Les libertés de l'improbable by Alain Berthoz and Carlo Ossola - Editions Odile Jacob, 19 June 2019 - 256 Pages
L’improbable is often seen as a futile exercise in idle assumptions or as an extra layer of uncertainty in Western culture, which prefers the predictable to the uncertain. And yet...
Whether in basic scientific research or artistic invention, in philosophical discussion or in the evolution of living things, the improbable is that source of freedom from which new and unforeseen ideas, solutions or events can emerge.
Around Alain Berthoz and Carlo Ossola, a dozen or so researchers of international stature take a multidisciplinary approach to the mysteries and springs of the improbable, a powerful factor of creativity at the frontiers of the possible and the impossible.
The improbable at the heart of creation in the sciences, the arts and in social life!
The thesis of this book, improbable itself, is the result of warm exchanges between the authors and in particular with the historian Brian StockParadoxically, the improbable is creative thanks to the opening up of fields of freedom from which ideas, solutions and new and unforeseen events can emerge. One of the great qualities of the improbable is to be vicarious. (1), i.e. open to multiple possibilities. It's a source of serendipity. For if the possible is already there and the impossible is an obstacle, the improbable is a potential source of innovation.
Alain Berthoz is a neurophysiologist and honorary professor at the Collège de France (chair "Physiology of perception and action"). He has in particular published The sense of movement, The DecisionThe Simplexity and, most recently, The Vicariance.
Carlo Ossola is a philologist, historian of literature. He is a professor at the Collège de France (chair "Modern Literatures of Neolithic Europe"). He has recently published Erasmus and Europe, The Autumn of the Renaissance and Fables and identity. To rediscover Europe.
(1) Vicariance, the creative brain of worlds, by Alain Berthoz - Edition Odile Jacob, 2013 ; Simplexity, of Alain Berthoz - Edition Odile Jacob 2009.
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