«L'ethos, mémoire autobiographique de l’homme de science» est le thème traité dans ce sixième numéro de Mnemosyne o la costruzione del senso. On y trouvera des articles sur des autobiographies de scientifiques – surtout mathématiciens, physiciens, naturalistes –, qui utilisent d’habitude des codes de communication très sectoriels, iconographiques ou écrits, dans leur profession. Le mot 'science’ nous réfère d'emblée à un domaine où l’application rigoureuse d’une méthodologie vise à trouver des récurrences dont les applications s’avèrent démontrables et reproductibles. Dans un essai célèbre2, Roland Barthes distingue les ‘écrivants’ des ‘écrivains’: pour les premiers, le langage est un véhicule; pour les seconds, le style est un but en soi et pour soi. Dans tous les essais qui sont publiés ici, la distinction barthienne s’avère très faible: on percevra dans tous ces récits une rhétorique, la recherche d’une façon de transmettre, de communiquer l’intrication entre oeuvre et vie, entre leurs découvertes et leur vie privée. Le terme ‘beauté’ y est en outre très récurrent. Voir entre autres l’article d’Alessio Porretta sur A mathematician’s apology de G. H. Hardy, qui n'était pas par hasard l'ami de Charles P. Snow, auteur de The Two Cultures (1959).

Biographical research methods have become a useful and popular tool for contemporary social scientists. This book combines an exploration of the historical and philosophical origins of this important field of qualitative research with comparative examples of the different ways that biographical methods have been successfully applied internationally. Through these many illustrative examples of socio-biography in process the authors show how formal textual analysis, whilst uncovering hidden emotional defences, can also shed light on wider historical processes of societal transformation. Topics discussed include: *individual and linked lives *generational change *political influences on memory and identity *biographical work in reflexive societies *narrativity and empowerment in professional practice *ways of theorising and generalising from case-studies. Biographical Methods in the Social Sciences promotes debate and provides opportunities for students and researchers to widen their uses of narrative research.

'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote Adorno. ‘It can only be defined in a living context together with others.’ In this major new biography, Stefan Müller-Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole. Müller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.

The idea for Philosophy in a Time of Terror was born hours after the attacks on 9/11 and was realized just weeks later when Giovanna Borradori sat down with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida in New York City, in separate interviews, to evaluate the significance of the most destructive terrorist act ever perpetrated. This book marks an unprecedented encounter between two of the most influential thinkers of our age as here, for the first time, Habermas and Derrida overcome their mutual antagonism and agree to appear side by side. As the two philosophers disassemble and reassemble what we think we know about terrorism, they break from the familiar social and political rhetoric increasingly polarized between good and evil. In this process, we watch two of the greatest intellects of the century at work.