La création de l’Institut des sciences cognitives du CNRS (1992-1998)

Résumé 0

The Creation of the CNRS’ Cognitive Sciences Institute In June 1992 the CNRS decided to create an Institute devoted to researches in cognitive sciences, located in Lyon. Officially created in January 1997, the new building was opened in April 1998. This creation represented the logical outcome of the national research program in cognitive sciences which supported interdisciplinary teams, located outside Paris. The urgency to fill the gap which had its origins in the rapid development of these sciences in the United States constituted the main objective. To attain this aim, it was necessary to create strong interactions between disciplines concerned by artificial intelligence and those, then scattered, that tried to describe human mind structure and functions : neurosciences, psychology, psychopathology, language sciences, philosophy of mind. The main strategy of this new Institute was to bring together researchers specialised in different disciplines in order that they worked on the same problems like action planning, form recognition or space representation. The efforts deployed to reach this objective showed the structural constraints without entirely overcome them. These constraints are originated in the CNRS’ structured in several departments and in the divisions caused by the different French organisms being in charge of research.