- Talk given at CERN on January 27, 1972.
- Original transcription by Jacqueline Picard from the magnetic recording1.
- Translated from French by Peio Borthelle from web sources23.
I've always been bothered by the fact that during my research activities this influential name—Alexander Grothendieck—started becoming a common noun (as in "the Grothendieck construction" or "Grothendieck fibrations", two very common objects in categorical logic among other fields). As a matter of fact my first encounter with his name was not in the context of mathematics but listening to the speech transcribed below. A friend of mine—fellow student with whom I regularly talked about the social impact of the academic science—stumbled upon it shortly after Grothendieck's death in 2014 which generated a short burst of media interest and shared it with me.
Talking with French and international colleagues I realized that in general, little was known about the interesting end of Grothendieck's career as a mathematician. Most commonly one would hear that "he left academia abruptly", that "he went to live alone secluded from society" or with uncomfortable amusement that "he refused any form of publication of his later works" (how childish can this be?). This depoliticization and "mad mathematician" trope is quite notable as his turnaround was very much in phase with the ecological and societal critics at the time (onward 1968 mobilizations). These ideas are still very relevant and active today, perhaps tagged as radical ecology.
Recently I had these discussions again and realized that an English translation of this talk was nowhere to be found online. The following aims to correct this fact. Please send me any mistake you can find and feel free to reproduce the translation with or without attribution to me. Copyright of the original audio files appears to be held by CERN.
– Peio Borthelle
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
In the ten years we've been organizing our lecture series, we've periodically asked scientists to come and give us their thoughts on science—on the responsibility of the scientist—and I think it's particularly necessary to do so because we have a tendency at CERN to think of ourselves as extraordinary people doing theoretical things that aren't dangerous at all within an exceptional European collaboration. So always caught up in these fine ideas we tend—perhaps a little too much—to be satisfied with them and not to ask ourselves deeper questions. It's precisely in order to go a little deeper that it's useful to have speakers like Mr. Grothendieck, whom we have with us this evening, and to whom I'd like to hand over the floor immediately.
I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to speak at CERN. For many people, including myself, CERN is one of the few citadels, so to speak, of a certain science, in fact a cutting-edge science: nuclear research. I've been proven wrong. It seems that at CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—one doesn't do nuclear research. Be that as it may I think that in many people's minds CERN does.
Nuclear research is indissolubly associated, for many people too, with military research, with A and H bombs, and also with something whose drawbacks are only just beginning to emerge: the proliferation of nuclear power plants. In fact, the concern that nuclear research has provoked since the end of the last world war has faded somewhat as the A-bomb explosion on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has receded into the past. Of course, the accumulation of destructive A- and H-type weapons kept a lot of people worried. A more recent phenomenon has been the proliferation of nuclear power plants to meet the growing energy needs of industrial society. However, it has become clear that this proliferation has a number of—to put it euphemistically—"extremely serious" drawbacks, and that it poses some very serious problems. The fact that cutting-edge research is associated with a real threat to the survival of mankind, a threat even to life itself on the planet, is not an exceptional situation, it's the rule. In the one or two years I've been wondering about this, I've come to realize that ultimately, in each of the major issues that currently threaten the survival of the human species, these issues would not arise in their current form—the threat to survival would not arise—if the state of our science were that of the year 1900, for example. I don't mean to imply that science is the sole cause of all these ills and dangers. There is of course a combination of several things, but science, the current state of scientific research, certainly plays an important role.
