Author Archives: Nicolae Sfetcu

Jean Ladrière gives a definition of scientific rationality: “A rational approach, in the cognitive as in the order of action, is an approach that is accompanied by the demonstration of its validity or its legitimacy, in accordance with criteria which … Read More

Denon wing – 1st floor – Mona Lisa room – Room 7 Normally it was called Laura di Dianti, Titian and his mistress, or even under this shorter title, the Mistress of Titian, this magnificent portrait of a young woman … Read More

Contemporary epistemology Criticism of logical positivism Quine and the “naturalized epistemology” With article Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Willard Van Orman Quine criticizes two central aspects of logical positivism. The first is the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths: there … Read More

Empiricism (Isaac Newton) Empiricism postulates that all knowledge comes essentially from experience. Represented by the English philosophers Roger Bacon, John Locke and George Berkeley, this current postulates that knowledge is based on the accumulation of observations and measurable facts, from … Read More

Denon wing – 1st floor – Grande Galerie – Room 5 Happy these paintings which have a familiar and popular name that repeat all the mouths. Madonna with the Green Cushion! Pretty name, pretty canvas! In a charming pose of … Read More

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