Cédrik Cormier

Research Assistant

Biography

Cédrik graduated with a Hon. Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and is now pursuing his studies in the same discipline by doing his Masters at the University of Sherbrooke.

His research questions are driven by his multidisciplinary background in philosophy, mathematics, and economics. In particular, he is concerned with the close ties between rhetoric and logic, and the role of metaphors and analogies in the justification and construction of legitimate arguments.

Currently, he aims to analyze the use of the term ''economy'' by French philosophers in the mid 18th century. He is interested in the different biological, physical and theological meanings of the word oikonomia and its analog and multidisciplinary applications at the time of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris. For example, the application of the principle of least action found within the optics works of Maupertuis is based on a particular sense of ''economy of nature.''

Yet, like scaffolding a magnificent building, the metaphysical backbones of those implementations are now implicit. His groundwork is now then to find and map these different explanatory ladders that once allowed us to climb, and to highlight the possible roles that this expression ''economy'' had and still have for the scientific method.

The originality of his work lies then not in knowing how science is used for economic purposes, problems covered well enough in the literature, but to see how the discipline of economics is at the service of science for its epistemological foundations; in other words, how the economy by analogy is used to justify the field of legitimacy of certain sciences, and this down to even their most basic principles.

Fields of interest

  • Philosophy of sciences
  • French Enlightenment
  • Modern Philosophy
  • Epistemology and Theory of knowledge

Scholarships and awards

  • 2015 — Research scholarship for the Masters
    CIRST (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie)
    2500 $
  • 2013 — Scholarship for summer research in algebraic topology
    Mathematics Department, University of Ottawa
    2000 $

This content has been updated on May 12th, 2020 at 11 h 40 min.