First of all, perhaps I could say a few personal words. I'm a mathematician. I've devoted most of my life to mathematical research. As far as mathematical research is concerned, both the research I've done and that done by colleagues with whom I've come into contact, it seemed to me to be far removed from any kind of practical application. For this reason, for a long time I felt particularly disinclined to ask myself questions about the ins and outs of this scientific research, and in particular its social impact. It's only quite recently, in the last two years, that I've gradually begun to ask myself questions on this subject. In the future, I'll only do what's strictly necessary to support myself, since until proven otherwise I have no other profession than mathematician. I know I'm not the only one to have asked this question. Over the last year or two, and even over the last few months, more and more people have been asking key questions on this subject. I'm quite sure that at CERN too, many scientists and technicians are starting to ask them. In fact, I've met some of them. What's more, I and others know people at CERN, for example, who have "extremely serious" ideas about the so-called peaceful applications of nuclear energy; but who dare not express them publicly for fear of losing their position. Of course, this atmosphere is not specific to CERN. I believe it's an atmosphere that prevails in most academic or research organizations, in France, in Europe, and even, to a certain extent, in the United States, where people who take the risk of openly expressing their reservations—even on a strictly scientific level, about certain scientific developments—are still a tiny minority.
So, for the past year or two, I've been asking myself questions. And not just to myself. I've also been asking them to colleagues and, particularly over the last few months, six months perhaps, I've been taking every opportunity to meet scientists, whether in public discussions like this one or in private, and raise these questions. In particular: "Why do we do scientific research?". A question that is virtually the same perhaps, in the long run at least, as the question: "Are we going to continue scientific research?". The extraordinary thing is to see how incapable my colleagues are of answering this question. In fact, for most of them, the question is simply so strange, so extraordinary, that they refuse even to contemplate it. In any case, they are extremely reluctant to give any kind of answer. When we manage to elicit an answer in public or private discussions, what we generally hear is, in order of frequency of response: "Scientific research? I do it because it gives me pleasure, because it gives me intellectual satisfaction". Sometimes people say, "I do scientific research because I have to make a living, because I get paid for it."
As far as the first motivation is concerned, I can say that it was my main motivation during my life as a researcher. Indeed scientific research gave me pleasure and I didn't ask myself many questions beyond that. In fact if it gave me pleasure, it was largely because social consensus told me that it was a noble, positive activity, one worth undertaking; by the way without any detail on how it was positive, noble, etc. Obviously direct experience told me that with my colleagues we were building something, a certain edifice. There was a sense of progress that gave a certain feeling of achievement... of plenitude, and at the same time a certain fascination with the problems at hand.
But all this, in the end doesn't answer the question: "What is the social purpose of scientific research?". Because, if its sole purpose were to give pleasure say to a handful of mathematicians or other scientists, society would doubtless hesitate to invest considerable funds in it—in mathematics they're not very considerable but in the other sciences they can be. Society would also be reluctant to pay tribute to this type of activity whereas it is rather silent about activities that may require just as much effort, but of a different type, such as playing marbles or similar. We can develop to the extreme certain facilities, certain technical faculties, be they intellectual, manual or other, but why is there this emphasis on scientific research? It's a question worth asking.
Talking to many of my colleagues over the past year, I've come to realize that in fact this satisfaction that scientists are supposed to derive from exercising their cherished profession, is a pleasure... which is not a pleasure for everyone! I was astonished to discover that for most scientists, scientific research is felt to be a constraint, a servitude. Doing scientific research is a matter of life and death for any considered member of the scientific community. Scientific research is a prerequisite for getting a job, once you've embarked on this path without really knowing what it's all about. Once you've got your job, it's an imperative to move up the ladder. Once you've moved up the ladder, even assuming you've made it to the top, it's an imperative to be considered in the running. You're expected to produce. Scientific production—like any other kind of production in the ambient civilization—is considered an imperative in itself. The remarkable thing about all this is that in the end, the content of research becomes a second thought. It's all about producing a certain number of "papers". In extreme cases, a scientist's productivity is measured by the number of pages they publish. Under these conditions, for a large number of scientists—certainly for the overwhelming majority, with the real exception of a few who are fortunate enough to have an exceptional gift or to be in a social position and disposition that enables them to free themselves from these feelings of constraint—for most, scientific research is a real constraint that kills the pleasure one can have in carrying it out.
