First session of the SHS/Philosophy/Biology seminar "Cultivating interdisciplinarity today".

Dear colleagues, Gilles Moutot, teacher-researcher at CEPEL, is one of the organizers, through SHSMED, the SHS department of the Faculty of Medicine, of the firstSHS/Philosophy/Biology seminar "Cultivating interdisciplinarity today", to be held on March 11 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in theamphitheater of DR13, CNRS campus, 1919 route de Mende, Montpellier. On this occasion, we will have the pleasure of hearing the presentations of Charlotte Brives (microbial anthropologist - CNRS, Centre É ile Durkheim - UMR5116, Bordeaux, France) and Rémy Froissart (evolutionary virologist, CNRS, IRD, U. Montpellier, UMR 5290, MIVEGEC, Montpellier F-34394, France):

"Evolution and involution in biomedicine. Phage therapy and the treatment of bacterial infections"
For the past twenty years, bacterial (multi-)resistance to chemical antibiotic molecules has been presented as one of the public health scourges of the 21st century. There is now a sense of urgency and a growing need for answers. What kind of medicine do we want? And what does it demand of us?
In this conference, we propose to "slow down", to "undo reflexes, methods and ideals of intelligibility", following the injunction of philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers. We will use the example of a therapy that has been practised worldwide for over 100 years: phage therapy (i.e. the use of bacteriophage viruses to treat bacterial infections). Through a reflection on the evolutionary and dynamic nature of living organisms, the aim is to understand the specific nature of bacteriophages and their mode of action, and to consider the multispecific relationships at work in this therapy, which links together viruses, bacteria and humans. The active consideration of the modes of existence of these different entities will lead us to a more general reflection on the conditions for the development of phage therapy.

 Registration (free): https: //interdis.sciencesconf.org/ 

General argument of the seminar
The project for this interdisciplinary seminar arose from a twofold observation. On the one hand, the conditions under which contemporary research is carried out - funding and publication methods, the use of new data production technologies, and, more broadly, current social conditions and ecological crises - are shaking up and calling into question the ways in which each discipline produces evidence and knowledge. On the other hand, such a reality enters into tension with the division of tasks that continues to preside over the disciplinary organization of our modes of knowledge: founded on the separation between nature on the one hand, and culture and society on the other, and hence between the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences, a partition that makes it difficult to apprehend the problems that our knowledge and practices generate and that we encounter in them. It is no longer so much the objects that define the disciplines as the ways in which they are questioned. The social sciences and philosophy now study the material and ontological dimensions of the objects specific to biology, while biology is more concerned with the social, economic and ecological conditions and consequences of its practices.
How, then, can we take account of this contemporary situation, so as to better situate ourselves as actors in it? How can we assess the effects it is having on our knowledge and practices? And how can we collectively learn to apprehend the consequences of our knowledge and practices in the wider world in which they circulate and unfold?
This seminar is intended as much as an exploration of the forms of cooperation between the humanities and social sciences and biology that are already at work, as it is an opportunity to cultivate and familiarize ourselves with our respective disciplines, our ways of creating problems and conducting research. In other words, we need to consider what we can and cannot do together.

Next sessionsMay 12 - 3pm-5pm Isabelle Stengers: "Une autre science est possible" June 19 - 3pm-5pm Guillaume Lachenal: "Histoire environnementale du VIH" (Environmental history of HIV)