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The 1994 Kyoto Prize
1994
11 /11 Fri
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 1994 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
To Think, to Do, to Believe
Abstract of the lecture
"Science is like a boat, which we rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat." Neurath Is life any different, in all its varieties of impulse and understanding? Morals, arts and politics, ethics and social systems, religions and economic systems, share the same plight. Planks are always rotting in warm, quiet waters or failing catastrophically in storms. Failure to keep up with the rebuilding will stunt human lives, bring companies, nations, cultures and civilizations to ruin, and leave sciences and philosophies dull and irrelevant. The problem is to save hard-won understanding despite the constant changes. Mathematical theorems and haiku enrich our humanity over millennia, and questions that were posed long before they were written down still perplex and challenge us. It is often noted that the rate of scientific and technical development accelerates. Each new technique and level of understanding enriches others, and the rich network expands in scale and complexity at a headlong pace, maintained by links across time and space. Less noted is the parallel growth of human culture in a broader sense because its growth seems to be dominated by the completion of success sive themes and impulses and by confusions during the growth and consolidations of new ones. More and more of those mature cultural complexes are preserved into later eras to influence later works and those with different roots. All is not lost to short human memories and the vagaries of history as a human network reaches farther around the world and backward into time. Architecture and art have long had opportunities to survive, then literature and music, and now we enrich our lives with performances from the past. Some thing is always lost; no human mind can hold the riches of all ages. Wisdom and knowledge and experience, of thoughts and acts and beliefs from the infancy and childhood of all humanity, are increasingly woven into our contemporary souls. The future grows from them, and the seaworthiness of our boat depends on our keeping them in balance and integrated as we build and rebuild each day, each year, each generation.
Lecture topics
My Life with Mathematics and with Bourbaki
Abstract of the lecture
The purpose of the lecture is to give a brief sketch of André Weil's career as a mathematician, including one important episode the creation of Bourbaki. Many mathematicians are precocious: there are anecdotes showing the appearance of mathematical gifts at an early age. This was the case with André Weil whose devotion to mathematics appeared about the age of seven. Travels and the influence of foreign cultures also made themselves felt soon enough. Most of his mathematical education was acquired at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, an institution dating back to the French Revolution, which has produced many of the most prominent Scientists in France. It recruits itself through competitive examinations (both in scientific and humanistic subjects) and is remarkable through the spirit of friendship it nurtures among its students and alumni. This played a role in the creation of a group which, beginning in the 1930's dedicated itself, under the assumed name of Bourbaki, to the production of a collective work, providing up-to-date foundations for the whole of modern mathematical science. This originated in Strasbourg where André Weil and Henri Cartan, for several years, were jointly in charge of the basic calculus course and the two of them, together with a number of colleagues, all young men from the Ecole Normale, joined forces together for such collective work.
Lecture topics
My View of Movies
Abstract of the lecture
In the lecture, I think I will mainly talk about my idea of films, what I think films are all about. I think I well also talk about how I make films, and how I want the viewer to see my films. But when I talk, my words must come somewhat naturally. So I don't think I can give an interesting talk if I decide what to say and how to say it in advance. This is what I intend to do in the lecture. I hope that my selfishness in not giving a proper outline of my lecture will be forgiven, and that this will serve as a kind of outline instead.
