Presentation The genesis of forms in the science and the arts international congress "As a herald it's my duty to explain those forms of beauty." (Goethe, Faust) "Les parties de toute formation naturelle ou de tout organisme vivant sont unies par un autre lien que la cohésion et la solidité de la matière." (Paul Valéry, L'homme et la coquille) "Un des problèmes centraux posés à l'esprit humain est le problème de la succession des formes." (René Thom, Stabilité structurelle et morphogenèse) "La forme ne doit jamais nulle part être considérée comme un achèvement, un résultat, une fin, mais comme une genèse, un devenir, un être." (Paul Klee, Histoire Naturelle Infinie) The purpose of this conference is to reflect upon the importance which the renewal and re-actualization of thought about forms could have for the elaboration of new ideas and methods indispensable to the comprehension of certain fundamental stakes that today more than ever confront the natural and life sciences as well as the visual and sound arts. It's goal is to suggest new theoretical conceptions and various concrete approaches to the question of the genesis and development of forms, as well as to their relations with our conceptions of the human being, of nature, of life and of artistic creation. The morphological level (privileged site of the emergence of forms) represents a level of structural organization which permits the constitution of physical reality, living mater and the phenomenal world. It is at once the source of significant systems and perceptual representations, artistic and symbolic thought, and language. Recent research in different domains has shown that certain processes of self-organization play an important role in the constitution of various types of phenomena at macroscopic, nanoscopic and microscopic levels and that they are, in a way, also responsible for the emergence of new forms in the natural and living world. This same research has also brought to light the existence of certain fundamental principles (of a geometric, topological, or physical nature) which would allow a better understanding of the processes underlying the change and evolution of phenomena. Symmetries richer than the "classical" symmetries known up to now and "broken" symmetries are responsible for these principles. In several domains of nature, it has become more and more clearly evident that these principles govern internal transformations as well as the interactions among the "internal agents" and the "external milieus," and that they contribute in an important way to the structural organization and the functional formation of components, which can manifest themselves only to the extent that the integrity of the total structure is maintained. Here one arrives at a new idea of wide reaching significance: structure depends in large part upon the dynamic phenomena which it organizes and which become an integral part of that structure. An important fact is that the processes of organization and self-organization of forms are inscribed in a temporal and therefore an essentially historical dimension. This takes place thanks to temporal trajectories which evolve in a space characterized by certain variables of state and parameters of order. It is a matter of the space of phases or of configurations which can undergo a system. This action of time on phenomena engenders a dynamic situation and, in orienting with the action of the properties of space their evolution, creates in a way their own history. This history, though inscribed in unique and specific contexts, will not, for all that, have less universal reach and validity. One of the most remarkable consequences of this evolution is a conception of Nature which does not entirely separate the human world from the living milieu and from that of a supposedly inert matter. This evolution involves a simultaneous taking into account of spatial transformations, the temporal dimension, and non-linearities, sources of an infinity of forms and behaviors. One thus sees that diversity can reflect an underlying order, unsuspected at first, and that the great variety of phenomena and apparent forms encountered in nature and in the sensible world can be the manifestation of modalities following which phenomena are subject to incessant transmutations and differentiations due to the action of certain great spatio-temporal principles and/or dynamics. This situation opens radically new perspectives upon a number of problems, the most fundamental of which is perhaps the nature and origin of forms which, for many centuries, have defied scientific, philosophical, and esthetic explanation. A cluster of new ideas breaks loose, bearing notably upon our ways of understanding the relations between the biosphere and the living world, the role of spatial and physical symmetries and the breaking of symmetries in self-organization and morphogenesis, the dynamic action of time on the transformation of natural and biological systems, on the formation of historical events and on anthropological changes. They are already contributing to the re-questioning of certain partitions which have traditionally separated the mathematical sciences from the natural and human sciences. Thus, connections unsuspected until now are surfacing especially among mathematical objects, natural processes and esthetic creation. This conference proposes to explore in depth certain themes which seem to us to be at the very heart of the problematic of forms, their genesis and constitution, their evolution and development, as well as the risks which threaten the very possibility of their existence. Let us summarize some of its objectives, whose significance and bearing at once scientific, philosophic, and esthetic, it will be a matter of study and exploring. To develop an intrinsic vision of things and events, one which assigns a much more important role to their qualitative and contextual, as well as to their singular aspects. In this regard, it seems extremely important to us to better understand the geometric genesis of natural forms and the underlying topological processes involved in perceptual forms and sensible qualities. Fundamental geometrical and topological concepts seem to be at work in numerous situations where occur generation and appearance of new forms, notably in embryonic development, molecular and cellular evolution, phase transitions in organic and inorganic mater, the growth of plants and other organisms in the vegetal realm, in the recognition and interpretation of perceptual forms, and in a great many other situations. In all of the phenomena mentioned, we are in the presence