This is something I discovered with amazement, because we don't talk about it. Between my students and myself, I thought there was a spontaneous and egalitarian relationship. In fact, it was an illusion in which I was trapped. Without even realizing it there was a real hierarchical relationship. The mathematicians who were my students or who considered themselves less well placed than me and who felt alienated in their work, would never have had the idea of talking to me about it until of my own accord, I left the scientific ghetto in which I was confined and tried to talk to people who weren't from my milieu. That milieu of esoteric scientists who did high mathematics.
To illustrate this point I'd like to give a very concrete example. Two weeks ago I went on a tour of Brittany. Among other things, I had the opportunity to visit Nantes where I met friends and spoke at a Maison de Jeunes et de la Culture [MJC, youth cultural center] about the kind of issues we're discussing today. I was there on Monday. As my colleagues from the University of Nantes had been warned of my arrival, they had asked me in extremis to come and give a talk on mathematical subjects with them the following afternoon. As it happened, on the very day of my visit one of the Nantes mathematicians, Mr. Molinaro, committed suicide. So because of this unfortunate incident the mathematical talk that had been planned was cancelled. Instead I contacted a number of colleagues to ask if we could get together to talk a little about mathematical life within the mathematics department at the University and also to talk a little about this suicide. There was an extremely revealing session that afternoon in Nantes where everyone present—with one exception I'd say—clearly felt that this suicide was very very closely linked to the kind of things we'd been discussing the evening before at the MJC.
In fact, I'll perhaps give one or two details. It so happened that Molinaro had two students working on post-graduate theses—I don't think they were state theses. These theses were not considered to be of sufficient scientific value. They were judged very harshly by Dieudonné, who is a good colleague of mine and with whom I wrote a major treatise on algebraic geometry. So I know him very well, he's a man of very sound scientific judgment, who is very demanding when it comes to the quality of scientific work. As a result, when these theses were being discussed by the Commission for inclusion on the list of candidates for higher education posts, he undermined them and their inclusion was refused. This of course was felt as a kind of personal affront by Molinaro who had already had difficulties before, and he committed suicide on these circumstances. In fact I had a mathematician friend called Terenhöfel who also committed suicide. I know a number of mathematicians—I'm talking mainly about mathematicians here, since that's the milieu I've known best—who have gone mad.
I don't think that's something peculiar to mathematics. I think that the kind of atmosphere that prevails in the scientific world—whether mathematical or not—a kind of atmosphere with extremely rarefied air, and the pressure that is exerted on researchers have a lot to do with the evolution of these unfortunate cases.
Concerning the pleasure we take in scientific research, I believe there can be enjoyment. But I've come to the conclusion that the enjoyment of some—the enjoyment of those in high places, the enjoyment of the brilliant—comes at the expense of genuine repression of the average scientist.
Another aspect of this problem which goes beyond the limits of the scientific community as a whole is the fact that these high flights of human thought take place at the expense of the population as a whole which is dispossessed of all knowledge. In the sense that in the dominant ideology of our society the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, which is the prerogative of a few million people on the planet, perhaps one person in a thousand. All the others are supposed to "not know" and in fact when you talk to them they have the impression that they "don't know". Those who do know are the ones up there in the high sciences: the mathematicians, the scientists, the very knowledgeable and so on.
So I think there's quite a lot of critical comment to be made on the pleasure we get from science and its side effects. This pleasure is a kind of ideological justification for a certain course that human society is taking and as such I think that even the most disinterested science that is being done in the current context, and even the most remote from practical application, has an extremely negative impact.
It's for this reason that personally I currently refrain as far as possible from taking part in this kind of activity. I'd like to clarify why I initially interrupted my research activity: it was because I realized that there were such urgent problems to be solved concerning the survival crisis that it seemed madness to waste forces on abstract scientific research. At the time I made this decision I was thinking of spending several years doing research, acquiring some basic knowledge of biology, with the idea of applying and developing mathematical techniques, mathematical methods, to deal with biological problems. It's an absolutely fascinating thing for me and from the moment some friends and I started a group called Survivre [surviving]—precisely to deal with questions of survival—from that moment on, overnight, the interest in disinterested scientific research completely vanished for me and I've never had a minute's regret since.
