“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity and not in the multiplicity and confusion of the things…” Isaac Newton.
Index
1. Overview
2. Ancient World
2.1 Contribution of the first thinkers
2.2 The Earth as center of the universe
2.3 Ockham’s razor
2.4 Advances in medicine
2.5 Galen contribution
3. Middle Age
3.1 Physics of the Middle Age
3.2 The scientific revolution of the 16th century
3.3 The contribution of Isaac Newton
3.4 Rationalism and Empiricism
4 Modern Age
4.1. Most important politics, economics and scientific issues
5 Contemporary Age
5.1. Most important politics, economics and scientific issues
5.2 Einstein and the pure science
6 Conclusions
1. Overview
How does man acquire knowledge?
Is the experience the unique source of knowledge?
Are the thought, the reason and the imagination the unique sources?
Are the innate ideas something real?
If they exist, where do they come from?
What is true and what not since the scientific point of view?
May be considered true something that cannot be demonstrated in the reality?
Is the theorist science a big speculation?
In the answers of those questions are implicit the epistemological and ontological dimensions of this work.
The advance of science has been a consequence of man necessities and of his intellectual curiosity. The material conditions of each epoch have determined the evolution or the stagnation of science. For example, the first stage, Prehistory, was an epoch of progress; in change, the Middle Age was a stage of frustration for the sciences. The Modern Age brought the Renaissance, which initiated a new period of advancement. In that time arose the Scientific Revolution, which represented the beginning of the modern science. In the 18th century occurred an event that changed the history of the Western society: the French Revolution of 1789. It marked the born of the Contemporary Age, period in which science and technology has reached the highest development of all times.
The true knowledge comes from the empirical science. An idea that cannot be proven in the practice is an abstraction or a speculation. It is true that, sometimes, the practical demonstration of the ideas is something very difficult and that the appearance of the things dominates our senses, but to discover the reality of the things, its essence, is the foremost objective of science.
For example, in the “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” (1687) Isaac Newton said that common people conceive time, space and motion in their relation with sensible objects. He indicated that the comprehension of the reality require to distinguish the absolute and the relative, the true and the apparent, the mathematical and the common.
Galileo Galilei taught that the language of the universe is the mathematics; perhaps that is true but the key question that arises ---from the epistemological and ontological point of view--- is until where the mathematical principles created by man are or not true, because mathematics is a creation of the human mind. How and where does a triangle or a point exist? Which is the essence, the matter of a number?
The most simple and the most complex mathematical conceptions as the infinitesimal calculus developed by Newton and Leibniz or the equations of Maxwell on the electromagnetism are abstractions of the mind.
Who can assure that the abstractions of the mind are true, are right?
For example, a tree of apple is not an abstraction; you can see and touch it but you cannot see nor touch a number, a triangle or a point. Well, you can say that the number represents all the things that exist in the reality and that in the reality exist forms that represents the triangle or the point, but in all those cases that is a creation of your mind. How can you be sure that the assumptions of the mind of the thinkers that postulated those ideas are true or right?
I remember that once my first professor of philosophy asked to his pupils what the mathematics is. No one of the students could answer the question; then he said: the mathematics is the study of the exact dimensions in the space and in the time. In the space is the geometry and in the time is the arithmetic. I never forgot the definition of my professor but sometime later I asked myself how the exactitude of the dimensions can be measured. Who can be sure that the ideas of exactitude are right or not?
For example, 220 years ago, in the year 1791, one meter had been defined officially as a portion of the meridian that crossed the city of Paris but recently, in this decade 2010, the international agency of the matter changed that concept by a measure of time regarding the speed of the light. The meter is a measure of surface, then how can it be transformed in a mechanic measure?
Is the meter a physical constant or a mathematical constant?
Those changes reveal that some scientific conceptions respond to arbitrary decisions instead of logic and rational assumptions. Then, what is true and what is not?
The unique manner of demonstrating the truthfulness of a concept, an idea or a measure is through its practical verification in the reality. But the verification, itself, may be right or wrong. How do you know that something is right or wrong? From the scientific point of view, something is right or true when is due proven by rational and material means. But there are cases where the true is a comparison regarding another thing; this mean that must exist something in order to compar. Then, the true is relative.
