André-Paul Weber Books

In France, demography is uniquely regarded as a vital population science, prominently featured in education, media, and ideological debates. This national identity issue has roots in a political history that intensified during the Second World War under the Vichy regime and evolved post-Liberation with the establishment of population policies and the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). This work is the first to explore the controversial origins of this phenomenon and its long-term implications. It illustrates how theories, institutions, and demographic policies emerged concurrently in France, reflecting on the interplay between ideologies, science, and the state, which could serve as a model for understanding other scientific fields. Paul-André Rosental’s essential study investigates the rise of demography as an independent discipline linked to the state in mid-twentieth-century France. The discipline's success in the post-war era stemmed from its dual focus on "science" and "action," enabling policymakers to assert both knowledge and expertise in tackling social issues. Rosental’s nuanced argument provides a thought-provoking perspective for those engaged in the history of human sciences.

This, the second Festschrift honoring the dean of Gustav Mahler Scholarship, Henry-Louis de La Grange for his 90th birthday, includes vibrant, new historical, theoretical and aesthetic research on the complex mind which produced among the best-loved orchestral works and songs of Western classical music.

This book explores reasoning under uncertainty based on statistical evidence, focusing on the search for arguments supporting or opposing specific hypotheses. It comprises two key aspects: the first draws from classical formal logic, where deductions stem from a knowledge base of observed facts and domain-specific formulas. Here, statistical observations serve as the facts, while general knowledge is represented by a type of statistical model known as functional models. The second aspect addresses the uncertainty inherent in formal reasoning, utilizing the theory of hints. This approach assumes that an uncertain perturbation takes a specific value, allowing for logical evaluation of the resulting consequences. Consequently, the original uncertainty is transferred to the implications of this assumption, a process termed assumption-based reasoning. Before delving into the book's content, it is worthwhile to examine the historical roots of assumption-based reasoning within the statistical framework. In 1930, R. A. Fisher introduced the concept of fiducial distribution as a new form of argument, contrasting it with the traditional Bayesian argument, thereby laying foundational ideas that inform the discussions in this work.