Then there's the second motivation: science, scientific activity, allows us to earn a living. This is actually the main motivation for most scientists, according to the conversations I've had with many of them. There's a lot to be said for that too. In particular for the young people who are currently embarking on a career in science—those who study science under the assumption that they will find a ready-made job that will provide them with security. I think it's generally well known that this is a great illusion. By dint of producing highly qualified people we've really produced too many since the great boom in the production of young scientists—since Sputnik some fifteen years ago—and there's more and more unemployment in scientific careers. The problem is becoming increasingly acute for a growing number of young people, especially young scientists. In the USA we must produce something like 1000 or 1500 theses a year in mathematics alone and the number of job openings is about a third of that.
On the other hand the fact remains that when science enables us to earn a salary and support ourselves, the links between our work and the satisfaction of our needs are practically cut and dried. The link is practically formed by the salary but our needs are not directly linked to the activity we perform. In fact—and this is the remarkable thing—when the question is asked: "What is the social purpose of science?", practically nobody is able to answer. The scientific activities we engage in don't serve to directly fulfill any of our needs, any of the needs of our loved ones, of people we may know. There's a perfect alienation between ourselves and our work.
It's not a phenomenon peculiar to scientific activity; I think it's a situation concerning almost all professional activities within industrial civilization. It's one of the great failings of industrial civilization.
As far as mathematics in particular is concerned, for the last few months I've been really trying to discover a way in which mathematical research—that which has been carried out over the last few centuries, I'm not necessarily talking about the most recent mathematical research, in which I was still involved at a fairly recent date—could be of use from the point of view of satisfying our needs. I've been talking to all kinds of mathematicians about this for the last three months. No one has been able to give me an answer. In audiences like this or smaller groups of colleagues nobody knows. I wouldn't say that any of this knowledge isn't somehow capable of being applied to make us happy, to allow us greater fulfillment, to satisfy certain genuine desires, but so far I haven't found it. Had I found it I would have been much happier, much more content in some respects, at least until recently. After all I'm a mathematician myself and it would have pleased me to know that my mathematical knowledge could be used for something socially positive. However in the two years I've been trying to understand a little bit about the course society is taking, the possibilities we have to act favorably on this course—in particular the possibilities we have to enable the survival of the human species and to enable life to evolve in a way that's worth living, that's worth surviving—my knowledge as a scientist hasn't served me once.
The only point on which my training as a mathematician served me was not so much my training as a mathematician as such, nor my name as a mathematician, it was that since I was a well-known mathematician I had the opportunity to be invited by quite a few universities all over the world. This gave me the opportunity to speak with many colleagues, students and people from all over the world. This happened for the first time last spring when I toured Canada and the United States. In the space of three weeks I visited around twenty campuses. I benefited enormously from these contacts; my ideas and my vision of things have evolved enormously since then. But it's only incidentally that my mathematical background came in handy. In any case my mathematical knowledge really didn't help.
I might add that since last spring, when I receive an invitation to give a mathematical talk somewhere and when I accept it, I make it clear that I'm only interested in it insofar as it gives me the opportunity to discuss more important problems such as the one we're talking about here. In general it also gives me the opportunity to talk with non-mathematicians, with scientists from other disciplines, and also with non-scientists. That's why I ask my fellow mathematicians to have at least one person from the department take charge of organizing such debates. This has been the case for example for all the conferences I've given in Canada and the USA. To date no one has ever once refused this proposal to organize non-technical, non-purely mathematical debates on the bangs of the mathematical invitation in the traditional sense. In fact since then I've also modified my practice a little by introducing, shall we say, preliminary comments into the mathematical presentations themselves so that there isn't too sharp a cut-off between the mathematical part of my stay and the other.