The system of measures is an invention of man. The measures do not have proper life as the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon, or the elements of the terrestrial reality. We must distinguish between the beings that have own life, own existence, the objective and material things, and the creations of the mind. They are different.
From the social and ethic point of view, a scientific approach is right if it gives happiness to the human beings and, on the contrary, it is wrong if it brings unhappiness or sadness to the human beings. An important objective of science must be the happiness of the human beings.
Along the time man has made an important and vast practical demonstration of his creative capacity; millions of discoveries and innovations are the outcome of man’s intelligence. It has been a process of sustained evolution. The discovery of one thing has opened the door to the discovery of other new things. In the first stage of man development, his attention was focused in the material things but, progressively, he was centering his attention in his own thought and his own creative capacity. That was the work of the first philosophers.
2. Ancient World
Prehistory was the first stage and encompassed the Age of Stone and the Age of Metals. The word history has been used to indicate the period of time that began since the appeareance of the writing invention until the present. The Ancient World lasted since the first civilizations born until the fall of the Roman Empire in the year 476.
In Prehistory man made the basic discoveries which have been present since then until now in the world’s life, among them, the agriculture and livestock, the textiles, the metals, the architecture and the creation of the first tools.
The main civilizations of the Ancient World were Mesopotamia 3000 BCE- 750 BCE, Egyptian 3000 BCE-800 BCE, Greek 800 BCE and Rome 600 BCE. In the East of Asia, India and China constructed their own culture which got an important level of evolution.
2.1 Contribution of the first thinkers
Man is in debt with the primitive philosophers, the pre-Socratic philosophers which did not receive a fair recognition. For example, the pre-Socratics made two decisive contributions to the science development: a) the first ideas about the Sun as center of the solar system and b) the first conceptions about the atom.
The historians attribute to the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus (480-385 BCE) to have conceived an astronomical system composed by the Earth, the Moon, planets and stars with a center that was the fire. Though he did not make explicit mention of the Sun as center of the system, it implied that the center was the Sun. Philolaus anticipated by hundreds of years the work that Nicolas Copernicus realized in the 16th century.
The historians also attribute to Leucippus (5th century) and Democritus (460-370 BCE) ---two pre-Socratic thinkers--- the discovery of the atom. Of course, their idea about the atom was different to the modern conception but, in essence, they were aware of the existence of a matter different to the observable in the apparent reality. Democritus considered that the atom was not divisible and stated that the atoms were the component element of all the things. He was, then, the precursor of the atomic studies. Democritus anticipated thousands of years the science performance because it was in the 20th century when the theory and the praxis of the atomic knowledge was developed.
How did the pre-Socratics philosophers acquire that knowledge? That is a key question that leads to other important issue: do the innate ideas exist? Because at that time, obviously, neither Philolaus nor Leucippus nor Democritus did not have access to the complex information required to arrive scientifically to their conjectures.
Other pre-Socratics philosophers established the bases of the scientific knowledge because they formulated the basic questions for the comprehension of the essence of the things that is usually different to its appearance. To discover the essence of the things and the laws that govern their behavior are two basic tasks of science. The scientific and technological advance is a consequence of the human knowledge evolution.
The philosophers of the Antiquity developed their conceptions through reason and imagination. Therefore, they built theories instead of empirical reflections. Aristotle, for example, made a complete theory about the transformation of the matter and the laws that govern those transformations. He stated that matter was formed by four elements: earth, water, fire and air that encompasses the terrestrial bodies ---living and unanimated--- and determines its motion and a fifth element, the Aether, that compose the heaven bodies. He distinguished between heavy bodies and light bodies. The earth is the heaviest body, the fire the lightest body. He said that the lights of the heaven, the Sun, the Moon, planets and stars are formed by the fifth element and move in circular form. He assured that the Aether was an unchanging and perpetual element.
2.2 The Earth as center of the universe
The conceptions of the Holy Scriptures, Aristotle’s and later the ideas of Ptolemy of Alexandria in the 2nd century were the base of the Geocentric Model of the Solar System which postulated that the Earth was the center of the Universe and that all other celestial bodies orbit around it. The Ptolemaic Model survived hundreds of years since the Antique Age and the Middle Age until the Modern Age in the 18th century.
2.3 Ockham’s razor
The priest William Ockham (1285-1347) is one of the most important philosophers of the science. Ockham postulated that “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” this means “plurality should not be posited without necessity.”
