3 December 2025

10:55 AM – 11:40 AM

Salle proudhon

Thierry Pozzo

Thierry Pozzo is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Burgundy and an honorary senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research project consists of studying the principles of human motor organization and identifying the underlying physiological mechanisms. The areas of focus take into account recent advances in neuroscience that suggest a close link between action and perception. He supports the hypothesis that cognition is rooted in individuals’ bodily experiences and depends on the motor system, contrary to the metaphor of the brain as a computer. Finally, the narrow focus of these questions and the standards imposed by science have convinced him for several years to extend his thinking to the field of image perception and the reciprocal contamination between art and science. This part of his activities takes place within the framework of the organization of popular science events at the Espace Marey, a platform partly dedicated to showcasing the work of the Burgundian scientist of the same name.

Are the limits of the inert the same as those of the living?

For Galileo and the inertial sciences, laws were developed by observing the regularity of planetary trajectories or the fall of bodies. It was according to the same principle that physiologists at the end of the 19th century described the living world. This seamless transition from the inorganic to the living had a lasting impact on the life sciences. A rapprochement with older fields of research has certainly made it possible to develop systematic interpretative frameworks and numerical models. However, the flip side of this enriching proximity has been to blur the boundaries between the inert and the living, the true boundary of the living being not spatial, but vital and temporal; It has also led to the normalization of phenomena and the reduction of qualities to mere quantities; and finally, to the conception of the living world as a set of isolated organs, whereas what distinguishes it from the inert world is that it is related to something other than itself and is the unique product of specific interactions. One of the objectives of this conference is to convince—using examples from neuroscience—that a physicalist description of the manifestations of the living world in the form of universal laws is an obstacle to its understanding.