1435 | policy, such as burning crops, for example; in order to know whether the
1436 | fallout will be more beneficial to American settlement or, on the contrary,
1437 | resentment might prevail. Studies like these are carried out in the field by
1438 | anthropologists.
1439 | 
1440 | In the end, I don't think there's that much of a difference to be made on the
1441 | practical and ideological role, between the humanities and the so-called exact
1442 | sciences, let's say the natural sciences.
1443 | 
1444 | > I'd like to ask you about the aims of the *Survivre* movement and what
1445 | > contacts you have with existing movements in the region, such as the *Comité
1446 | > Bugey-Cobaye* \[Bugey guinea-pig committee][^16].
1447 | 
1448 | What are the goals of the *Survivre* movement? In the beginning, our vision was
1449 | apocalyptic and our aim was to fight for the survival of the human species,
1450 | threatened by the dangers of military conflict and the ecological crisis,
1451 | caused by pollution and the depletion of natural resources. But in the year and
1452 | a half of existence, we've evolved quite a bit, and I think the way most of us
1453 | see our purpose is the following: to help prepare for the transition from one
1454 | type of civilization to another through immediate transformations. Up until
1455 | now, our work has mainly been critical. Nevertheless, it's been a long time,
1456 | six months, since we've been able to see quite clearly that we need to move
1457 | past critical work to be able to do something in a constructive direction. For
1458 | example, disseminating information about the community movement on the
1459 | development of light technology, of biotechnology, in the sense of the *New
1460 | Alchemists*; disseminating information on the experiences of new schools like
1461 | Summerhill[^8] and things like that. But, between the intention to do it and,
1462 | let's say, the preparation from the point of view of experience, from the point
1463 | of view of contact, and so on, there's another step. I think that this
1464 | transformation, in the content of the journal and our action, will take place
1465 | gradually, over the coming year or years. I hope that within a year, for
1466 | example, at least half of the publications we put out, whether newspaper or
1467 | otherwise, will be in this constructive direction, rather than being purely
1468 | critical.
1469 | 
1470 | As for our relations with the *Comité Bugey-Cobaye*, well, we're on good terms
1471 | with them! Five *Survivre* members took part in *Bugey-Cobaye*'s big
1472 | party-event last June. We're in fairly close contact with them. We even had
1473 | someone at the picket in front of the Bugey nuclear power plant for a month or
1474 | two last autumn. He was a member from the Hérault region, an editor of *Le
1475 | Courpatier*[^2], a small regional ecological newspaper in Provence.
1476 | 
1477 | From a practical point of view, one of the useful things we can do, say, as a
1478 | specific action, particularly because we're a lot of scientists within Survivre
1479 | and are therefore better placed than many others, is to help denounce a certain
1480 | number of scientific myth, and we're going to start vigorously in this
1481 | direction from starting with issue no. 9 of *Survivre*. Its editorial is devoted
1482 | to a new critical description of scientism, with the title "The New Universal
1483 | Church"[^12].
1484 | 
1485 | On the other hand, we believe that a very important phenomenon is taking place.
1486 | Namely, the growing number of people isolated in their corners, or in their
1487 | family, or professional environment, who are beginning to be aware of the
1488 | existence of a real, civilizational, crisis. They feel isolated and thus
1489 | paralyzed, and we want to contribute to create a network of contacts between
1490 | these people. In fact, this network is is in the process of being set up
1491 | through all kinds of factors; I believe that, for example, Fournier's articles
1492 | in *Charlie-Hebdo*[^14] contributes to it, and I think the existence of our
1493 | group also contributes to it. Moreover, this phenomenon of creating a network
1494 | of links between previously isolated entities applies not only to individuals,
1495 | but also to groups. For example, for quite some time, the *Survivre* group
1496 | believed it was the only one of its kind to critically analyze science. But we
1497 | have since realized that similar groups are springing up all over the place. We
1498 | are particularly familiar with LASITOC[^9] and another group in the United
1499 | States, *Science for the People*[^15]. There are other groups created more or
1500 | less simultaneously with us and under the same name "survival" in the USA.
1501 | These groups, each based on a specific aspect of the crisis of civilization,
1502 | are gradually broadening their starting point along with all kinds of other
1503 | groups, sometimes starting from very different points. I have the impression
1504 | that this extremely rapid process will be completed in the coming year. In
1505 | other words that anyone in Western society, at least anyone who begins to sense
1506 | quite clearly that something is not quite right from a civilizational point of
1507 | view, who begins to be gripped by a feeling of incoherence in his own
1508 | life—but an incoherence with a global meaning—it will be impossible for him
1509 | to be isolated, he will immediately find himself in this network. It's a
1510 | process to which a group like ours can make an excellent contribution. These
1511 | are fairly modest things, which everyone does in their own sphere of activity,
1512 | but as there are so many people and groups doing it, the overall effect is by
1513 | no means negligible.
1514 | 
1515 | — So, that sounds like a good conclusion to the questions, because I
1516 | think we can go on all night, but we've got to come to an end sometime. I think
1517 | we can thank you very much, because a lot of very profound points have been
1518 | treated and many aspects of these problems are certainly worthy of further
1519 | reflection. We'll be continuing this kind of discussion next time with another
1520 | speaker.
1521 | 
1522 | — Just if I can add anything? Of course, if there are people here
1523 | who would like to continue, let's say, discussing certain points in
1524 | particular—I don't know, can we do it here on the spot?
1525 | 
1526 | — It would be better to continue downstairs.
1527 | 
1528 | — Right. Because in my personal experience, in the end, the discussions that
1529 | take place in small groups, after the fact, once the meeting's adjourned, are
1530 | more fruitful, are more interesting than the general discussion,
1531 | which was particularly orderly here, but which in general is much more
1532 | anarchic, much more chaotic—I see we're dealing with scientists, in other
1533 | words, disciplined people. \[laughter and applause\]
1534 | 
1535 | [^1]: The *New Alchemy Institute* is a group of agrobiology researchers founded
1536 |   by Dr. John Todd and Dr. William McLarney in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA
1537 |   ("The Book of the New Alchemists", ed. Nancy Todd, pub. Dutton, NY, 1977).
1538 | [^2]: Archived by [archivesautonomies.org](https://archivesautonomies.org/spip.php?rubrique718).
1539 | [^3]: <https://sciences-critiques.fr/allons-nous-continuer-la-recherche-scientifique/>
1540 | [^4]: <https://sniadecki.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/grothendieck-recherche>
1541 | [^5]: TODO: book reference
1542 | [^6]: <https://cds.cern.ch/record/912518/>
1543 | [^7]: *Planète* (1961–1971), a french magazine publishing on the topics of
1544 |   science history, science fiction, fantastic, futurology.
1545 | [^8]: See Alexander Sutherland Neill, "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child
1546 |     Rearing", pub. Hart, 1960.
