Agora des Savoirs

The line between science and science fiction is often thin. And Jurassic Park is a textbook case. Since its popularization in 1993 with the release of the first feature film, the universe created by Michael Crichton has continued to question its biggest fans. Jean-Sébastien Steyer, Nicolas Allard and their co-authors offer an unprecedented scientific and cultural exploration of the cult franchise, covering paleontology, psychology, genetics, philosophy, etc. From the enormous breeding ground of literary and cinematographic influences in which the colossal work was born to the unreal size of the velociraptors, they put all the films and works through the scientific microscope. Watercolors, sketches, paintings, this homage to Jurassic Park is richly illustrated by Alain Bénéteau. Only one question remains to be resolved: can we, or not, recreate dinosaurs? Biography Jean-Sébastien Steyer is a paleontologist at the CNRS and the Paris Museum, author, lecturer and exhibition curator. Nicolas Allard is an associate professor of modern literature and a doctor of literature. He is a teacher in preparatory classes, an essayist and a lecturer.

To define a species, we first talk about individuals that look alike and reproduce among themselves. But what to do with these lions and tigers that have young together? What to do with these birds in which males and females are very different? The notion of species has been a matter of question for centuries. Charles Darwin laid the foundations, but Meredith Root-Bernstein suggests decentering the subject through ethnobiology, the study of knowledge associated with species in different cultures. For example, the Mapuche in Chile do not have a word for "plant." But they do have words for "tree" and "grass," and according to them these two words belong to the same category. Naming and categorizing living things is therefore not done solely according to a biological approach; it is necessary to take into account the social, cultural and spiritual aspects. Non-human species also have their own ways of classifying the world. The author shows that they tend to divide the world between prey/food, the society they belong to and the rest that they ignore. For a wolf, the reindeer is prey but not the coyote, so he does not adopt the same attitude towards them. There is no objectivity in the way of naming and classifying living things. These have always been arbitrations destined to evolve. Whales were once classified as fish, but today they are mammals because the criteria have been refined. However, having a common international classification makes it possible to identify species and therefore better protect them. Biography Meredith Root-Bernstein is a research fellow in ethnobiology at the CNRS. She holds a master's degree in ethology and evolution and a doctorate in ecology. She is also interested in the ethnography of human-environmental relations and environmental policy. She is an expert on the socioecological system of central Chile. Partner bookstore: La Cavale

California on fire, Andalusia dried up, an urban system whose vulnerability is being realized during the Covid epidemic… The signs of a crisis of habitability of the Earth are multiplying. Globalized consumption patterns and the actions of predatory “geopowers” are obvious causes. How can we live differently? Geographer Michel Lussault reexamines this question that the Anthropocene forces us to think about in a new way. Contrary to fantasies of a return "to nature", he acknowledges the effects of widespread urbanization, which makes living spaces interdependent. Any search for autonomy is therefore an illusory path today. On the contrary, it is the links between human and non-human living beings and the materiality of their habitats that must be considered and cared for. Inspired by the ethics of Care, the author advocates for "inhabitant virtues" and the implementation of a "geo-care", the possible concrete scope of which he examines. Based on vivid stories, which take us from the misery of Vancouver's homeless to the Ojibwes' fight for the rights of wild rice or to the lithium mines of the Atacama Desert, it analyzes how, far from the reductive imagination of the world city, sustainable ways of coexisting are being experimented with.