The inevitable collaboration between the natural sciences and the humanities

Although the relationships between body and soul, as is well known, have been the subject of philosophical debates since pre-Socratic philosophers, the study of the interrelationship between the organism and the mind is nowadays acquiring a rigorously scientific dimension. It is true that Diderot did indeed assert, in the eighteenth century, that it was very difficult to do good metaphysics and good morals without being an anatomist, naturalist, physiologist and physician, but this is a time when the analyzes of the neurosciences are subject to multiple and sometimes controversies Controversial among various professionals in the humanities.

Some authors express their fear that the subjects of their disciplines – especially psychology and psychiatry – lose their autonomy as they pass through the “neuroimaging machine”, while others, on the contrary, judge that matters of ethics, politics, with aesthetics can be dealt with, And even with rhetoric and poetic, usefully from the perspective of the functioning of the brain without detracting from the analysis of the human sciences mentioned.

In my opinion, it is now necessary and legitimate to promote mutual cooperation between the natural and human sciences, provided that we respect the competencies of each discipline and on the condition that we establish a convergence of mind, language and brain studies.

I take it for granted that the progressive works of the neurosciences, thanks to new research tools, can shed new light on the conclusions of the philosophical, psychological, ethical, aesthetic, poetic and rhetorical analyzes developed throughout all antiquity. tradition. I am also convinced that ethics—considered both in its practice and in its theory—is currently a subject of constant and deep interest to citizens and a subject of conversations among parents, teachers, and sociologists, and I hope it will interest communicators. and politicians of various ideologies so that, in practice, they direct our ways of feeling, enthusiastic, thinking, speaking, and behaving.