What he wanted to express was that among two or several answers about a same problem the simplest idea must be the right answer, but this is not an infallible rule. The most complex idea might be also the right answer. This conception of Ockham has influenced the philosophy of science since then.
2.4 Advances in medicine
The first principal exponent of medicine in the Ancient World was Hippocrates (460-370BC). During centuries, man thought that the diseases were a punishment of the gods. Hippocrates reacted against that prejudice and postulated that the diseases were a consequence of the people custom and of the environmental factors.
Hippocrates attained important advances in the diagnostic and treatment of different kind of diseases; also in surgery and some of his concepts and ideas are still employed actually. He made important contributions in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and other disciplines.
2.5 Galen contribution
Claudius Galen (129-199AD), physician, surgeon, is the other important physician of the Ancient World. He formulated his theory on physiology of circulation which considered the venous and arterial as two different systems. The theory of Galen endured several centuries until 1628. In that year, was published the book of William Harvey, who assured that it does not exist two different circulatory systems but only one that encompasses the veins and arteries and that the heart pump the blood.
3. Middle Age
For the comprehension of the scientific reality in the Middle Age is convenient consider briefly the general situation of that epoch.
The Middle Age began with the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the year 476 and lasted until the invasion of Constantinople by the Turkish in the year 1453. This was a dark stage of the history because the creative capacity of man was interfered by the rigid rules of the Catholic Church, impeding the development of new knowledge.
It was also the time of the Crusades that had as objective the recovery of the sacred places, Belen and Jerusalem and the conversion of the Muslims to the Christianize.
The main characteristic of the Middle Age was the Theo centrism; this meant that all the expressions of the life were centered in God.
The Catholic Church exerted its most influence through the dominium of the population by mean of the threat and the punishment, among them, the excommunication and the employment of the courts of Inquisition. These courts were used for torture and intimidate.
In that period of history the Church was accused of selling the positions of authority in its hierarchy and selling also the forgiveness of the sins.
Since the politics and economic point of view, the Middle Age was the time of the Feudalism.
3.1 The Scientific Revolution of the 16th century
Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642) was the most relevant scientist of the Middle Age. Their ideas were strongly rejected by the Catholic Church.
The Copernicus’s belief about the Sun as center of the solar system changed completely the history of science. Through his book, “on the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres”, Copernicus established the Heliocentric Cosmology. The Copernicus’s theory about the Sun as center of the solar system represented a complete revolution because displaced the Ptolemaic Model that survived the Ancient World and the Middle Age.
Copernicus assured that any motion of the celestial bodies in the firmament was an illusion. He said that the true motion is the motion of the Earth. The Sun, the Moon, the planets and stars do not change their positions in the heaven, is the Earth who change their position regarding the Sun.
Copernicus wrote his book in the year 1543 but it did not attract the attention of the Catholic Church, notwithstanding that too few years later, in 1546, a priest qualified the book as contrary to the Holy Scriptures. It was sixty years later, in 1616, when the Catholic Church banned the book of Copernicus.
Galileo Galilee (1564-1642) defended the Copernicus’s ideas and for that reason was condemned by the Inquisition to stay arrested in his home for the rest of his life. Galileo was a big scientific, mathematician, astronomer, physics; he made diverse scientific creations, one of the most important is his concept about the language of the Universe. He assured that the language of the Universe is the mathematics. But he made other concrete contributions like the thermometer and the telescope, founding the modern astronomy, because this let a most accurately observation of the exterior space.
Also must be mentioned that was Galileo Galilee who made the first approach to the theory of relativity that hundreds of years after was improved by Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century. Galileo explained the laws of mechanic and through his Classic Theory of Relativity he stated that the perception of motion depends of the place since where the observer observe. For example, when you flight in a plane at constant speed you do not perceive the speed, but the observer that is in the Earth is able of to appreciate the plane motion. The motion is relative to the passenger of the plane and for the observer of Earth. But simultaneously Galileo stated that the time for both, for the passenger of the plane and for the observer in Earth was identic. That is that time is absolute and independent of the place since where is measured.
As may be observed, Galileo worked with great success in pure science as well in applied science.
3.3 Main scientific discoveries of the Middle Age
The most significant discovery was the imprint by Johannes Gutemberg in the year 1440. Other discovery was the compass, by Pietro Peregrino in 1269 and improved by Flavio Gioja in the 14th and 15th centuries.