of a situation in which something absolutely extraordinary and most often unexpected takes place: the engendering and unfolding of new spatial forms (surfaces, varieties, nodes, and other forms which can be even more complex) with different and richer structures arising from a spatial support on which are made to act a certain number of dynamic parameters. Furthermore, apparently simple geometric and topological objects can engender very complex properties and behaviors in matter, nature and in living beings. To study those phenomena situated at the interface of certain endogenous and exogenous processes, between, for example, the internal factors inherent in organisms and external factors inherent in the environment, for we are beginning to understand that the interface (the frontier or the boundary) itself constitutes a highly dynamic milieu allowing for the emergence and development of new forms. Biological membranes, for example, are the seat of morphological and essentially dynamic processes essential to the growth of all living organisms. To bring to light the fact that a fundamental esthetic signification exists in the processes of the evolution and transformation of objects and organisms, a signification which is inseparable from the question of meaning. It is clear, for example, that there are very close relations between the perception of forms (visual, sound, etc.) and the sensible qualities of objects and organisms, or between the recognition and knowledge of forms in our ambient space and the evolution and survival of our species and of other animal and vegetable species. To study in depth the dynamic and interpretative historical dimensions of the processes of evolution and the transformation of phenomena and of physical and biological systems, but also cultural and symbolic formations. It becomes more and more clear that other histories, in the forms of trajectories and figures, which are temporal, non-linear and multidimensional, in the forms of entropy and of a certain irreversibility, of memory and the sedimentation of geophysical landscapes, but also of systems of cognitive and semiotic reference, play important roles in the fashioning of reality, in its morphological and phenomenological diversification and in its semantic polymorphism. The comprehension of forms, of their evolution and transformation, can in no case be reduced to a mechanical description of their physical, chemical, or even their analytic and algorithmic bases. This is as true of natural and biological forms as it is of esthetic and symbolic forms. Using this method destroys the form, or rather the internal structure of the form, which is to say its soul, its being and its potential to develop and blossom in its integrality. Nature and life are the formation of forms, and from the moment we claim to know these forms by analyzing and determining their components separately from their morphogenesis and interaction with their living surroundings, we end up with unformed material, for living forms are "wholes" whose meaning resides in their tendency to realize themselves as themselves in the course of their evolution. And it is for this reason that they can be grasped only in a vision, never in a division. The problem of form and its stakes today incite everyone-researchers, philosophers and artists-to pave the way for a new conception of reality, in which belief in reductionism and applicability must be replaced by the concepts of self-organization and morphogenesis. Just as it is impossible to reduce the explanation of the physical world in its totality and macroscopic, nanoscopic and microscopic complexity to a few assumed simple fundamental atomic and subatomic laws, so is it illusory to want to reduce everything which concerns the living organism to chemistry-everything from the common cold and mental illnesses to language and esthetic pleasure in painting and music. There are surely more levels of organization between esthetic perception or symbolic representation and DNA, than between DNA and the quantum electrodynamics, and each level of reality requires for its comprehension that we invent entirely new concepts. For example, it is clear that any true explanation in biology must, beginning with the thinnest molecular bases, go back through a complex three-dimensional morphology to arrive at the entire organism, achieved or in the course of construction. It is on condition that morphogenesis and morphology find their proper place in scientific, philosophical and artistic research, but also in our ethical and cultural practices, that we can hope to realize a new rapprochement between nature, living creatures, and esthetic creation. The essence, the end, and the dignity of everything resides in form. Form, thus, is the being becoming of every phenomenon. In this sense, it unites the present to the past, but at the same time, the present represents something else which opens towards an unpredictable future. Any form is the trace or the living witnesses of multiple directions which the evolution on our planet, the transformations of matter, organisms and cultures have followed, transmitted from generation to generation by physical, biological and symbolic systems. This is why today the rehabilitation of rational and sensible thought about forms answers to the need for a new scientific, philosophic and esthetic intelligibility of nature and living beings. But it is also a "battle of ideas" to save our Earth, to protect the biosphere, to preserve the diversity and the richness of natural, animal, and vegetal species, of cultures, languages, and historical memory throughout the world. In short, it is a battle, not for any kind of development or any kind of progress (which has been responsible in great part for the disappearance and the destruction of a great many forms-of nature, of life and of expression), but rather and decidedly it is a battle 1) for the valorization and respect for all the natural, vital, and human resources which the Earth and the biosphere offer; 2) for the development of a new humanism which can reconcile science (as the creation of concepts and not as merely technological exploitation) to philosophical reflection and esthetic imagination. It is this intellectual battle for forms and for a new perception of their role in rational and sensible thought which, today, can bring about the arrest of catastrophes, inundations, and conflagrations, along with other disasters which threaten nature and the community of men and women, and which is the condition for a dignified existence, for happiness of spirit and for the very nourishment of the body.