Resumen de Peut-on parler rationnellement de «science naturante» (shizengaku 自然学) ?
- français
Vers la fin de sa carrière, IMANISHI Kinji (1902-1992) a résumé sa méthode scientifique dans le concept de « science naturante » (shizengaku 自然学), en l'opposant à la notion ordinaire de sciences naturelles (shizen kagaku 自然科学). Il s'agit fondamentalement d'un rejet du dualisme moderne, lequel a fait de la nature un objet. Cette science naturante postule que l'observateur peut dans une certaine mesure s'identifier au mouvement même de la nature, s'agissant notamment de l'évolution des espèces, à propos de laquelle Imanishi rejette catégoriquement le paradigme néo-darwiniste en postulant que, dans l'évolution, joue la subjectité de l'espèce en tant que telle, et non pas seulement la statistique d'une population d'organismes.
Cette position a fait ostraciser l'idée de science naturante par la communauté scientifique nippone, mais les critiques adressées par Imanishi au paradigme actuel des sciences naturelles sont loin d'être toutes aberrantes. On reviendra ici sur ces questions en tentant d'évaluer leur validité.
- English
Can we rationally speak of “naturing science” (shizengaku 自然学)? IMANISHI Kinji (1902-1992) has been internationally recognized as the initiator of a paradigm shift in primatology, the essence of which consists in recognizing the animal’s subjecthood, sociality and culturalness. Yet, he was much more than a primatologist. Also an entomologist, ecologist, anthropologist and a great moutaineer, he was fundamentally a thinker of nature, life and evolution.
He summarized his epistemological stance in the concept of shizengaku 自然学, as opposed to shizen kagaku 自然科学, the natural sciences. Though robot translators make no difference between the two terms, what is at stake here is in fact an alternative between two radically different conceptions of reality, one (shizen kagaku) in which, in accordance with the classical modern Western scientific paradigm, nature is considered as an object, and another one (shizengaku) in which the scientist participates in the general subjecthood of nature, and thus is able to know it hermeneutically, i.e. from the inside, making science itself a particular aspect of nature’s general motion. This is why I propose to translate shizengaku with “naturing science”. Needless to say, from the first point of view, this is a totally heretic, unscientific stance. This discrepancy was best illustrated with respect to the theory of evolution. All his life long, Imanishi was highly concerned with evolution, and published abundantly about it, tenaciously contesting the neo-Darwinian dogma. One of his last books (1980), entitled Subjecthood in evolution (Shutaisei no shinkaron 主体性の進化論), is a good example of what shizengaku can consist of in such matters. No surprise, his theses were discarded by the academic world (though he was himself titular of a prestigious chair at the University of Kyoto) ; e.g. a recent book, entitled Why is evolution a philosophical question 1 , in which a team of nine philosophers of science, in nearly 300 pages, accomplish the feat of not mentioning his name even once. This is more or less as if a book on ontology would ignore the name “Heidegger”. My stance here is different. I do consider that shizengaku, for better or worse, is a highly philosophical question, which deserves much more attention than that kind of mura hachibu 村八分 (village ostracism). We should remember that, during a whole generation, if not totally ignored, Imanishi’s primatology was laughed at in the West as childishly anthropomorphic, before it became so naturally paradigmatic as to make young Western primatologists unaware of its origin. Yet, it was and remains consistent with his shizengaku. All the question fundamentally relies on the modern distinction between subject and object and its relevance, on the one hand, to Japanese realities (language, attitudes toward nature, etc., which in fact imply an ambient rather than a subject), and on the other hand to reality in general, beyond the classical modern Western scientific paradigm. Is science to remain within the gauge of shizen kagaku, or can we conceive of scientifically naturing science itself?