So not only am I announcing the more general public debate that takes place afterwards but I'm also distancing myself from the very practice of inviting foreign speakers to perform a certain ritual—namely to give a high-profile lecture on a great esoteric subject in front of an audience of fifty or a hundred people, perhaps two or three of whom can painfully make some sense of it while the others feel genuinely humiliated because, effectively, they feel a social constraint placed on them to go. The first time I asked the question clearly was in Toulouse a few months ago, and I actually felt a kind of relief that these things were being said. For the first time since I've been doing this kind of lecture, spontaneously, without anything having been agreed in advance, after the mathematical lecture which was indeed very esoteric and which in itself was very tedious and burdensome—I had to apologize several times during the lecture because really it was quite intolerable—well immediately afterwards an extremely interesting discussion took place precisely on the theme: "What's the point of this kind of mathematics?" and "What's the point of this kind of ritual of giving lectures to people who have absolutely no interest in it?".
My intention was not to create some kind of anti-science theory. I can see that I've barely scratched the surface of some of the problems associated with the question "Are we going to continue with scientific research?", even among those indicated on this flyer, a copy of which I've seen. For example about the possibilities of developing a scientific practice entirely different from current scientific practice and about a more detailed critique of that practice.
Instead I spoke in fairly concrete terms about my personal experience—about what was passed on to me directly by others—for half an hour. That's probably enough; perhaps it would be preferable for other points to be dealt with in a little more depth during a general discussion.
Before I finish my introductory speech I'd just like to say that I've brought back a few copies of a magazine we publish called Survivre et Vivre4 [surviving and living]. This is the group I mentioned at the beginning, which changed its name a few months ago. Instead of "surviving", after a rather significant and characteristic change of perspective it has become "surviving and living". In the beginning we started out with the fear of a possible end of the world where the essential imperative for us was the imperative of survival. Since then, through a parallel process for many of us and others outside the group we've come to a different conclusion. At first we were overwhelmed by the multiplicity of extremely tangled problems in such a way that it seemed impossible to touch any one of them without at the same time bringing on all the others. In the end we would have given in to a kind of despair, a black pessimism, had we not made the following change of perspective: within the usual system of reference in which we live—within the given type of civilization, let's call it western civilization or industrial civilization—there is no possible solution; the interweaving of economic, political, ideological and scientific problems is such that there are no possible outcomes.
At the beginning we thought that with scientific knowledge—by making it available to enough people—we'd be able to better grasp a solution to the problems at hand. We've come back from that illusion. We now believe that the solution will not come from more scientific knowledge or more techniques but from a change in civilization. That's where the extremely important change of perspective comes in. For us the dominant civilization—industrial civilization—is doomed to disappear in a relatively short time, in perhaps ten, twenty or thirty years... one or two generations, in that order of magnitude; because the problems currently posed by this civilization are effectively insoluble problems.
We now see our role in the following direction: to be ourselves an integral part of a process of transformations—of ferments of transformations from one type of civilization to another—which we can begin to develop right now. In this sense the problem of survival for us has been superseded, it has become the problem of life, of the transformation of our lives in the immediate future; so that they become ways of living and human relations that are worthy of being lived, and also, are viable in the long term and can serve as a starting point for the establishment of post-industrial civilizations, of new cultures.
For subscriptions, please write to my address: 21, avenue Kennedy, 91 Massy; conditions are indicated in the journal.
I'd love to know what you think makes life worth living.
Actually, up until now, the activity, the life I've had, I've considered it worthy of living. I had the feeling of a certain type of self-fulfillment that satisfied me. Now, looking back, I see my past life in a very different light; in the sense that I realize that this fulfillment was at the same time a mutilation. Indeed it was an extremely intense activity, but in an excessively narrow direction. In such a way that all other possibilities are not covered. For me, there's absolutely no more doubt about it. The kind of activity I'm doing now is infinitely more satisfying and rewarding than the one I had during my twenty or twenty-five years as a mathematical researcher. This is a very personal point, as far as my own life is concerned.
