The Manifold Man

I review here briefly the many fundamental contributions of Jean Petitot in epistemology and phenomenology in cognitive sciences, along his prolific career. Jean Petitot is considered as a “Geometer of the Mind”, in the line of one of his spiritual fathers, the topologist René Thom. These remarkable scientists and philosophers “see” in multiverse spaces with any number of dimensions, as easily as ordinary mortals do in ordinary space. Their seminal work touches many fields as varied as physics, linguistics, psychology and biology. I will focus here on the passion of Jean Petitot for “neurogeometry”, a novel interface field with brain sciences that he created in the course of his quest to theorize natural perception.