[MUSIC] Welcome to the eight week of our course and now we are in for something completely different. We say with a Monty Python Show and we want to offer now a view of the Cartesian dream and how this dream is important for a different understanding of the history of quantification. In the first part of our talk, we try to understand the birth of dream and also why this dream came to a crisis in our mobility. But we also want to say something about how successful this dream was and still is in many respects, and how deeply it affects the way we think and we reason. Also, the toward the end some element of dystopia, so when the utopia comes to its opposite. In a sense, we are all slaves of defunct philosophers. And this is why we need to look at the history of the quantification. What we will try to do is to say, why don't we just do a cost-benefit analysis, as you all learn in your courses of mathematics? Why is that we have to go beyond that? Why do we think that in certain case a quantification can be an instrument of hypocognition? And we should also touch upon socially constructed ignorance. And then, eventually try to show you something called quantitative storytelling which tries to be a solution to all that, but as I said, all starts with a dream. And the dream was a dream which we call the Cartesian dream, though in effect we should be calling it the dream of Francis Bacon because he was the first one to formulate in most explicit terms, as we shall see the dream. And the dream had been an important appendix worth mentioning Nicolas de Caritat who extended the dream of natural sciences to control and be the mother of nature to the realm of social sciences, but we'll come to that. Now, I don't want you to read at this page because there's too much text on it, but this page is there to show you how many words Francis Bacon used in 1627. Actually that in 1626, but that book was published one year after his death. In this science fiction book, called the New Atlantis, to describe to the reader what science would eventually achieve in time. Let's now look at the beginning of the page and the end of the page. It's a rather arbitrary selection. Just to start our discussion. If you read this list of items of wondrous of nature, you see that you have a prolongation of life, the restitution of youth, retardation of age, curing of diseases and so on and so on. And then, it finish with a new foods, new substances for making clothes, glasses. Natural divination is something which can possibly discuss. Deception of senses. Greater pleasures, artificial minerals and so-on. What I'm trying to get to that, with the exception perhaps of Natural Divination which we didn't achieve. All what was on this list was eventually achieved by science and more of it. In a sense, saw this dream was extremely successful. He maintained all of his promises though it was made roughly four centuries ago. Cartait and I said, because Cartait particular understanding of the dream. This is a long story which is, if you wish, you can read in the book of. The was particularly shocked by the religious war which had the religious war which had devastated Europe during the Thirty Years' War. And it was seeking for something which would replace all these religious quibbles with something clear, crisp, unambiguous and indisputable. And so, he discovered that geometry, especially the geometry of Euclid, was giving this kind of clarity. And so, he said, what if we achieved the same degree of clarity, things which pertain men and his actions. So in a sense he says, what I learned studying Greek and Latin and the classics, this was a waste of time. What we need is to understand mathematics, geometry and then find a way to use this kind of knowledge to rule our affairs. So in a sense, this was also condemnation of humanities. Which we may agree with our not but it's an important element of the dream. And then, he comes to what is perhaps the most famous quote made by Descartes. And that if we try to adopt this practical philosophy as opposed to speculative philosophy so to understand the force by which fire, water, the stars and the heaven. Again, you see this divination element is too present, this was spirit of the time. But yet, the idea that you control all what is under the sky to the effect of making men, lords and possessors of nature. This you will find anywhere, this quote, of Descartes is very famous. This idea that science allow men to domesticate nature and to become the master of nature. As I promised, Condorcet has an interesting twist to this story. Working during the French Revolution. He died eventually in a quite mysterious circumstances. He wasn't anyhow a victim of the Revolution. But he also said, well, even when we talk about human affairs, all errors and mistakes we make are errors of a philosophical nature. And since philosophy rests on physics eventually on mathematics, and then again we can perhaps correct those errors, thanks to the mathematics. Why was Condorcet left to this rather surprising statement. Because there was a number of reason. One was that he believed that intellectual progress would be accompanied by moral progress. A kind of version of the history of mankind. And in fact, in this book, which is a kind of sketch of the historical progress of man, he says that eventually in the future, man will not overpopulate the planet because he will understand that the purpose of life is not to produce more living beings but to produce happiness, which for the age was quite a revolutionary idea. But then the reason why Condorcet, that mathematics could solve problem of so practical nature like social problem, is that it was very much involved in something which would call today the fission theory. Even today we use terms as Condorcet method or Condorcet winners. To describe the particular methodology to compare options in a multi-criteria analysis. And this was use, for example, to decide on whether to condemn or not to condemn the person. And has important application to both in theory. For this reason, it's said, this could be generalized so that eventually, all problems will be mastered by mathematics. You will notice that in this discussion, there has been from Descartes' Geometry, to the algorithm of Condorcet, a thread of quantification. Which was part of their agenda of the Cartesian dream. Now, we have a short time, so we have to skip a couple of centuries. And we go to the end of the World War II to see how the dream was received at that time. As you may remember, the war was won against German, against the powers of the axis. And for many, the victory was especially new to better and superior science. Not only the bomb, the nuclear bomb, but also the radar, the sonar, and, as you now know from many movies and books on the subject, better cryptography. Well, now that we have won the war, thanks to science, was a message of Vannevar Bush, we must view the same science to win the war for when being for jobs and this science must become our frontier. Because in the American mythology you had the colonization of the country moving from east to west. The moving frontier, but once you omit the option, you can no longer populate. And then, the new frontiers becomes science. So science, the new frontier, which will never end, which will always provided well-being. And, in a sense, many of these promises have been maintained by science. And even today, we keep witnessing a spectacular achievement in the progress of science. Many of you have surely heard about the confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves. This was a prediction made by Einstein, that the space would deform under the presence of strong gravitational forces. More than half a century has elapsed through the prediction of Einstein. Back in time, some scientist saw that gravitational wave could be detected even in simple laboratories but this was not the case. What you see in the photo below is 1 of the 2 laboratories which were built 6,000 miles apart, to detect possible deformation of the space due to gravitational waves, and in fact, one such episode were detected confirming many years after the prediction the theory of Einstein. And this kind of achievement, in a sense, they never end. Science continue to deliver these wonders.