1547 | [^9]: *Look At, Search Into, Try Out* (LASITOC), an international group
1548 |   promoting critical science founded in 1967. Notably organized a workshop
1549 |   on "Threats and Promise of Science" at the Imperial College in July 1970.
1550 | [^10]: Archived by [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/pub_organic-gardening)
1551 | [^11]: Internationally acclaimed initiative of semi-professional healthcare
1552 |   workers in rural China (1965–1981), focused on preventive and primary
1553 |   healthcare, see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_doctor>.
1554 | [^12]: <https://archivesautonomies.org/spip.php?article2637>
1555 | [^13]: Archived by [archivesautonomies.org](https://archivesautonomies.org/spip.php?rubrique531)
1556 | [^14]: TODO: find it
1557 | [^15]: See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People>.
1558 | [^16]: One of the first anti-nuclear group in france, organizing protests
1559 |   against the Bugey power plant construction, such as July 10th and 11th, 1971.
1560 |   TODO: get hands on <https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42564802q>
1561 | 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/fra-dimanche-de-ma-vie.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 | # "Le dimanche de ma vie"
  2 | 
  3 | N'étant pas moi même pas particulièrement bien renseigné sur la vie d'Alexandre
  4 | Grothendieck, j'ai cherché plus d'informations. Je suis tombé sur un [entretien
  5 | avec Leïla Schneps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BbFTEyvIw), qui a été
  6 | boulversée par la lecture de son *Esquisse d'un Programme* vers 1991, et qui
  7 | n'a pas par la suite jamais cessé de chercher ses traces. Bien que l'entretien
  8 | soit, sans surprise, axé sur le sensationalisme d'un soit-disant mathématicien
  9 | de génie, fantasque et torturé, avec des questions largement aveugles à un
 10 | point de vue politique et empathique de sa personne, Leïla s'en sort
 11 | remarquablement bien. Ci-dessous la transcription du court passage de
 12 | l'entretien portant sur la période 1970--1990 de sa vie, qu'il considérait
 13 | d'après Leïla comme la plus heureuse, "le dimanche de sa vie". J'ai légèrement
 14 | édité l'oralité de l'entretien, pour plus de fluidité à la lecture
 15 | ([verbatim](/fra-verbatim-leila-schneps.md)).
 16 | 
 17 | Gauthier Depambour --- Dans ces années 1960, un autre grand changement dans la
 18 | vie de Grothendieck c'est qu'il va se politiser, il va rencontrer des gens qui
 19 | vont notamment le sensibiliser à la question de l'écologie. Il va devenir
 20 | militant écologiste radical et il va même fonder une revue qui s'appelle
 21 | *Survivre*.
 22 | 
 23 | Leïla Schneps --- Oui mais ça c'est plus tard, en fait c'est très intéressant
 24 | comme question.
 25 | 
 26 | G.D. --- Mais ça commence dans les années 1960!
 27 | 
 28 | L.S. --- Je crois que ça commence avant. Il faut savoir qu'il s'est marié,
 29 | qu'il a eu trois enfants, qu'il habitait un pavillon à Massy Palaiseau, qu'il
 30 | vivait vraiment comme comme un professeur de fac normal. Il s'est adapté à la
 31 | vie qu'on attendait de lui. On dit souvent qu'il faisait jusqu'à seize heures
 32 | de maths par jours. Il faisait tout le temps ça. C'était extrêmement difficile
 33 | de lui parler d'autre choses, de lui parler de livres à lire, de cinéma, de
 34 | films. En gros il faisait vraiment uniquement des maths. Et la question de ses
 35 | intérêts politiques, qui quelque part viennent forcément de ses parents, et de
 36 | son intérêt pour l'écologie, à quel moment ça a commencé chez lui, c'est
 37 | difficile à dire. Ce qui est sûr c'est qu'il y a eu un bouleversement
 38 | incroyable dans sa vie en mai 68. Je pense que pour lui c'était un moment
 39 | énorme, où il a renoué avec ce qu'il était vraiment, ce qu'il avait écrasé. Il
 40 | le dit lui-même: "J'ai stagné complètement pendant tout le temps que je faisais
 41 | des maths, parce que je ne faisait que des maths."
 42 | 
 43 | Il y a Michel Demazure, un de ses élèves qui est devenu un excellent
 44 | mathématicien, qui raconte cette anecdote, où un jour, il a croisé Grothendieck
 45 | dans la rue qui lui disait "Tu vas où?" et il a dit quelque chose comme "Je
 46 | vais au concert". "Pourquoi tu fais pas des maths? Pourquoi tu fais autre
 47 | chose?" lui demande Grothendieck. Et une dixaine d'années plus tard, donc après
 48 | la grande rupture, il l'a recroisé dans la rue et il a dit "Qu'est-ce que tu
 49 | fais ses jours-ci?" ce à quoi Démazure répond: "J'essaie de démontrer machin
 50 | truc." Grothendieck répond "Tu fais encore des maths?!" Donc c'était tout ou
 51 | rien avec Grothendieck. Je sais pas ce qu'il pensait politiquement ni
 52 | écologiquement avant 1968, ce que je sais c'est que c'était énorme pour lui,
 53 | cette révolution étudiante, il se sentait complètement du côté des étudiants.
 54 | Il a essayé de communiquer, mais les étudiants, en gros lui disait "Mais vous
 55 | êtes un des mandarins, vous êtes précisément de ceux contre qui on se bat." Et
 56 | pour lui c'était terrible. Tout d'un coup il s'est vu avec les yeux des autres
 57 | et il n'a pas voulu ça. Mai 68, c'était le début de ce mouvement, qui a fini
 58 | avec la rupture en 1970--71. Donc à partir de ce moment là on peut dire qu'il a
 59 | ouvert les yeux, il qu'il est en train de tuer la personne qu'il est vraiment,
 60 | de l'écraser. Et il a parlé très souvent parlé plus tard, dans un autre
 61 | contexte, d'enterrement, on y arrivera peut-être. Je pense qu'il savait déjà ce
 62 | que ça voulait dire, parce que c'est quelque chose qu'il avait fait à lui-même
 63 | pendant de longues années.
 64 | 
 65 | G.D. --- Justement cette rupture dont tu parles, des années 1970--71, provient
 66 | du fait, aussi, qu'il est devenu très anti-militariste et qu'il ya eu une
 67 | petite proportion, toute petite --- je crois que c'était 5% du budget de l'IHÉS
 68 | --- qui provenait de fonds militaires. Il a essayé de se battre pour que ce
 69 | budget, ces 5% là, soient abandonnés, et comme ça n'a pas été abandonné il a
 70 | claqué la porte de l'IHÉS. Il est allé au Collège de France, et là il a
 71 | commencé aussi à faire des cours, en expliquant que les maths, ça servait
 72 | peut-être pas à grand chose. Il a essayé de politiser ses cours, et ça n'a pas
 73 | plu non plus aux professeurs du Collège de France, qui l'ont viré. Après, je
 74 | crois qu'il a fait un an à Orsay et il est revenu finalement à Montpellier, où
 75 | il avait fait ses années de licence.
