Causality is an epistemological concept that formalises the very basis of any scientific approach, which consists in organising systematically empirical facts and giving them a sense. This constructivist definition of epistemology is opposed to the notion of causality conceived as a metaphysical postulate, according to which human Reason is able to grasp essence and raison […]
The geometrical metaphor of centre and periphery is often used to describe opposition between the two basic types of places in a spatial system : the one which is commanding and benefitting it, the centre, and those which are subjected to it, in a peripheral position. This conceptual pair goes back at least to the […]
1. An estuary is an area where a watercourse meets the water surface into which it flows, generally at the point where the river reaches the sea (or possibly a lake). Traditionally, all the forms of transition between watercourse and sea have been called ‘mouths’; two types are distinguished among them: the delta and the […]
The transition from an economy based on predation (hunting, gathering, fishing) to an economy based on the voluntary production of given plants and animals has been an essential process in the History of societies. In a limited number of places on Earth, some societies, confronted with particular constraints, achieved mastery in the reproduction of vegetal […]