17 / 92
350
YEARS
OF
SCIENCE
17
© Zacarias da Mata - Fotolia
we cannot ask science to answer alone to all the
questions our societies must face. It cannot do
so and such is not its role.
The unprecedented increase in scientific
and technological knowledge that has
been takingplace for the last two centuries
has made us change our worldview. We
apprehend the world differently from our
ancestors. This produces some anxiety:
the anxiety associated with what we will
discover. What will the state of scientific
knowledge be in a few hundred years, what shall
we do with it? That’s is where all artistic and literary
creations find their potential, precisely because they are
stable over time, because they do not progress – or maybe do they
evolve, as men’s emotions evolve.
© From B.Eymann - Académie des
sc
ien
ces
It is this construction of science – science progressing
through successive accumulation – that we shall visit,
letting each field carry us along through the following
pages. It reminds us, 350 years after the creation of our
Académie, that the march of knowledge is inseparable
from a certain idea of progress. The exercise our fellows
have accepted to undergo is a difficult one. Well aware
of how harsh it is, we thank them all the more for tackling
such a task.