 76 | 
 77 | L.S. --- Oui. Je tiens quand même à dire que tout est exactement comme tu l'a
 78 | raconté, à ceci près que les fonds militaires que recevait l'IHÉS c'était un
 79 | prétexte. Il y avait un conflit larvé avec le directeur de l'IHÉS Léon Motchane
 80 | depuis déjà plusieurs années. Par exemple, moi j'ai trouvé une correspondance
 81 | privée. Il a gagné la médaille Fields en 1966, Grothendieck. Il a refusé
 82 | d'aller en russie pour chercher sa médaille, parce qu'il protestait contre
 83 | l'emprisonnement de deux mathématiciens dans un asile psychiatrique. Donc on
 84 | peut dire que à l'intérieur du monde mathématique, il avait quand même déjà une
 85 | conscience politique. Motchane, qui tenait beaucoup aux honneurs pour son
 86 | institut est allé à Moscou recevoir la médaille pour lui. Et quand il est
 87 | revenu il tenait absolument à organiser à une cérémonie, où il décernerait,
 88 | lui, la médaille à Grothendieck. Et Grothendieck, voulait rien savoir, disait
 89 | "Donne moi ce truc, d'ailleurs je vais le donner au Vietnam." Il ne s'entendait
 90 | pas du tout ces deux là. Le conflit était larvée, mais il était de plus en plus
 91 | important et sur de plus en plus de sujets. Donc finalement c'était un prétexte
 92 | cette histoire. C'était un prétexte aussi de la part de Motchane pour qu'il
 93 | s'en aille. Parce que bien sûr Motchane aurait pu renoncer à ces quelques
 94 | pourcentages de fonds militaires, mais il n'a pas voulu parce qu'ils ne se
 95 | supportaient plus.
 96 | 
 97 | G.D. --- Il faut savoir que Grothendieck n'aimait pas spécialement les prix et
 98 | qu'il a reçu les plus belles distinctions en mathématiques mondiales. La
 99 | médaille Fields, comme tu dis, qu'il a accepté, mais qu'il n'est même pas allé
100 | chercher et qu'il a donné à Hanoï effectivement. Et puis le prix Crafoord
101 | aussi, grande récompense mathématique, qu'il a refusé. Et donc après toutes ces
102 | aventures, il retourne à Montpellier, où il va être professeur. Mais il va
103 | avoir du mal finalement à noter ses élèves. Je crois qu'il n'aimait pas ça du
104 | tout.
105 | 
106 | L.S. --- Oui. En fait je pense qu'il devait être un professeur extraordinaire.
107 | J'ai quelques écrits, une description du cours qu'il donnait une année. C'est
108 | incroyable, j'aurais tellement aimé être dans ses cours! Il découvrait beaucoup
109 | de choses qu'il n'avait jamais faites. Puisque les élèves avaient un petit
110 | niveau, il les faisaient découper avec du papier avec des ciseaux, faire des
111 | solides platoniciens, vraiment des choses concrètes. Et il découvrait lui même
112 | tout un aspect des maths qu'il n'avait jamais regardé.
113 | 
114 | G.D. --- Ce qui est très étonnant c'est d'avoir eu cette composante pédagogique
115 | alors que lui-même refusait, notamment dans les *EGA* (*Éléments de Géométrie
116 | Algébrique*) de donner des exemples. C'était une pensée très abstraite, très
117 | difficile à aborder encore aujourd'hui, même pour des mathématiciens confirmé
118 | qui cherchent à dépouiller les archives. Et donc là, il a réussi.
119 | 
120 | L.S. --- En fait c'est fascinant pour moi le refus des exemples de Grothendieck
121 | en tant que mathématicien. Il refusait tous ce qui était concret. Et quand je
122 | dis ça, c'est qu'une des raisons pour laquelle il est fascinant, c'est que sa
123 | vie ressemble à ses maths. Ce n'est pas quelque chose qu'on peut toujours dire.
124 | Dans ses maths et dans sa vie, tout est totalement épuré, tout est minimaliste.
125 | Il a besoin du concept le plus dépouillé. Dans sa maison il n'y avait rien,
126 | même pas de lit, il n'y avait rien.
127 | 
128 | G.D. --- Oui c'était très spartiate.
129 | 
130 | L.S. --- Complément spartiate! Et la maison elle-même, il vivait à
131 | Montpellier dans des petits villages, dans des maisons minuscules. Si vous
132 | voyez les photos, vous ne le croirez pas. Mais c'est ça qu'il voulait. Il
133 | aimait ça, sa maison était ouverte à n'importe quels gens de passages, qui
134 | pouvait venir, dormir. Mais on dormait sur un morceau de bois parce qu'il
135 | n'avait pas de lit. Je mets ça en lien direct avec son style en mathématiques
136 | qui était pareil. Qui était concentrée sur le besoin essentiel, les choses qui
137 | sont communes à de grande partie de maths, sans les détails et les
138 | particularités des personnalités de chacun. Je trouve il y a vraiment un esprit
139 | commun entre sa vie et ses maths.
140 | 
141 | G.D. --- Et ça, ça atteint son paroxysme à partir de 1991. Alors là changement
142 | total, où il décide de vivre en acèse, comme un moine, à Lasserre, dans ce
143 | petit village de l'Ariège. Alors là, il a vraiment une vie très simple, il
144 | cultive son jardin, au sens propre, il passe beaucoup de temps avec ses
145 | plantes.
146 | 
147 | L.S. --- Oui, parce que malgré tout quand il était à Montpellier donc, il avait
148 | de l'enseignement, il avait une maison, il avait des amis, finalement un
149 | cercle, pas mal de gens. Il faisait encore beaucoup de maths, qu'il ne publiait
150 | pas, mais qu'il mettait dans des caisses.
151 | 
152 | G.D. --- Les fameuses archives de Montpellier.
153 | 
154 | L.S. --- Les fameuses archives. Et il avait aussi une histoire amoureuse
155 | extrêmement passionnée, avec une dame qui habitait dans les environs. Mais à un
156 | moment donné, c'était de nouveau une vie qu'il ne voulait pas, il a voulu
157 | vraiment se couper de tout.
158 | 
159 | G.D. --- Je crois que c'est Pierre Lechaq \[nom incertain\] qui me disait que
160 | ses passions c'était les maths, le bouddhisme et les femmes.
