Dr. Robert Franck

Biography

Robert Franck is Professor Emeritus of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL, Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, SSH/FIAL). With Daniel Courgeau (Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques, Paris), he directed the collection of Methodos Series, Methodological Prospects in the Social Sciences, published by Springer*. Special adviser for the edition of the European Interdisciplinary Academy of Sciences (AEIS, Paris). Associated since 1998 with the epistemology study group of the social sciences created by Jean-Michel Berthelot (Sorbonne) and animated from 2006 by Bernard Walliser (EHESS); three collective works have emerged, respectively in 2001 at the Presses universitaires de France (reissued in 2016), 2009 and 2015 at the editions of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). The titles of Doctor in Philosophy and Letters, and Doctor of the Higher Institute of Philosophy, were conferred on him in 1964 at UCL, for a thesis in moral philosophy on the so-called reflexive method of Jean Nabert. His main results were published in the Revue philosophique de Louvain in 1965 and 1966. Research Fellow of the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS Belgium) from 1965 to 1969, he studied the philosophy of language and in particular the analytical current, and he translated and published at the invitation of Gilbert Ryle the first French translations of Gilbert Ryle and John Austin in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, Paris, in 1966 and 1967. In the wake of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games and Emile Benveniste’s advanced analysis of the language, he developed a new definition of the nature of discourse. His main results were published in the Revue philosophique de Louvain in May 1969. In charge of teaching knowledge theory at UCL in 1967 he published in 1968 lessons in knowledge theory. Lecturer at UCL in 1969 and Professor in 1975, his teaching and publications have focused since 1969 on the theory of knowledge, general epistemology, philosophy of sciences, sociology of sciences, health policy in Belgium, the social issues of psychological practices, the epistemology of psychology, the epistemology of psychiatry, the history of philosophy, moral philosophy, the philosophy of work, the teaching of philosophy (Aggregation), the policy of education, and the methodology of research in the social sciences. In 1971 he edited a thematic issue of La Revue Nouvelle (Brussels) on the relations between science and society, and edited a second thematic issue of the same magazine in 1978 in collaboration with François Gobbe on health policy in Belgium. From 1973 to 1998, he collaborated in the evaluation and guidance of innovative practices in health, psychiatry, education and social work services: integrated social services (Quebec), medical homes in popular settings, ambulatory psychiatry, network psychiatry, cooperative pedagogy, science shops, and action research. He collaborated from 1974 to 1997 on a university program of training for adults in economic and social policy, within his university (Open Faculty of Economic and Social Policy – FOPES, UCL). In 1979, he joined the editorial committee of the Revue internationale d'action communautaire – International Review of Community Development, Montreal, at the invitation of Frédéric Leseman. Visiting professor at the Instituto Superior de Psicologia Applicada, Lisbon, from 1981 to 1983, he published a series of studies on the social issues of school psychology, industrial psychology, and clinical psychology, and on the nature of psychological discourse. In 1983, with Michel Legrand and Alex Neybuch, he created the journal Perspectives, Revue sur les enjeux sociaux des pratiques psychologiques, Liège**, and directed it in collaboration until 1996 (29 issues published). From 1986 to 1994, member of the Organizing Committee for Colloquia ‘L'Autre Lieu’ Action Research on Psychiatry and Alternatives, Brussels.

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