Anne-Françoise Schmid

Anne-Françoise Schmid

Associate professor of epistemology and philosophy,

INSA de Lyon

Philosopher among scientists

Also collaborate with Ecole des Mines de Paris, Centre de Gestion Scientifique et chaire de la conception

And with INRA, Centre de Jouy-en-Josas (animal biology)

Associate researcher of Poincaré Archives, University of Nancy 2.
Jean-Marie Legay & Anne-Françoise Schmid, Philosophie de l’interdisciplinarité. Correspondance (1999-2004) sur la recherche scientifique, la modélisation et les objets complexes, Paris, Pétra, 2004.
Bertrand Russell, 2001, Correspondance sur la philosophie, la logique et la politique avec Louis Couturat (1897-1913), edition Anne-Françoise Schmid, Paris, Kimé, 735 pages.
Member of the editorial committee of the interdisciplinary scientific journal Natures, Sciences, Sociétés (EDP Sciences), of Philosophia Scientiae (Poincaré Archives, Kimé éditions), and of Russell. The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Research Center (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada)
My topics :

1. 
   Extension of epistemology from theory to model and conception (L’Age de l’épistémologie. Science, ingénierie, éthique, Paris, Kimé, 1998)
   
2. 
   Contribution to a generic Epistemology
   
3. 
   Theory of fiction in conception (cf. Philosophy of mathematics) and in philosophy (Philo-fiction, non-philosophy, who is a generalisation of philosophy whithout autority, cf. the work of François Laruelle)
   
4. 
   How to understand the future disciplines, in particular in biology, predictive biology, synthetic biology, integrative biology,… How to interpret the multiplicity of the disciplines in biology
   
5. 
   New logics of interdisciplines and places of interdisciplines
   

Title : Philosophy and logics of interdisciplines

(Multiplicity of philosophies, new scientifics objects, “places” for interdisciplinarity)
The problems :

Conceptual :

The interdisciplinary questions are too fast approached according to the last disciplinary overhangs and according to utilitarian objectives. It is normal, but unsatisfactory for the understanding of future sciences.

Practical :

The scientists think of giving up their skills in the interdisciplinary practice. How to engage processes which allow to work together? The science has not to be ashamed to take care of common objects.
A cultural fact :

There is a crisis in the representation of the sciences. There is not criterion anymore of scientific practice, if it is not local. Rather than to look for an identity of the sciences, we compose her with everything of kind of knowledges (for example creationism).

How can the philosophy contribute to think of the interdisciplinarity? For that purpose, she has to note her own interdisciplinarity, which has to be the consideration without hierarchy of the multiplicity of the philosophies. It was also important that she is not satisfied with logics of opposition. Write allowing that the others write under other hypotheses, usually considered as opposite.

What philosophical practices? At the same time, practices of philosophical invention AND dumping among the sciences. No more practices of flying and foundation of the sciences, but the fiction local between sciences and philosophies.

A scientific fact:

Objects are not only given, either only built, nor only complex, but also conceptifs (they are not any more given - cf. C-K Design Theory of École des Mines (French engineering school of Paris), but intégratifs, they integrate the intention of the researcher. To work on such objects, there is a drift or a translation of the disciplines, which are not any more in the center, but of which we make use to build the dimensions of the object. The place of construction of these objects (and disciplines) is an interdisciplinary place, not descriptible by the average classics of the disciplines, but by experimental texts. The contemporary scientific problems do not depend any more directly on disciplinary knowledges nor on the present situation.

The identity of the sciences is bound to a " collective intimacy ", in front of the "disturbance” of the interdisciplinary practice. There is science, there is philosophy, and they can be put in link by practices of fiction and réinterpretation of the notion of hypothesis.