161 | 
162 | L.S. --- Oui, enfin non, la méditation, mais c'est pas du boudhisme, c'est la
163 | méditation à sa façon. On peut dire c'est un peu Zen mais pas entièrement.
164 | C'est lui même qui disait que les trois passions de sa vie étaient les
165 | mathématiques, la méditation et les femmes. Et il faut dire que il y a beaucoup
166 | d'histoires qui sont plutôt belles parce que c'est un homme de passion, donc
167 | il faisait pas les choses légèrement, il ne laissait pas les gens indifférents.
168 | Ni homme ni femme d'ailleurs, que ce soit ses amis, ses élève, ses amantes, ses
169 | amies.
170 | 
171 | G.D. --- J'aimerais te poser une question. Quand même c'est incroyable ce
172 | mathématicien qui a pris une ampleur considérable, qui était mondialement
173 | connu, qui a reçu les plus beaux prix des maths et qui va s'enfermer pendant 23
174 | ans dans un petit village. Il a pu parler encore à des gens, mais très peu, et
175 | puis à la fin de sa vie il ne parlait quasiment plus à personne. Je me souviens
176 | quand même que juste un mois avant sa mort en octobre 2014, il a invité ses
177 | enfants à dîner, et donc le mois d'après il décède à l'hôpital de Saint-Girons.
178 | Qu'est ce qui s'est passé?
179 | 
180 | L.S. --- Alors il y a vraiment deux étapes. La première étape c'est en 1971,
181 | quand il quitte l'IHÉS, et où c'est vraiment mai 68 qui lui avait ouvert les
182 | yeux. Mais il ne supportait plus la vie qui n'était pas la sienne, c'était pas
183 | sa vie à lui. Lui c'était quand même un homme des pauvres, du village, de
184 | petites gens, qui pouvait parler avec des gens religieux, avec des moines
185 | bouddhistes. Et puis d'écologie, avec des gens qui faisait pousser leurs
186 | légumes dans leur jardin. Et tout d'un coup il a repris contact avec le
187 | concret. Que ce soit dans son enseignement, ou dans cette vie avec son jardin,
188 | alors qu'il s'était coupé du concret jusque là, jusqu'à l'âge 42 ans. Il a
189 | repris contact avec le concret, et il y a quand même quelques années pendant
190 | cette période qu'il appelle "le dimanche de ma vie". Je trouve que c'est une
191 | très belle expression. Il était heureux, et ce n'était pas un homme heureux en
192 | général, mais il a eu quelques années de bonheur. Mais ce qui s'est passé
193 | pendant les 18 ou 20 ans qu'il a passés à Montpellier, c'est que
194 | malheureusement il est rentré de nouveau dans des... Il a des tas de petites
195 | phrases très typique de sa façon parler, comme "le carrousel de l'amour". Tout
196 | va mal, il est en relation avec des gens qui ne le comprennent pas. Au début de
197 | cette période il a passé plusieurs années à vivre en communauté, et à
198 | travailler --- mais comme un dingue, parce que lui quand il faisait quelque
199 | chose c'était jusqu'au cou --- à l'écologie et à sortir un petit journal
200 | écologiste "Survivre et Vivre". Ce journal devait convaincre les gens de
201 | changer leur style de vie et de se rapprocher de la terre. Il a abandonné parce
202 | qu'il ne convainquait personne. Il n'était pas fait pour persuader, je me
203 | souvient de Pierre Cartier qui m'a dit une fois: "Il est venu à un congrès de
204 | maths pour parler d'écologie et convaincre les gens, mais il était énervant. À
205 | tel point, que j'étais d'accord avec tout ce qu'il disait, mais j'étais
206 | tellement énervé, que j'avais pas envie de faire ce qu'il disait, même si
207 | j'étais d'accord avec tout." Il se mettait les gens à dos, il n'était pas très
208 | doué pour convaincre, pour persuader. Donc il a renoncé à toute forme de
209 | prosélytisme ou de travail social. Et la communauté ça n'a pas marché bien sûr,
210 | parce que c'est dur de vivre en communauté. Je crois que c'est pas facile, et
211 | lui il avait besoin de solitude. Donc ça, ça a duré quelques années, après il a
212 | retrouvé sa solitude. Mais il avait quand même des élèves, des amis, une
213 | amante.
214 | 
215 | G.D. --- Et alors il y a eu une deuxième rupture.
216 | 
217 | L.S. --- C'est ça. À un moment donné, il n'a pas pu supporter le fait que rien
218 | ne marche. Rien, pas une relation humaine, pas une relation amoureuse, enfin il
219 | faut croire. La dame disait que c'était absolument merveilleux et que son
220 | départ était une terrible surprise pour elle. Mais peut-être qu'il souffrait
221 | quand même, que personne ne comprennait. Il m'a dit une fois: "J'ai
222 | l'impression d'être au large, et tous les gens, tout le monde, vous tous, vous
223 | êtes sur la rive. Et on peut pas communiquer, on peut juste se faire quelques
224 | signes." Je crois qu'il voulait être seul, qu'il n'en pouvait plus de ces
225 | communications qui ne marchaient pas. Et il a décidé, sans rien dire à
226 | personne, de disparaître complètement. Il a attendu que son amie soit partie en
227 | week-end, puis il a brûlé des milliers et des milliers de pages. Il avait comme
228 | une espèce de vieille baignoire dans le jardin, qu'il a rempli de papiers, et
229 | il a tout brûlé, elle n'a trouvé que des tas de cendres. Mais il a quand même
230 | laissé plusieurs caisses de maths, et d'autres trucs dans sa petite maison. Il
231 | lui a laissé un mot: "Tout ce que je laisse dans la maison tu peux t'en
232 | occuper, tu peux le garder." Et c'est tout, elle ne savait pas où il était
233 | allé, personne ne le savait. Il a complètement disparu corps et âme. Ça c'était
234 | en 1991, juste au moment où moi je suis tombé sur le manuscrit \[d'*Esquisse
235 | d'un Programme*\]. Et puis il avait écrit beaucoup d'autres choses que j'ai
236 | commencé à lire petit à petit. Il avait écrit un livre immense, très beau, qui
237 | s'appelle *Récoltes et Semailles* sur sa vie personelle et sa vie mathématique.
238 | 
239 | G.D. --- C'est parfait parce que justement, j'ai ici un chapitre imprimé de
240 | *Récoltes et Semailles*, qu'il a donc écrit à la fin de sa vie.
241 | 
242 | L.S. --- Pas à la fin de sa vie, il l'a écrit en 1983--84 je pense.
243 | 
244 | G.D. --- Bon, quand même relativement tardivement.
245 | 
246 | L.S. --- Il a soixante ans. La fin de la vie --- moi je les ai dans quelques
247 | jours, les soixantes ans.
