Author Archives: Nicolae Sfetcu

According to Hervé Barreau, modern epistemology derives from Kant’s criticism in the eighteenth century and from the positivism of Comte in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But it also draws on older traditions, including ancient and Cartesian traditions. It was … Read More

(Omnidirectional sound source in anechoic chamber (Czech Technical Univerzity, Prague). ) Acoustics is the science of sound (physics). The discipline has extended its field to the study of mechanical waves within gases, liquids, but also within solids, whatever the frequency … Read More

Richelieu wing – 2nd floor – Germanic countries, 15th century – Room 7 The moneylender and his wife are seated in their officine, a modest stall that only shows two wooden shelves where account books are next to fruit. On … Read More

Field of application of epistemology For a long time, epistemology has focused exclusively on the content of science, the history of this content, and the genealogy of the advances of this content. Science as a human institution was left to … Read More

(also known as Les bergers d’Arcadie or The Arcadian Shepherds) Richelieu wing – 2nd floor – The French Caravagges – Room 11 At the edge of a country lane stands a tumultuous stone that reminds the passerby that a dead … Read More

Nyâya The Nyâya school of philosophical speculation is based on a text called Nyâya Sûtra. It was composed by Gautama Aksapada (not to be confused with Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism), around the fourth or fifth century BC. The … Read More

Richelieu wing – 2nd floor – Holland, second half of the 17th century – Room 38 No one, better than Pieter de Hooch, knew how to render the intimacy of the Dutch houses, their solid and comfortable ease, nor to … Read More

So, every Sunday I wipe the dust of the week‘s days Left all behind me. Nicolae Sfetcu, 13.08.2017

Sully wing – 2nd floor – Greuze – Room 51 We do not have the same enthusiasm today as Diderot for the sentimental compositions of Greuze, for his family scenes whose reputation is universal, but we admire in him the … Read More

Ontology in its most general sense questions the meaning of the word “to be”. “What is being?”, considered as an inaugural question, that is to say, first in time and first in the order of knowledge, is that of the … Read More

Collection of Louis XVI (acquired in 1782) , 1782 – INV. 933 In a sort of dungeon-like loft, a ragged child is squatting. The violent light of the sun which passes by the window brightens suddenly the sordid ragged, patched, … Read More

Positivism vs. Constructivism Some epistemological postures consider the object “knowledge” in a radically different way: the positivist posture considers the truth value of propositional knowledge representing reality as independent of the will of men, without metaphysical content and where a … Read More