Latest news with #Flammarion
LeMonde
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
Philosopher Emanuele Coccia and designer Alessandro Michele believe fashion deserves a place in the world of ideas. Here's why
At 6:35 pm, at 50 Rue de Varenne, extra folding chairs had to be added to the already packed room at the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris (ICIP). On Wednesday, May 21, 250 people gathered for the French launch of the book La Vitta delle forme (The Life of Forms), co-written by fashion creator Alessandro Michele, 52, and philosopher Emanuele Coccia, 49. Facing the garden, on the creaking parquet floors beneath the gilded decor of the Hôtel de Gallifet, in the very room "where Napoleon and Madame de Staël once met," as the ICIP director reminded the audience, another kind of union was being made official before a largely receptive crowd: the convergence of two disciplines that had rarely crossed paths until now. While sociology has considered clothing as a marker of generation, society, status or gender, fashion has remained largely absent from the world of ideas or culture. At French publishing house Flammarion, they even say that "the subject is still new to philosophy." At the book signing which took place at the Hôtel des Beaux-Arts, Coccia – who, in previous works, had already expanded the philosophical field to plants, the home and even angels – offered an explanation deeply entrenched in both tradition and posture. "One does not learn – unless you specialize – the history of fashion. Not at school, not at university. No one teaches the importance of Gabrielle Chanel, who changed the codes by transforming a sports garment, such as her tweed jacket, into an emblem of elegance, bringing together two simultaneous questions: 'What is a woman?' and 'What is an athlete?' The result is that in 2025, if you don't know anything about Charles Frederick Worth, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Azzedine Alaïa or Martin Margiela, that's fine. You can even brag about it. Whereas, if you know nothing about Picasso, you're considered a philistine."
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet
Living in today's age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what they could see through their telescopes had to use their imaginations. As a space historian and author of the book 'For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet,' I've worked to understand how people in different times and places imagined Mars. The second half of the 19th century was a particularly interesting time to imagine Mars. This was a period during which the red planet seemed to be ready to give up some of its mystery. Astronomers were learning more about Mars, but they still didn't have enough information to know whether it hosted life, and if so, what kind. With more powerful telescopes and new printing technologies, astronomers began applying the cartographic tools of geographers to create the first detailed maps of the planet's surface, filling it in with continents and seas, and in some cases features that could have been produced by life. Because it was still difficult to see the actual surface features of Mars, these maps varied considerably. During this period, one prominent scientist and popularizer brought together science and imagination to explore the possibilities that life on another world could hold. One imaginative thinker whose attention was drawn to Mars during this period was the Parisian astronomer Camille Flammarion. In 1892, Flammarion published 'The Planet Mars,' which remains to this day a definitive history of Mars observation up through the 19th century. It summarized all the published literature about Mars since the time of Galileo in the 17th century. This work, he reported, required him to review 572 drawings of Mars. Like many of his contemporaries, Flammarion concluded that Mars, an older world that had gone through the same evolutionary stages as Earth, must be a living world. Unlike his contemporaries, he insisted that Mars, while it might be the most Earth-like planet in our solar system, was distinctly its own world. It was the differences that made Mars interesting to Flammarion, not the similarities. Any life found there would be evolutionarily adapted to its particular conditions – an idea that appealed to the author H.G. Wells when he imagined invading Martians in 'The War of the Worlds.' But Flammarion also admitted that it was difficult to pin down these differences, as 'the distance is too great, our atmosphere is too dense, and our instruments are not perfect enough.' None of the maps he reviewed could be taken literally, he lamented, because everyone had seen and drawn Mars differently. Given this uncertainty about what had actually been seen on Mars' surface, Flammarion took an agnostic stance in 'The Planet Mars' as to the specific nature of life on Mars. He did, however, consider that if intelligent life did exist on Mars, it would be more ancient than human life on Earth. Logically, that life would be more perfect — akin to the peaceful, unified and technologically advanced civilization he predicted would come into being on Earth in the coming century. 'We can however hope,' he wrote, 'that since the world of Mars is older than our own, its inhabitants may be wiser and more advanced than we are. Undoubtedly it is the spirit of peace which has animated this neighboring world.' But as Flammarion informed his readers, 'the Known is a tiny island in the midst of the ocean of the Unknown,' a point he often underscored in the more than 70 books he published in his lifetime. It was the 'Unknown' that he found particularly tantalizing. Historians often describe Flammarion more as a popularizer than a serious scientist, but this should not diminish his accomplishments. For Flammarion, science wasn't a method or a body of established knowledge. It was the nascent core of a new philosophy waiting to be born. He took his popular writing very seriously and hoped it could turn people's minds toward the heavens. Without resolving the planet's surface or somehow communicating with its inhabitants, it was premature to speculate about what forms of life might exist on Mars. And yet, Flammarion did speculate — not so much in his scientific work, but in a series of novels he wrote over the course of his career. In these imaginative works, he was able to visit Mars and see its surface for himself. Unlike his contemporary, the science fiction author Jules Verne, who imagined a technologically facilitated journey to the Moon, Flammarion preferred a type of spiritual journey. Based on his belief that human souls after death can travel through space in a way that the living body cannot, Flammarion's novels include dream journeys as well as the accounts of deceased friends or fictional characters. In his novel 'Urania' (1889), Flammarion's soul visits Mars in a dream. Upon arrival, he encounters a deceased friend, George Spero, who has been reincarnated as a winged, luminous, six-limbed being. 