248 | 
249 | G.D. --- D'accord, d'accord! Par rapport à la solitude que tu évoquais, je
250 | voulais dire que c'est une solitude qui est doublée d'une très haute opinion de
251 | lui-même. Il y a un passage qui m'a toujours fait rire, je n'avais pas prévu de
252 | le lire, mais je le trouve quand même assez incroyable. *Récoltes et Semailles*
253 | c'est une immense oeuvre dans laquelle il parle à la fois de sa vie, de sa
254 | philosophie, et de ses mathématiques. Et donc là il parle de ses mathématiques
255 | et il dit:
256 | 
257 | > La chose qui m'a frappé c'est que je ne me rappelle pas avoir eu connaissance
258 | > ne fût-ce que par allusion par des amis ou collègues mieux versés en histoire
259 | > que moi, d'un mathématicien à part moi qui ait apporté une multiplicité
260 | > d'idées novatrices, non pas plus ou moins disjointes les unes des autres,
261 | > mais comme parties d'une vaste vision unificatrice (comme cela a été le cas
262 | > pour Newton et pour Einstein en physique et en cosmologie \[...\]). J'ai eu
263 | > connaissance seulement de deux "moments" dans l'histoire de la mathématique,
264 | > où soit née une vision nouvelle de vaste envergure.
265 | 
266 | Puis il parle de la grèce antique et du moment Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, je
267 | passe.
268 | 
269 | > Pour autant que je sache, la vision née en l'un ou en l'autre moment a été
270 | > l'oeuvre non d'un seul, mais l'oeuvre collective d'une époque.
271 | 
272 | Donc non seulement j'ai révolutionné les maths, mais en plus je les ai
273 | révolutionnées tout seul! Je trouve que c'est quand même un passage assez
274 | éloquent. Donc ça, c'est dans *Récoltes et Semailles*, qui va être publiés le
275 | mois prochain, n'est-ce pas?
276 | 
277 | L.S. --- Oui, voilà. Donc finalement ce livre qui n'avait jamais été publié,
278 | pour une longue multiplicité de raisons compliquées, ayant à voir d'abord avec
279 | lui et ensuite avec ses héritiers, va être publié. Il va sortir en janvier chez
280 | Gallimard. Moi je trouve que c'est un livre magnifique. C'est très long, c'est
281 | très beau, apparemment ils n'ont pas fait de coupe du tout. Il ya des parties
282 | qui parlent de sa vie, de ses pensées sur lui-même, qui peuvent être vraiment
283 | lues par n'importe qui, et d'autres parties plus mathématiques. Mais je tients
284 | quand même à répondre à ce que tu as dit là. Il avait une très haute et belle
285 | opinion de ses propres mathématiques, qu'il trouvait magnifiques, il le dit à
286 | plusieurs reprises. Mais il a simplement raison! Et si Einstein disait que la
287 | relativité est une découverte incroyable, unique dans l'histoire de la
288 | physique, il aurait raison! Et il n'avait pas une si haute opinion de lui-même
289 | en tant qu'individu. Il se critique même sévèrement à plusieurs moments, et il
290 | tente de parler de lui-même avec une grande honnêtetée. Bon, chacun sait que
291 | c'est pas toujours facile d'aller jusqu'au bout, mais il essaye vraiment. Mais
292 | les mathématiques, le corpus de mathématiques qu'il avait fait, oui, il
293 | l'aimait d'amour.
294 | 
295 | "Le génie Grothendieck raconté par Leïla Schneps", Sabre Bougrine, Gauthier
296 | Depambour et Leïla Schneps. Thé & Sciences #3, UPENDO TV, 2021,
297 | [yt:V8BbFTEyvIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BbFTEyvIw), 30:27--48:17.
298 | 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/fra-verbatim-leila-schneps.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 | "Le génie Grothendieck raconté par Leïla Schneps", Sabre Bougrine, Gauthier
  2 | Depambour et Leïla Schneps. Thé & Sciences #3, UPENDO TV, 2021,
  3 | [youtube:V8BbFTEyvIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BbFTEyvIw),
  4 | 30:27--48:17.
  5 | 
  6 | Gauthier Depambour --- Et alors dans ces années soixantes, autre grand
  7 | changement dans la vie de Grothendieck c'est qu'il va se politiser, il va
  8 | rencontrer des --- tu vas nous en parler je cros --- des gens qui vont
  9 | notamment le sensibiliser à la question de l'écologie. Et il va devenir
 10 | militant écologiste radical et il va même fonder une revue qui s'appelle
 11 | *Survivre*.
 12 | 
 13 | Leïla Schneps --- Oui c'est plus tard. En fait c'est très intéressant comme
 14 | question.
 15 | 
 16 | G.D. --- Mais ça commence dans les années soixantes.
 17 | 
 18 | L.S. --- Je sais pas... Il faut savoir qu'il s'est marié, qu'il a eu trois
 19 | enfants, qu'il habitait une maison, un pavillon, à Massy Palaiseau enfin qu'il
 20 | vivait vraiment comme un professeur de fac normal, voilà. Il s'est adapté quand
 21 | même à la vie qu'on attendait de lui. Et il faisait, on dit souvent, jusqu'à
 22 | seize heures de maths par jours. Il faisait tout le temps ça. C'était
 23 | extrêmement difficile de lui parler d'autre choses, de lui parler de livres à
 24 | lire, de cinéma, de films.
 25 | 
 26 | En gros il faisait vraiment uniquement, uniquement, uniquement des maths. Et la
 27 | question de ses intérêts politiques, qui quelque part viennent de ses parents
 28 | forcément, et de son intérêt pour l'écologie, à quel moment ça a commencé chez
 29 | lui, c'est difficile à dire parce que de toute façon il voulait faire que des
 30 | maths. Ce qui est sûr c'est qu'il y ait un bouleversement incroyable dans sa
 31 | vie en mai 68. Ça je pense pour lui c'était un moment énorme, où il a renoué
 32 | avec ce qu'il était vraiment, qu'il avait écrasé. Il le dit lui-même, il dit
 33 | "J'ai stagné complètement pendant tout le temps que je faisais des maths, parce
 34 | que je faisait que des maths."
