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Didier van Cauwelaert offers a panorama of the most amazing phenomena, facts that seem at first glance logically impossible and yet have an explanation, backed up by scientific proof. A chick that attracts a robot solely using the power of thought. A host that levitates during a televised Mass. A tree that moves, entirely on its own power. A machine capable of conversing with insects. A military man who creates a detailed picture of a secretly-constructed enemy submarine that is ten thousand kilometres away. A member of the Resistance who escapes talking under Nazi torture by practicing bilocation. A priori, all these things seem impossible, and yet all of them, and others the author presents in this unusual dictionary, have been observed, described, and authenticated by trustworthy individuals, scientific researchers equipped with instruments to measure them. Didier van Cauwelaert pushes back the limits of the unimaginable from A to Z. From the psychic powers of the bee to the rational fabrication of zombies, from A as in Abandon (victory by) to Z as in Zola (the double miracle inflicted upon Emile), with discernment and curiosity, he joyously offers the reader the opportunity to vastly expand the realm of things possible. And his exploration of these amazing phenomena changes our perception of ourselves and all that surrounds us, encourages our re-enchantment with the world, while exploring its behind-the-scenes aspects where, just behind the curtain, crafty schemes, disinformation, mental manipulation, selective perception, conspiracies of silence, and deliberate bluffing reign supreme. Didier van Cauwelaert’s popularity has grown with every successive literary prize he has earned. Prix Del Duca for his first novel in 1982, Prix Goncourt and Prix Nimier for Un aller simple in 1994, he is also the laureate of the Prix Science de la Vulgarisation Scientifique for his work L’Apparition in 2002. His latest novel is La Femme de nos vies (Albin Michel, 2013).
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The dialogue between a linguist and a physician. Are language and science at antipodes? Disjointed fragments of our culture? In competing spheres at school? No! Not at all, on the contrary, they are twin sisters, unfailingly complicit. This is the story of these twins, told by the intermingled pens of Alain Bentolila, linguist, and Yves Quéré, physicist. Science, a discourse on nature and the narrative of what we perceive of the world, was born and evolved hand in hand with language. From the creation of words to the architecture of the sentence, language played the role of refining its rigor and its logic, promoting an actually scientific way of thinking--as archaic as it may have been at the very beginning. And thus was born reason. The twin sisters have allowed Man to progress in the comprehension and mastery of the world around him. Their complicity is such that we cannot present one, to children in particular, without referring to— and revering--the other. And both of them, constituent parts of our culture, suggest the order of priority which becomes “Read, write, count…reason”.
JANUARY "
Alain Bentolila is a professor of linguistics at the Université de Paris-Descartes who has devoted his career to the description of language in general and French in particular. A renowned specialist on the learning of oral and written language, he has created an international network to prevent illiteracy. He is, notably, the author of De l’illettrisme en général et de l’école en particuler (Plon, 1996, Grand prix de l’Académie française, 1997) and of Le Verbe contre la barbarie (Odile Jacob, 2007). Yves Quéré is a physicist, former Directeur de l’Enseignement of the Ecole polytechnique, and a member of the Académie des sciences. He was elected president of the IAP, which is the Assembly of Academies of Science worldwide. Among his works are La Science institutrice (Odile Jacob, 2002), Les Enfants et la Science, co-authored with Georges Charpak and Pierre Léna (Odile Jacob, 2005), and Doubles croches (Le Pommier, 2010).
Foreign rights Contact: Ms. Florence Maletrez: florence.maletrez@plon-perrin.com Plon & Presses de la Renaissance, 12, avenue d’Italie – 75013 Paris, France. www.plon.fr
FRANKFURT 2013
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