Interdisciplinary workshop, ENS de Lyon, Amphithéâtre Descartes, 15 parvis René Descartes, Métro Debourg
Date : 11 décembre 2012, 10h – 18h
The avalanche of data provided by the traceability of many social activities represents a major scientific, economic and social revolution. However, in order to transform these data into relevant scientific insights, major scientific puzzles have to be solved. The evolution of social structures is one of them, as many structural accounts of social transformation tend to introduce change from outside the system, rather than showing how change is generated by the very structures internal to a society. How to develop a conceptual approach that makes it possible to think that the ordinary operations of structures can generate transformations? This is all the more difficult as our philosophical culture has been mostly focused on finding essences, eternal concepts and ideas rather than on understanding transformations.
Network theory is a promising approach to improve the understanding of social change. However, its formal methods network theory apply mainly to static networks, when most networks have a dynamical nature, with a time scale that may be of the same order as that of the dynamical processes occurring between nodes. For instance, the propagation of information or viruses occurs on networks that are highly dynamical objects, as people frequently make new acquaintances and change their relationships.
This workshop will address the fundamental challenges behind the understanding of social transformations using dynamical networks. How to extend the notion of “community” to dynamic graphs and build efficient clustering algorithms? How to detect the micro changes which lead to macro-restructurings? How to conceive structures, beyond the usual communities ? How to detect in dynamic networks the nodes that play a key role in information propagation? Our ambition is to gather scientists from natural and social sciences to discuss the exciting developments of our understanding of social change and stimulate exchanges between the ways different disciplines conceive evolutions.
Invited speakers :
- François Jullien, philosopher, author of “Silent transformations” – http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Jullien
- Dominique Pestre, historian at EHESS (Paris) – http://www.koyre.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article86
- François Taddéi, biologist at INSERM, specialist of single cell aging – http://www.necker.fr/tamara/pages/francois.html
- Jean-Philippe Cointet, sociologist, specialist of knowledge production dynamics – http://jph.cointet.free.fr/wp/
- Alain Barrat, physicist, specialist of network dynamics – http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~barrat/
- Clémence Magnien, computer scientist, specialist of graph dynamics – http://www-rp.lip6.fr/~magnien/
Registration :
Registration is free but mandatory. Please send an e-mail to ixxi@ens-lyon.fr.
Programme provisoire :
10h Introduction, Sergio Ciliberto, Directeur de la Recherche, ENS de Lyon & Pablo Jensen, directeur IXXI
10h30 La conception chinoise des transformations, François Jullien, philosophe
11h30 Comment l’histoire pense les transformations? Concepts, méthodes, outils quantitatifs, Dominique Pestre, EHESS
12h30 Pause déjeuner
14h La physique et la dynamique des réseaux, Alain Barrat
14h30 L’ informatique et la dynamique des réseaux, Clémence Magnien
15h Comprendre les dynamiques de la recherche, J Ph Cointet
15h30 Pausé Café
16h Une autre approche sociologique des transformations, Tommaso Venturini
16h30 L’évolution biologique, François Taddéi
17h30 Table Ronde, Conclusions
18h15 Fin du colloque