 35 | 
 36 | Il y a Michel Demazure, un de ses élèves qui est devenu un excellent
 37 | mathématicien, qui raconte cette anecdote, où un jour, il a croisé Grothendieck
 38 | dans la rue qui lui disait "Tu vas où?" Et il disait je sais pas "je vais au
 39 | concert" ou au cinéma ou quelque chose comme ça. "Pourquoi tu fais pas des
 40 | maths? Pourquoi tu fais autre chose?" Et une dixaine d'années plus tard, donc
 41 | après la grande rupture et tout, il l'a recroisé dans la rue, il a dit
 42 | "Qu'est-ce que tu fais ses jours-ci?" Et Démazure répond: "J'essaie de
 43 | démontrer machin truc." "Tu fais encore des maths?!" Donc c'était tout ou rien
 44 | avec Grothendieck, voilà c'était tout ou rien. Donc je sais pas ce qu'il
 45 | pensait politiquement ni écologiquement avant 68. Ce que je sais c'est que
 46 | c'était énorme pour lui cette révolution étudiante. Qu'il se sentait
 47 | complètement, 100% avec les étudiants, du côté des étudiants. Et qu'il essayait
 48 | de leur dire, il a essayé de communiquer, il a essayé de faire des, comment
 49 | dire, des communications. Et que les étudiants en gros lui disait "Mais vous
 50 | êtes un des mandarins, vous êtes précisément de ceux contre qui on se bat." Et
 51 | pour lui c'était terrible. Tout d'un coup il s'est vu avec les yeux des autres.
 52 | Et il n'a pas voulu ça. Et ça, mai 68, était le début de ce mouvement qui a
 53 | fini avec la rupture en 70--71. Donc à partir de ce moment là on peut dire
 54 | qu'il a ouvert les yeux, il se dit "Je suis en train de tuer la personne que je
 55 | suis vraiment, d'écraser." Et il a parlé plus tard dans un autre contexte, très
 56 | souvent d'"enterrement", "enterrement", on y arrivera peut-être. Mais je pense
 57 | qu'il savait ce que ça voulait dire, parce que c'est quelque chose qu'il avait
 58 | fait à lui-même pendant de longues années.
 59 | 
 60 | G.D. --- Justement cette rupture dont tu parles des années 70--71 provient du
 61 | fait, aussi, qu'il était anti-militariste, enfin qu'il est devenu en tout cas,
 62 | très anti-militariste et qu'il ya eu une petite proportion, toute petite --- je
 63 | crois que c'était 5% du budget de l'IHÉS --- qui provenaient de fonds
 64 | militaires. Il a essayé de se battre pour que ce budget, ces 5% là soient
 65 | abandonnées, et comme ça n'a pas été abandonné il a claqué la porte de l'IHÉS.
 66 | 
 67 | L.S. --- Oui, en fait...
 68 | 
 69 | G.D. --- Alors, peut-être je raconte juste la rupture dans sa totalité. Il est
 70 | allé au Collège de France, on lui a trouvé une place au Collège de France, et
 71 | là il a commencé aussi à faire des cours, en expliquant... que les maths... ça
 72 | servait peut-être pas à grand chose. Enfin il a essayé de politiser ses cours,
 73 | et ça n'a pas plu non plus aux professeurs du Collège de France, et il a été
 74 | viré du Collège de France. Et donc c'est après, je crois qu'il a fait un an à
 75 | Orsay et il est revenue finalement à Montpellier, où il avait fait ses années
 76 | de licence.
 77 | 
 78 | L.S. --- Oui je tiens quand même à dire que tout est exactement comme tu l'a
 79 | raconté, à ceci près que les fonds militaires que recevait l'IHÉS c'était un
 80 | prétexte. Il y avait un conflit larvé avec le directeur de l'IHÉS Léon Motchane
 81 | depuis déjà plusieurs années. Par exemple, moi j'ai trouvé une correspondance
 82 | privée. Il a gagné la médaille fields en 66, Grothendieck. Il a refusé d'aller
 83 | en Russie pour chercher sa médaille, parce qu'il protestait contre
 84 | l'emprisonnement de deux mathématiciens qui avaient été en fait enfermés dans
 85 | un asile psychiatrique. Donc on peut dire que à l'intérieur des maths, il avait
 86 | quand même déjà une conscience politique, à l'intérieur du monde mathématiques.
 87 | Donc Motchane qui tenait beaucoup aux honneurs pour son institut, est allé à
 88 | Moscou recevoir la médaille pour lui. Et quand il est revenu il voulait
 89 | absolument organiser à une cérémonie, où il décernerait, lui, la médaille à
 90 | Grothendieck. Et Grothendieck, rien du tout "Donne moi ce truc d'ailleurs je
 91 | vais le donner au Vietnam." Bon, bref, et il s'entendait pas du tout ces deux
 92 | là, pas du tout du tout. Et le conflit était larvée, mais était de plus en plus
 93 | important et de plus en plus profond sur de plus en plus de ce sujet, de
 94 | raisons différentes. Et donc finalement c'était un prétexte cette histoire.
 95 | C'était un prétexte aussi de la part de Motchane pour qu'il s'en aille. Parce
 96 | que bien sûr Motchane aurait pu, comment dire, renoncer, à ces quelques
 97 | pourcentages de fonds militaires, mais il n'a pas voulu parce qu'il supportait
 98 | plus et ça marchait plus quoi.
 99 | 
100 | G.D. --- Il faut savoir, tu en parlais, que Grothendieck n'aimait pas
101 | spécialement les prix et il a reçu les plus belles distinctions en
102 | mathématiques mondiales. La médaille Fields, comme tu dis, qu'il a accepté,
103 | mais qu'il n'est même pas allé chercher.
104 | 
105 | L.S. --- Je plaisante pas il l'a donné au Vietnam pour...
106 | 
107 | G.D. --- Il l'a donné à Hanoï effectivement. Et effectivement et puis le prix
108 | Crafoord aussi, grande récompense mathématique, qu'il a refusé, donc... Et donc
109 | après toutes ces aventures il retourne à Montpellier où bon, il va être
110 | professeur, mais il va avoir du mal finalement à noter ses élèves. Je crois
111 | qu'il n'aimait pas du tout.
112 | 
113 | L.S. --- Oui, en fait moi je pense qu'il devait être un professeur
114 | extraordinaire. Il écrit, j'ai quelques écrits, j'ai une description du cours
115 | qu'il donnait une année. C'est incroyable, c'est... Moi j'aurais tellement aimé
116 | être dans ses cours je pense! Il découvrait beaucoup de choses qu'il avait
117 | jamais fait, puisque les élèves avaient un petit niveau, donc il les faisaient
118 | découper avec des ciseaux, du papier, faire des solides platoniciens, vraiment
119 | des choses concrètes. Et il découvrait lui même tout un aspect des maths qu'il
120 | n'avait jamais regardé.
121 | 
122 | G.D. --- Ce qui est très étonnant d'avoir eu cette composante pédagogique alors
123 | que lui-même refusait, notamment dans les EGA, les Éléments de Géométrie
124 | Algébrique, de donner des exemples. C'était une pensée très très abstraite,
125 | très difficile encore aujourd'hui à aborder même pour des mathématiciens
126 | confirmé qui cherchent à dépouiller les archives. Et donc là, il a réussi.
