İnsan ve Kent

by Henri Laborit, Bertan Onaran (Translator)

Henri Laborit, canlı varlığı, o arada insanı kavrayıp anlatmaya büyük katkılarda bulunmuş bir bilimadamı, bir dirimbilimci.

Cansız maddeden canlıya geçişteki evrimi, özellikle 1950'den sonra elektrikli aygıtların sağladığı araştırma kolaylıklarıyla, derinlemesine ve geniş olarak ele alan dirimbilim, tekhücreli canlıyla çokhücreli arasında tartışılmaz benzerliklerin yanında çok asal bir ayrılık saptamış: Karmaşıklık ve örgütlenme biçimi. Amiple insanoğlunu birbirinden ayıran yalnızca işte bu örgütlenme. Örgütlenmeyse, gittikçe kalabalıklaşan insanlığın temel işlevlerinden biri olmakla kalmamış, şimdi can alıcı bir soruna dönüşmüştür.

Laborit ve benzerleri, canlının bedenindeki hücre örgütlenmesinin tıpkısının yaşadığı ortamda, ya da özel adıyla "kentte" de belli yasalara ayak uydurduğunu, uydurması gerektiğini ilk bulgulayan insanlar. Bu kitap bu konuyu en ince ayrıntılarıyla gözler önüne seriyor. Varılan yargı yalın, çarpıcı: Kentleşme çarpık, çünkü içimizdeki dirimsel örgütlenmeyi -masalların ötesinde- tanımıyoruz, dolayısıyla dış örgütlenme de bunu yansıtıyor.

192 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 1990

About the author

Henri Laborit was a French surgeon, researcher, writer and philosopher. Animated by a robustly nonconformist spirit, he maintained an independence from academia and never sought to produce the orderly results that science requires of its adherents. His laboratory was self-funded for decades and allowed him to pursue his interdisciplinary interests. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of systems thinking and complexity theory in France.

He won the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1957. Laborit later became a research head at Boucicault Hospital in Paris.

His interests included psychotropic drugs, eutonology, and memory. He pioneered the use of dopamine antagonists to reduce shock in injured soldiers. His observation that people treated with these drugs showed reduced interest in their surroundings led to their later use as antipsychotics.

He was also the first researcher to study GHB, in the early 1960s. He hoped that it would be an orally bioavailable precursor to the neurotransmitter GABA, but it proved to have other uses and was later discovered as an endogenous neurotransmitter.

He appeared in the 1980 Alain Resnais film Mon oncle d'Amérique, which is built around the ideas of Laborit and uses the stories of three people to illustrate theories deriving from evolutionary psychology regarding the relationship of self and society. This movie includes short sequences of rat experiments that are used to illustrate the behaviors of some of the characters in different situations (such as inhibition in the action).

The French-born American market researcher Clotaire Rapaille considered Laborit to be an important influence in his work.

The 1991 Italian film Mediterraneo begins with a quote from Laborit which, translated, means "In times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and keep dreaming."