Science, Industry and Society
The importance of Academia in our societies should always be remembered. When Justinian I (ca. 482–565), also known as Justinian the Great, the great Byzantine emperor from 527 to 565, desired to tame his renovatio imperii, or``restoration of the Empire”, he closed the School of Athens created three hundred years before in attempt to revival the Academia founded by Plato at the IV century A.D. The decision had a fundamental impact on the history of human thought.
From an individual point of view, culture is instrumental in making it possible to form human beings from youth, to prepare them as broadly as possible for life, in contact with nature and men. Under various scientific and technical, literary, philosophical and artistic, moral and civic aspects, culture contributes to the evolution of different faculties, unequally shared by each one, the capacity of observation, abstract reflection, verbal or plastic thinking, and action. In academia and society, culture is unavoidable for the individual, the sure path to remain human, in the face of the automatisms of the profession and external controls made by the society upon the individual. Hence, Academia must not only develop the necessary skills to cope with an increasingly technological society but as well develop knowledge. Science engages only the rational intellect, some would say, but creation engages the whole mind and first-rate scientist might well engage emotion, too. It suffices to remember Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). In the words of , an Italian literary critic that authored Italian Library (1757) [Giuseppe Baretti (1719–1789), in The Italian Library, published in London in 1757.], a useful catalogue of the lives and works of several Italian authors: ``This is the celebrated Galileo, who was in the inquisition for six years, and put to the torture, for saying, that the earth moved. The moment he was set at liberty, he looked up to the sky and down to the ground, and, stamping with his foot, in contemplative mood, said, Eppur si move; that is, still it moves, meaning the earth.”
Returning to the teachings of the Ancient Greeks, what command the world is Logos and Religion, or spirituality, as told by Empedocles. Heraclitus, who rejected polumathiê, or information-gathering, on the grounds that ``it does not teach understanding”. All the information is at our disposal to build a better world, but it needs meaning, understanding, and respect for each other.
Historians place the Renaissance, a period in European history covering the 15th and 16th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, as the transition to the Scientific Revolution. Rarely noticed, is the role of the Portuguese voyages of discovery. Its success relied upon the continuous application of scientific theory and technology to navigational problems, seeking to solve a wide-ranging scientific research program to ensure Portuguese naval supremacy and to enhance trade advantages. The works of scholars such as Yehuda ibn Verga, Joseph Vizinho, Abraham Zacuto, Garcia da Orta, Pedro Nunes, and others, emulated and expanded by scientists from other maritime Western nations, contributed to the emergence of the modern science [Ref. Daniel Banes, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 78, №1 (March, 1988), pp. 47–58 (12 pages)].
The scientific methods developed not from the ancient Greeks, but from Leonardo da Vinci vision of the details of nature. His method was the procedure of induction. Later, Francis Bacon (1620) and Christian Huyghens (1690) established the intellectual basis of the induction process. They understood that to reach an explanation it is not sufficient to follow what happens in nature by means of deductive steps, that every explanation goes beyond our experience and, therefore, every explanation is a conjecture, a speculation. Huyghens goes further, articulating that an explanation should be called probable and considering that no induction is unique, in fact, there exist an infinite set of alternative explanations. Hence, when a scientist proposes a theory, she$/$he is making a choice, frequently based on aesthetic grounds, considering symmetry or imaginative grounds [Ref. J. Bronowsky, ``The Creative Process”, Sci. Am. {\bf 199}(3) p.59 (1958).].
From observations to scientific inference, statistics, and causal relationships are the backbone of the scientific method, a central part of human learning. From the interactions between physical objects, or patterns of spatial or temporal coincidence, theories are elaborated. The discovery of fire is the first instance when humankind understood the cause and effect kind of law, and from that moment this law serve as a guide to us. Quite interestingly, fire was discovered by human species well before what previously was thought. Researchers recently discovered evidence of human use of fire dating back about 1 million years ago, in the Wonderwerk Cave, in South Africa, a massive cavern located near the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Every problem contains its own solution, and it is part of human life to be repeatedly confronted with sources of difficulties that requires a solution. In fact, these situations are the ones that keep us alert, sharpens our senses and challenges our rational mind.
We live in a materialistic world bound by a narrow logic, and constrained “physical laws” that restrain the appealing of the mysterious in us. The usual causal thinking follows a linear trail, where events A,B,C follow one after the other, C takes place because of B, and B is due to A. Classical mechanics, so-far, seems to follow causal relationships. Quantum mechanics doesn’t.
Jung hypothesized that causal effects have place with transmission of energy from cause to effect. However, there are some effects that apparently occur without Exchange of energy, and the event was called acausal by Carl Jung. A well-known physical effect representing an acausal effect is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, which is also a non-local effect.
We are therefore using the general concept of synchronicity in the special sense of a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning…Synchronicity therefore means the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appears as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state-and, in certain cases, vice-versa. Chinese philosophy thought occurrence of events differently from us. We usually ask: what causes this? Classic chinese texts ask: what likes to occur with what?…
But there is mysterious and inexplicable coincidences in our lives that we feel are full of meaning, although we don’t understand if we follow the stringent logic of reason, as teached by Aristotle and others in the West. These coincidences are what Carl Jung called “meaningful coincidences”, James Joyce’s “epiphanies”, and those that experienced them (and we all did) feel as they are occasions when a bridge are formed in order to connect the inner and outer worlds.
The major difference between scientific and technological innovation resides in the motive. While scientists seek new knowledge, technologists see to make useful things. For this aim, our societies need creative engineers able to grasp the meaning of scientific discoveries and incorporate them into technology to satisfy the human needs. These technological advances can be made in small and specialised laboratories, and as well in big corporations. But the objective characteristics of a productive laboratory is not what we may count, the impact factors. Much more important are the attitudes, motivation, personal relations, the way the laboratory is managed, to feel that each one has a place of its own, a perspective of evolution. Technological innovations plays a fundamental role in the progress of mankind, as important as language, art and science. Innovation is, without any doubt, history’s great free lunch.