127 | 
128 | L.S. --- En fait c'est fascinant pour moi le refus de Grothendieck en tant que
129 | mathématicien, le refus des exemple. Il refusait tous ce qui était concret. Et
130 | quand je dis ça, pour moi, pourquoi il est fascinant, une des raisons pourquoi
131 | il est fascinant, c'est que sa vie ressemble à ses maths. C'est pas quelque
132 | chose qu'on peut toujours dire. Dans ses maths et dans sa vie, tout est
133 | totalement épuré, tout est minimaliste. Il a besoin uniquement du concept le
134 | plus dépouillé en fait. Alors dans sa maison il n'y avait rien, même pas de
135 | lit, il n'y avait rien.
136 | 
137 | G.D. --- Oui c'était très spartiate.
138 | 
139 | L.S. --- Complément spartiate! Et la maison elle-même, il vivait à
140 | Montpellier dans des petits villages, dans des maisons minuscules. Si vous
141 | voyez les photos, on n'arrive même pas à le croire. Mais c'est ça qu'il
142 | voulait. Il aimait ça, sa maison était ouverte à --- n'importe qui pouvait
143 | venir, des gens de passage, dormir. Mais on dormait sur un morceau de bois
144 | parce qu'il n'avait pas de lit. Et pour moi, je mets ça en lien direct avec son
145 | style en mathématiques qui était pareil. Qui était juste le besoin essentiel,
146 | les choses qui sont communes à de grandes parties de maths, sans les détails et
147 | les particularités des personnalités de chacun. Je trouve il y a vraiment un
148 | esprit commun entre sa vie et ses maths.
149 | 
150 | G.D. --- Et ça, ça atteint son paroxysme à partir de 1991. Alors là changement
151 | total, où il décide de vivre en acèse, comme un moine, à Lasserre, dans ce
152 | petit village de l'Ariège, c'est ça?
153 | 
154 | L.S. --- Oui.
155 | 
156 | G.D. --- Alors là vraiment, une vie très très simple, il cultive son jardin, au
157 | sens propre, il passe beaucoup de temps avec ses plantes.
158 | 
159 | L.S. --- Oui, parce que malgré tout quand il était à Montpellier, donc il avait
160 | de l'enseignement, il avait une maison, il avait des amis, finalement un
161 | cercle, pas mal de gens. Il faisait encore des maths, qu'il publiait pas, mais
162 | beaucoup beaucoup de maths qu'il mettait dans des caisses.
163 | 
164 | G.D. --- Les fameuses archives de Montpellier.
165 | 
166 | L.S. --- Les fameuses archives. Et il avait aussi une histoire amoureuse
167 | extrêmement passionnée, avec une dame qui habitait dans les environs. Et à un
168 | moment donné, c'était de nouveau une vie qu'il ne voulait pas. Il voulait
169 | vraiment se couper de tous.
170 | 
171 | G.D. --- Je me demande, je crois que c'est Pierre Lechaq \[nom incertain\] qui
172 | me disait, ses passions c'était les maths, le bouddhisme et les femmes.
173 | 
174 | L.S. --- Oui, enfin non, la méditation mais c'est pas du boudhisme, c'est la
175 | méditation à sa façon. On peut dire c'est un peu Zen mais... C'est lui qui dit!
176 | C'est lui même il a dit "les mathématiques, la méditation et les femmes", trois
177 | passion de sa vie. Et il faut dire que il y a beaucoup beaucoup d'histoires qui
178 | sont plutôt belles parce que c'est un homme de passion, donc il faisait pas
179 | les choses légèrement, il laissait pas les gens indifférents. Ni homme ni femme
180 | d'ailleurs, que ce soit ses amis, ses l'élève, ses amantes, ses amies.
181 | 
182 | G.D. --- Et moi j'aimerais te poser une question. Quand même c'est incroyable
183 | ce mathématicien qui a pris une ampleur considérable, qui était mondialement
184 | connu, qui a reçu les plus beaux prix des maths, qui va s'enfermer pendant 23
185 | ans dans un petit village. Il a pu parler encore à des gens mais très très peu
186 | et puis à la fin de sa vie il parlait quasiment à plus personne. Je me souviens
187 | quand même que juste un mois avant sa mort en octobre 2014, il a invité ses
188 | enfants à dîner, et donc le mois d'après il décède. À l'hôpital de
189 | Saint-Girons. Qu'est ce qui s'est passé?
190 | 
191 | L.S. --- Alors il y a vraiment deux étapes. Donc la première étape c'est en 71
192 | quand il quitte l'IHÉS, où c'est vraiment mai 68 qui lui avait ouvert les yeux.
193 | Mais il supportait plus la vie qui n'était pas la sienne, c'était pas sa vie à
194 | lui. Lui c'était quand même un homme des pauvres, du village, de gens, de
195 | petits, qui pouvait parler avec des gens religieux, avec des moines
196 | bouddhistes. Et puis l'écologie, avec des gens qui faisait pousser leurs
197 | légumes dans leur jardin. Et tout d'un coup il a repris contact avec le
198 | concrêt. Que ce soit dans son enseignement ou dans cette vie avec son jardin,
199 | il s'était coupé du concret jusque là, jusqu'à l'âde 42 ans. Il a repris
200 | contact avec le concrêt, et il y a quand même quelques années pendant cette
201 | période qu'il appelle "le dimanche de ma vie", que je trouve une très belle
202 | expression. Il était heureux et c'était pas un homme heureux en général, il y a
203 | eu quelques années de bonheur. Mais qu'est ce qui s'est passé pendant les 18 ou
204 | 20 ans qu'il a passés à Montpellier, c'est que malheureusement il est rentré de
205 | nouveau dans des... il a des tas de petites phrases très typique de sa façon
206 | parler: "le carrousel de l'amour" où ça va toujours mal c'est jamais bien, les
207 | relations avec les gens, mais qui vous comprennent pas. Et il avait passé, tu
208 | en a parlé tout à l'heure, au début de cette période il a passé plusieurs
209 | années à vivre en communauté, et à travailler --- mais comme un dingue, parce
210 | que lui quand il faisait quelque chose c'est jusqu'au cou --- à l'écologie et à
211 | sortir un petit journal écologiste *Survivre et Vivre* qui devait convaincre
212 | les gens maintenant de changer leur style de vie et se rapprocher de la terre.
213 | Il a abandonné parce qu'il ne convainquait personne. Il n'était pas fait pour
214 | persuader, je me souvient de Pierre Cartier qui m'a dit une fois: "Il est venu
215 | à un congrès de maths pour parler d'écologie et convaincre les gens, et Cartier
216 | a dit, il était énervant, à tel point que moi j'étais d'accord avec tout ce
217 | qu'il disait, mais j'étais tellement énervé que j'avais pas envie de faire ce
218 | qu'il disait, même si j'étais d'accord avec tout." Il se mettait les gens à dos
219 | en fait, il n'était pas très doué comme ça, pour convaincre, pour persuader.
