We wish to start with the following observation: the humanities and the "hard" sciences (here meaning especially biology and a good part of the cognitive sciences) differ considerably in their ambitions concerning the "big questions' . The hard sciences are more daring than ever in proposing how the cosmos formed and life originated, how species evolved and the destiny of it all. In contrast, for the humanities it has been a time of dispersion, of fragmentation, of a dissemination which resists any attempt at integration on a grand scale. The time of the "big theories' seems to have been left far behind.