4. Modern Age
4.1 Most important politics, economics and scientific issues
The Modern Age began in the year 1453 and lasted until the French Revolution in the year 1789. This was the time of the Renaissance, which brought positive and important facts, among them the Anthropocentrism and Humanism, it mean, the recognition of man as principal subject and object of the different political, social and scientific disciplines. The Anthropocentrism and Humanism was the opposed thesis of the Theo centrism that dominated the previous Middle Age.
In this period appeared a new political and economic system, the Commercial Capitalism, which had its most intensity between the 15th and the 18th centuries. The Commercial Capitalism encompassed two forms: the Colonialism and the Mercantilism.
The discovering of America by Christopher Colombo in the years 1492 marked the beginning of the Colonialism.
Since the scientific point of view the Colombo’s adventure ---and later the Sebastian Elcano’s trip in the year 1522--- confirmed the Earth round. But one of the most important consequences of the America’s discovering was the development of the naval industry with the construction of more advanced ships. This fact had and important effect: the world commerce interchange increase and the Commercial Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. In turn, the Commercial Revolution brought other important consequence: the development of Mercantilism, political and economic doctrine that believed that the wealth of nations was the gold and silver and a positive balance of payments, it means, the preeminence of the exports over the imports and, in consequence, the control of the State on the basic issues of the economy.
The wealth of America was looted in those centuries; especially it’s gold and silver wealth to feed the treasures of the nations that dominated the American Continent, Spain, England, France and Portugal.
A reaction against the Mercantilism conception appeared in England and France, especially. The new doctrine was the Economic Liberalism, which principal exponent was Adam Smith (1723-1790), among other important philosophers. In the year 1776 Smith published its work, The Wealth of Nations.
Beside to the evolution of the Mercantilism science and technology began a new stage.
4.2 The contribution of Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) is the other big scientific of the 18th century. In his book “Principles of Natural Philosophy” (1687) he presented the Theory of Universal Gravitation and the Laws of Motion. The first law was the Law of Inertia, the second the Law of Force and Acceleration and the third the Law of Action and Reaction.
The principles of Newton exerted a sustained influence in the science and were affected only after the formulation of the Einstein’s theories in the first decades of the 20th century.
4.3 Medicine
In medicine, the Andreas Vesalius’s book “On the fabric of the Human Body” was one important contribution of the period. Vesalius presented for first time evidence of the human body anatomy. Until then, the studies of anatomy were based in the dissections of animals, because the dissection of human beings rests was banned by the Christian Church.
4.4 Rationalism and Empiricism
The Rationalism appeared since the beginning of the western philosophy, but it was in the 17th century when attained its most development through the philosophy of Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.
Descartes considered that geometry was the ideal of science and philosophy. He taught that the reason was the main source of the knowledge and believed in the existence of the innate ideas.
The Empiricism appeared also in the first stages of philosophy from the hand of Aristotle, who explained the paper of the experience. In the 17th century the empirics’ philosophers, John Locke (1632-1704), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Tomas Hobbes (1588-1679), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776) postulated the Empiricist thesis; it means that the experience was the main source of the knowledge. They denied the innate ideas.
5. Contemporary Age
The Contemporary Age began in the time of the French Revolution in the year 1789 until now. This is the most advanced scientific period of history and encompassed six stellar moments: a) the discovery of new sources of energy, coal, petroleum, electricity and nuclear energy, b) the discovery of the steel, c) the advances in medicine and pharmacology, d) the technological development of the mass media, especially the radio and television, e) the conquer of the space and f) the discovery of the informatics.
5.1 The First Industrial Revolution was a direct consequence of science and technology advance. This historic period began in the first years of the 18th century with the creation of the machine of vapor in the year 1705 by Thomas Newcomen and improved after by James Watt. Until that moment the scale of production was limited. The mode of production was the handcraft. In first instance, the machine of vapor was used to ameliorate the conditions of the textile industry and the metal industry.
In parallel to the First Industrial Revolution, an Agricultural Revolution took place in England since the 18th century and until the middle of the 19th century. This phenomenon determined an important growth of the population in that country.