220 | Donc il a renoncé à toute forme de prosélytisme, ou de travail social. Et la
221 | communauté ça n'a pas marché bien sûr, parce que c'est dur de vivre en
222 | communauté, je crois que c'est pas facile, et lui il avait besoin de solitude.
223 | Donc ça, ça a duré quelques années, après il a retrouvé sa solitude, mais
224 | c'était pas de la solitude. Il avait quand même des élèves, des amis, une
225 | amante, bon.
226 | 
227 | G.D. --- Alors il a eu une deuxième rupture.
228 | 
229 | L.S. --- C'est ça, c'est ça. À un moment donné, il n'a pas pu supporter le fait
230 | que rien ne marche. Rien, pas une relation humaine, pas une relation amoureuse,
231 | enfin il faut croire, je sais pas, la dame disait que c'était absolument
232 | merveilleux et que son départ était une terrible surprise pour elle. Mais lui,
233 | peut-être il y avait de la souffrance quand même. Il s'est dit personne
234 | comprend. Il m'a dit une fois: "J'ai l'impression d'être au large et tous les
235 | gens, tout le monde, vous tous, vous êtes sur la rive. Et on peut pas
236 | communiquer, pas vraiment, on peut faire ça \[fait un signe de la main\]." Je
237 | crois que il s'est dit: "Je veux être seul, j'en peux plus. J'en peux plus de
238 | ces communications qui ne marchent pas." Et il a décidé, sans dire à personne,
239 | de disparaître, complètement. Et donc il a vraiment attendu que son amie soit
240 | partie en week-end, il a brûlé des milliers, des milliers et des milliers de
241 | pages. Elle a trouvé --- il avait comme une espèce de vieille baignoire dans le
242 | jardin, qu'il a rempli de papier, il a tout brûlé. Donc elle a trouvé juste des
243 | piles de cendres. Mais il a laissé plusieurs caisses de maths, et d'autres
244 | trucs dans sa petite maison quand même. Et il lui a laissé un mot: "Tout ce que
245 | je laisse dans la maison tu peux t'en occuper, tu peux garder." Et c'est tout,
246 | elle savait pas où il était allé, personne ne savait où il était allé. Il a
247 | disparu corps et âme, complètement. Ça c'était en 1991, juste au moment où moi
248 | je suis tombé sur le manuscrit. Et puis il avait écrit beaucoup d'autres choses
249 | que j'ai commencé à lire petit à petit. Il avait écrit un livre immense, très
250 | beau qui s'appelle *Récoltes et Semailles* sur sa vie et sa vie mathématique.
251 | 
252 | G.D. --- Alors c'est parfait parce que justement, j'ai un chapitre imprimé ici
253 | de *Récoltes et Semailles* donc qu'il a écrit à la fin de sa vie.
254 | 
255 | L.S. --- Pas à la fin de sa vie, en 83--84 il l'a écrit je pense.
256 | 
257 | G.D. --- Bon quand même relativement tardivement.
258 | 
259 | L.S. --- Il a soixante ans, la fin de la vie, moi je les ai dans quelques
260 | jours, les soixantes ans.
261 | 
262 | G.D. --- D'accord, d'accord, c'est bon! Non, je voulais dire, par rapport à la
263 | solitude que tu évoquais, c'est une solitude qui est doublée d'une très haute
264 | opinion de lui-même. Et il y a un passage qui m'a toujours fait rire, je vous
265 | le lis, j'avais pas prévu de le lire, mais je le trouve quand même assez
266 | incroyable. Donc *Récoltes et Semailles* c'est une immense oeuvre dans laquelle
267 | il parle à la fois de sa vie, de sa philosophie, et de ses mathématiques et
268 | donc là il parle de ses mathématiques et il dit:
269 | 
270 | > La chose qui m'a frappé c'est que je ne me rappelle pas avoir eu connaissance
271 | > ne fût-ce que par allusion par des amis ou collègues mieux versés en histoire
272 | > que moi, d'un mathématicien à part moi qui ait apporté une multiplicité
273 | > d'idées novatrices, non pas plus ou moins disjointes les unes des autres,
274 | > mais comme parties d'une vaste vision unificatrice \[on va en reparler\]
275 | > (comme cela a été le cas pour Newton et pour Einstein en physique et en
276 | > cosmologie \[...\]). J'ai eu connaissance seulement de deux "moments" dans
277 | > l'histoire de la mathématique, où soit née une vision nouvelle de vaste
278 | > envergure.
279 | 
280 | Donc il parle de la grèce antique et puis du moment Descartes, Newton, Leibniz,
281 | bon je passe.
282 | 
283 | > Pour autant que je sache, la vision née en l'un ou en l'autre moment a été
284 | > l'oeuvre non d'un seul, mais l'oeuvre collective d'une époque.
285 | 
286 | Donc non seulement j'ai révolutionné les maths, mais en plus je les ai
287 | révolutionnées tout seul! Je trouve que c'est quand même un passage assez
288 | éloquent. Donc ça c'est dans *Récoltes et Semailles*, dont on va parler.
289 | 
290 | Sabre Bougrine --- Qui a jamais été publié?
291 | 
292 | G.D. --- Alors, on peut peut-être en parler maintenant? *Récoltes et Semailles*
293 | qui va être publiés le mois prochain, n'est-ce pas.
294 | 
295 | L.S. --- Oui, voilà. Donc finalement le livre qui n'avait jamais été publié,
296 | pour une longue multiplicité de raisons compliquées, ayant à voir d'abord avec
297 | lui et ensuite avec ses héritiers, va être publié, va sortir en janvier chez
298 | Gallimard. Moi je trouve que c'est un livre magnifique. C'est très long, c'est
299 | très beau, apparemment ils ont pas fait de coupe du tout. Et il ya des parties
300 | qui parlent de sa vie qui parlent de ses pensées sur lui-même qui peuvent être
301 | vraiment lues par n'importe qui, et d'autres parties plus mathématiques. Mais
302 | je tiens quand même à répondre à ce que tu as dit là. Il avait une très haute
303 | et belle opinions de ses propres mathématiques, qu'il trouvait magnifiques, il
304 | le dit à plusieurs reprises. Mais il a juste raison! Et si Einstein disait
305 | relativité est une découverte incroyable, unique dans l'histoire de la
306 | physique, il a juste raison! Et il n'avait pas une haute opinion de lui-même
307 | comme homme ou individus. Il se critique même sévèrement à plusieurs moments,
308 | et il tente de parler de lui-même avec une grande honnêtetée. Bon chacun sait
309 | que c'est pas toujours facile d'aller jusqu'au bout. Mais il essaye vraiment.
310 | Mais les mathématiques, le corpus de mathématiques qu'il avait fait, oui, il
311 | l'aimait d'amour.
312 | 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------