Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Les indispensables

Une fois n'est pas coutume, un post en français car le sujet s’y prête. Il s’agit d’un coup de projecteur sur le livre d’Alexandre Moatti édité par Odile Jacob : Les indispensables – Mathématiques et Physiques pour tous. Un excellent livre de culture générale scientifique qui a le mérite de couvrir effectivement " les indispensables " : nombre d’or, nombres parfaits et amicaux, quadrature du cercle et courbes fractales, vitesse de la lumière et trous noirs, théorème de Gödel et relation d’incertitude, relativité et théorie du chaos. Même dans le domaine relativement pointu des créatures artificielles, et a fortiori pour tous ceux qui s’intéressent aux sciences de la complexité, la lecture rafraîchissante de ce livre apportera une perspective intéressante : il est possible en effet de présenter des concepts et des théories jugés souvent " trop compliqués " de façon simple et compréhensible, sans introduire un décalage entre le scientifique et l’honnête homme du XXIe siècle.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Daedalus and Artifical Creatures

This is a photo of the Knossos's palace taken last week during my vacation in Crete : in greek mythology, this is the famous "Labyrinth" which was an elaborate maze constructed by King Minos of Crete and designed by Daedalus to hold the Minotaur, a man-eating monster that was half man and half bull. Daedalus is an important figure in the history of artificial creatures. He was a great architect and sculptor who's said to have created wooden "moving statues" and many other artifacts : he has built for Minos' wife, Pasiphae, a wooden cow so she could mate with the Minotaur ; he has fabricated wings for himself and his young son Icarus to escape from Crete, but Icarus flew too near the sun and fell into the sea. It is very difficult to know if Daedalus, like Minos itself, have really existed or if it is only a myth like many others in the antic greek legendary tales. However, the fact is that the palace exists and has been dated around 1700 B.C. (bronze age period) that is over 3500 years old.