At the beginning of the 19th century Richard Trevithick and Oliver Evans built the first motor of steam of high pressure. In the year 1814, in England, George Stephenson invented the railroad; this used the steam motor for first time. The system was applied also to the ships and in the year 1838 navies of vapor crossed the ocean like pioneers. These facts let a best communication between the nations and inside of the own territories of the countries.
With the improvement of the steam machine the industrial scale of production attained a new level. This represented more industrial goods and economical save because of the increase of the amount of merchandises transported; this meant a complete revolution in the methods of production and commerce with repercussion in the size of the markets.
Other important discoveries of the First Industrial Revolution period were the electricity by Michael Faraday in 1831; his work was continued by other scientists like Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Ohm, among others.
The Second Industrial Revolution began in the year 1859 with the discovering of the petroleum and after, in the 20th century, with the massive use of the electricity as source of energy; this made possible a second important change in the scale and methods of production and in the world population standard of live. These two elements, petroleum and electricity, determined the other advances of the population wellbeing. The Industrial Revolution may be named the Revolution of the Energy; in its first stage because of the use of the steam and in its second stage because of the use of petroleum and electricity. The other big discovery of the Second Industrial Revolution was the steel which contributed to make a deep transformation of the reality.
In the last years of the 19th century the science discovered the rays x, Charles Darwin published his book on the origin of the species, Louis Pasteur developed a method for the food conservation, the researchers discovered the science of bacteria’s, and was achieved important advances in surgery.
The Industrial Revolution provoked important demographic changes; the most important was the population increase and the concentration of the population in the new cities where were located the new industrial activities. This fact generated serious problems of public health, poverty, unemployment and overexploitation of the workers.
Since the economic point of view, the Industrial Revolution ---that, in turn, was a scientific revolution--- determined the Capitalism apparition and the born of a new class: the proletariat. As a consequence of that process the difference between the rich classes and the poor classes reached its maximum level. The Industrial Revolution changed the geography; one of its consequences was the damage to the environment and nature increase, the overexploitation of the natural resources and the contamination.
As a consequence of the discovery of electricity other important advances were made in the second half of the 19th century, among them the telegraph, by Samuel Morse in 1832; the telephone, by Alexander Graham Bell, in 1876; the radio, by Guglielmo Marconi, in 1895; the movie, in 1895, by the Lumiere’s brothers.
All those discoveries were the outcome of the human creative capacity. The scientists promoted the development of the science and the application of the innovations to new useful things.
In the 20th century science and technology got its most level of progress. The petroleum had an important paper in that sense because it allowed the creation of new material things. Moreover of the advances in medicine, other sectors, as the transport, contributed to build the current world, through the automobiles, the aviation and the modern naval industry. The creation of the radio and television, the discovery of the atomic energy, the improvement of methods to increase the food production, are only a small part of the vast capacity of the scientists.
In the last decades, the advances in the conquest of the space, in nanotechnology, in biology and now in informatics are a clear example of the researcher’s ability and intelligence. There are notorious scientists like Stephen Hawking that has revolutionized the knowledge of physical, but it is fair to recognize that there are also many young scientists ---the most of them unknown for the public--- that are doing an important work.
Recently I read the web page of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and I found interesting information about the most recent events; for example, the activity of Dr. Marx Bates, winner of the GE Prize for Young Life Scientists, for his work “New Approach to Florescence Microscopy,” cited by Eurekalert. Also I read an interesting comment about the work of researchers of the University of East Anglia and the University of Harvard who has discovered that “bioactive compounds in berries can reduce high blood pressure.” This is good news because the high blood pressure affects to millions of people in the entire world.
Other research cited is “the new technology to make shellfish safer to eat, developed by scientists at Queen University Belfast.” Eurekalert says that this discovering is “likely to revolutionize the global fishing industry.” The food sector deserve the most attention because will be the population growth and the food availability one of the most problems of humanity at midterm. Some weeks ago I read other useful thesis for the improvement of the quality of food in the dairy sector, made by Dr. Paola Zinno, of the University Federico II of Italy.
Other important research exists in key sectors for the human wellbeing, as medicine and pharmacology. For example, a big challenge is the discovering of the cure of cancer. The past year, 2010, I knew about the Venezuelan researcher Dr. Jacinto Convit, who developed a success work in that field. The number of scientists that are making a big work for the development of science is a hope. But the big problem is that the population growth surpasses the capacity of the available resources.