'Organisms can no more be earthly on Mars than they could be aerial at the bottom of the sea,' Flammarion writes. Later in the same novel, Spero's soul visits Flammarion on Earth. He reveals that Martian civilization and science have progressed well beyond Earth, not only because Mars is an older world, but because the atmosphere is thinner and more suitable for astronomy. Flammarion imagined that practicing and popularizing astronomy, along with the other sciences, had helped advance Martian society. Flammarion's imagined Martians lived intellectual lives untroubled by war, hunger and other earthly concerns. This was the life Flammarion wanted for his fellow Parisians, who had lived through the devastation of the Franco-Prussian war and suffered starvation and deprivation during the Siege of Paris and its aftermath. Today, Flammarion's Mars is a reminder that imagining a future on Mars is as much about understanding ourselves and our societal aspirations as it is about developing the technologies to take us there. Flammarion's popularization of science was his means of helping his fellow Earth-bound humans understand their place in the universe. They could one day join his imagined Martians, which weren't meant to be taken any more literally than the maps of Mars he analyzed for 'The Planet Mars.' His world was an example of what life could become under the right conditions. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Matthew Shindell, Smithsonian Institution Read more: A decade after the release of 'The Martian' and a decade out from the world it envisions, a planetary scientist checks in on real-life Mars exploration Dear Elon Musk: Your dazzling Mars plan overlooks some big nontechnical hurdles When will the first baby be born in space? Matthew Shindell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
War & Justice Diary by late Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina to release in UK, US and other countries
At the end of winter, the book by Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, whose life was taken by a Russian attack, will go on sale abroad. The work tells the story of women through the lens of war. Source: Tetyana Teren, former head of Ukrainian PEN (Poets, playwrights, Essayists and Novelists) Details: The official release date of the book War & Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War was set for 13 February. Victoria Amelina's book will be available for purchase from: 18 February – in bookstores in the US (published by St. Martin's Press); 19 February – in France (Flammarion publishing house); 24 February – in Sweden (Ersatz Publishing); 18 March – in Italy (Guanda publishing house); 21 March – in Germany (Edition Fototapeta). The book will be published in English. At the 29th Book Forum in Lviv, Victoria Amelina shared that she was writing a book in English about Ukrainian women who "in various ways strive for justice".The author revealed that the heroines of the book include lawyers, journalists, herself, as well as "Ukrainian cities, towns, and villages". Quote from Tetyana Teren: "If these days it is important for you to explain to your foreign friends, colleagues and partners what it means to live through more than ten years of war, what Ukraine strives for and fights for – please, gift them the book of our Vika [derivative from Victoria - ed.], whom Russia took from us and our culture." More details: Victoria Amelina was a Ukrainian writer and public activist who became a laureate of the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski literary award and a nominee for the Angelus Central European Literary Prize. After the start of the full-scale war, Victoria paused her fiction writing and joined the Truth Hounds organisation, which documents human rights violations in Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She also participated in charity trips of Ukrainian PEN writers to the de-occupied territories. Victoria Amelina was injured in a Russian missile strike on a café in the city of Kramatorsk on 27 June 2023. At the time, she was accompanying a delegation of writers and journalists from Colombia on a trip to eastern Ukraine. Despite doctors' efforts, Victoria passed away on 1 July 2023. Support UP or become our patron!
Express Tribune
05-02-2025
- Express Tribune
Gisèle Pelicot's daughter to release book on rape victims and chemical submission
Caroline Darian, the daughter of convicted rapist Dominique Pelicot, is set to release Pour que l'on se souvienne ("For Us to Remember") on March 5. The book will highlight the stories of rape victims who have no evidence or memories of their assaults due to drug-facilitated abuse, her publisher JC Lattès announced. Darian is the daughter of Gisèle Pelicot, who was drugged and repeatedly raped by strangers for over a decade at the hands of her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot. In December 2024, he was convicted alongside 50 co-defendants, receiving sentences between three and 15 years. Gisèle Pelicot became a feminist icon for demanding the trial remain public, refusing to be silenced by shame. Having previously written Et j'ai cessé de t'appeler papa ("And I Stopped Calling You Dad") in 2022, Darian has actively campaigned to raise awareness about chemical submission, or the use of drugs to facilitate sexual assault. Her latest book aims to expose the dangers of these crimes and advocate for victims left without tangible proof. In addition to Darian's book, Gisèle Pelicot is also in discussions with publisher Flammarion to release her own account of the traumatic events. JC Lattès stated, "The daughter of the victim and the persecutor offers her unique view of this tragedy, exposes the unfinished business of the investigation, and relentlessly pursues her fight against chemical submission." Through their work, both mother and daughter hope to bring further awareness to the dangers of drug-induced sexual violence and the long-term impact on survivors.
