Keynote Talk

Starting from his own experience, the speaker will try to understand why scientific careers appear today much less appealing than in the 1960s, when he was a young man. For this purpose, he will go beyond trivial effects related to the social environment. More precisely, he will analyze the dominant representations of science and technology in our post-modern societies as well as some new practices of scientific communities which can divert a young student from scientific research or convince a mature scientist to leave it. Power games, lack of poetry and absence of metaphysical implications in present science appear to be key factors of explanation for these retreat phenomena.

This pessimistic conclusion could appear as a pure consequence of the usual nostalgia which invades the elderly when they speak about their past life, but it is not the case as far as the speaker concerned. His objective is only to issue a call to arms to fight against obscurantism and intellectual decline. It is also a call to fight in favour of beauty, of culture and especially of poetry. Science and humanities are in the same boat. They will be saved from the wreck by the same struggle. If they still believe in a future for humanity which is not to be a new totalitarianism or a global society purely devoted to consumerism, scientists as well as educated people should participate in this battle.