5.2 Einstein and the pure science
Albert Einstein is the best example of the research in pure science. He contradicted the empiric method that dominated the scientific research since the Scientific Revolution of the Modern Age.
Einstein used his reason and his imagination to formulate his appreciations. His theories were not based in the experience, in the observation of the reality, but in his suppositions.
In 1905 he published his first successful works in the magazine of physical Annalen der Physik, one about the Brownian motion, other on the quantic hypothesis of the light and the third about the Special Theory of Relativity. In 1916 he published in the same magazine his General Theory of Relativity and in 1917 wrote his first article on cosmology.
In 1919 one of his predictions about the behavior of the sun rays were confirmed by the official astronomer of Great Britain, Arthur Eddington, and since then his fame reached a first plane in the entire world.
Researchers consider that was the Einstein´s theory the most important input for the atom fission because since then the scientists understood that matter and energy are an identity and, in consequence, from matter may be obtained big amounts of energy, but was the Italian physic Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) who in the year 1934 discovered the chain reaction. That was the principle that let the construction of the atomic bomb.
Also it is attributed to Einstein to have changed the laws of mechanics formulated by Isaac Newton, laws that dominated the scientific scenario until then.
The Einstein’s case demonstrates that only in some exceptional cases the Rationalism and the imagination alone may be the source for the development of the applied science.
The progress reached by humanity in the last centuries has been linked to the science and technology advance; the technology is the expression of the applied science. The future of humanity will depend of the science and technology evolution.
Conclusion
The big challenges of the science and technology in the 21st century:
There is not an exclusive system of knowledge; the reason and the practice are the road. But the practice is the unique manner of to achieve and prove the true. An idea that cannot be proven in the practice is an abstraction or a speculation. The theorist conceptions not enough demonstrated in the reality are abstractions and in other cases rationalist speculations.
The innate ideas exist but nobody can assure where do they come from.
So far, science has not denied the Galileo’s concept about mathematics as language of the Universe. The problem is that mathematics is a creation of the man mind; mathematics does not exist in the material reality. For that reason the question is until where those creations of the mind are true and right. One meter might be 100 centimeters or less or more, because a meter is an arbitrary measure created by our thought. A triangle is also an arbitrary measure built by our minds; the concept of three sides with convergence in three angles is only an idea that may or not coincide or be created in the material reality.
The best answer regarding the comprehension of the reality is the explanation of William Ockham in the 14th century, when assured that ---between several answers--- the simplest explanation must be the correct. Ockham did not deny the existence of complex things and recognized that those things also may be correct, but he preferred the simplest explanations. The position of Ockham was rebated after by many philosophers as Emmanuel Kant.
But we can find a coincidence between Ockham and the father of the modern physic, Isaac Newton, who, four centuries after Ockham, in the 18th century, assured that “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity and not in the multiplicity and confusion of the things…”
The new science of the 20th century, the science of the Quantic Theory neither the Relativity Theory, has not been able of changing the concepts of Ockham and Newton about the simplicity as mean of acquiring knowledge.
The other big thinker that thought the same than Ockham and Newton was the Eastern philosopher Confucius, who constructed all his philosophy in base to the simplicity as main way for the ontological an epistemological comprehension of the terrestrial and cosmological reality.
Einstein was an exceptional scientific that could gather his imagination and his innate ideas to create a new perspective of science, but since the ontological and epistemological point of view it is valid asking: are all his conceptions true? What do you think?
In resume:
- The true is relative.
- The philosophy of science should reveal the epistemological and ontological dimension of science including their ethics.
- The objective of science and technology should be to improve the quality of life of the world population, this mean reducing the poverty, the illnesses and preserving nature and the environment. Science must be at the service of man and not vice versa, man at the service of science.
- Man wants to conquer the exterior space when still he has not conquered the Earth.
- The precursors of two important scientific discoveries were the pre-Socratics philosophers Philololus, Leucippus and Democritus.
- The principles of the modern science were established first in the Ancient World by William Ockham and after in the Modern Age by Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilee, Isaac Newton, Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey among other scientists.
- The contemporary science should consider the ethical limits of their research, especially regarding the artificial creation of the live.
- It is a crime against humanity the development of new systems of weapons for mass destruction.
- Science has the duty of warning about the consequences of the overpopulation, foremost cause of the big problems of the world.