On the other hand, when I speak of a life worth living, I'm not just talking about my own life, it's about everyone's life. And I realize that the fulfillment I've been able to achieve in a very limited direction was at the expense of other people's possibilities for fulfillment. If some people have found themselves under such psychological pressure to the point of suicide, it's because of the prevailing consensus that a person's worth was judged, for example, by their technical virtuosity in proving theorems, i.e. to perform excessively specialized operations—when, the rest of the person was left completely in the shadows. This is something I've experienced time and again. When we're talking about a certain person and I ask, "Who is he?", I'm told, "He's a jerk." This meaning, among mathematicians, that it's a guy who either demonstrates theorems that aren't very interesting, or demonstrates theorems that are false, or doesn't demonstrate theorems at all!
So I've defined rather negatively what I mean by a life worth living. I think that, for everyone, there's the possibility of fulfillment without being judged by others, by such narrow, simplistic, criteria. In fact, I think this scale of values has a direct mutilating effect on the possibilities for self-fulfillment. Well, this is an aspect, I don't pretend to answer the question raised here, which is a very vast one. But from the point of view we're taking here, based on scientific practice, it's the most immediate thing I can think of as an answer.
What are your views on the structure of scientific research in the People's Republic of China?
Until quite recently, let's say about three months ago, I was rather closed to any information that came from China because it was wrapped up in such jargon that, a priori, you felt like questioning it—you didn't want to take it seriously. Jargon, let's say, of an unbridled cult of Mao Tse Tung's personality, a sort of hagiography that accompanied it, meant that I read these publications quite often, but they fell out of my hands of discouragement: it just wouldn't do. Then, three months ago, I met the New Alchemists5 who made me realize the possibility of a scientific practice entirely different from that which currently prevails in all the sciences that are at universities and research institutes. From that moment, I took a renewed interest in what was happening in China, and I was motivated to go beyond, let's say, the frills of style, and try to get to the bottom of things. As a result, I became convinced that there are some extremely interesting things happening in China too, precisely in the direction of developing a new science. In any case, China is the only country where the myth of the expert is officially shattered. Where people are told: "Don't trust the experts. Don't wait for the government to send you competent folks to solve them for you. Solve them yourself with whatever means you can find on the spot."
Whether we're university professors, workers or farmers, we're all capable of creative initiative, of inventing something. I think the most striking way in which these—let's call them watchwords—or this new movement has materialized, is in the development of Chinese medicine. Particularly since the Cultural Revolution. This is precisely an example of science getting out of the hands of a certain caste to become the science of all, and it is only by becoming everyone's science can it become science for everyone. In fact, practically anyone can become a doctor, whatever their cultural background. This vast movement of barefoot doctors6 has mobilized an impressive number of people—but I'm no good at statistics and can't say how many—who travel the countryside for all kinds of simple medical procedures that would only be admitted after years and years of medical study in a social context like ours. Whereas over there, after just a few months' preparation, you can practice certain medical activities.
Particularly noteworthy is the sensational development of Chinese acupuncture, which has made it possible to cure certain ailments in previously unexpected cases, or as an adjunct to certain medical techniques. We know the role currently played by Chinese acupuncture in anesthesia. Acupuncture can also be used to cure all kinds of ailments, including commonplace ailments such as colds, but also, for example, very serious conditions such as pelvic organ prolapse in very advanced states. I recently had the translation of a Chinese newspaper article on this subject, which sheds some light on the differences between scientific practice—in particular medical practice in Western countries such as France or Switzerland—and practice in China, where an entirely new technique for healing very advanced organ prolapse was found by a young woman doctor who had very little formal education behind her, but who was highly motivated to to heal a specific case. On the other hand, she found herself in a cultural climate where it is not considered inadmissible, unthinkable, that a person with little knowledge, and practically no qualifications, could develop new techniques. She experimented with herself by needling on her own lower vertebrae, since she knew, from the little elementary things she had learnt, that there were direct nervous links between the pelvic floor and these vertebrae. By force of experimentation on herself, she finally found a point that caused her an extremely strong reaction that brought the pelvic organs up inside her belly. Then, convinced that she'd found the correct point, she performed the same operation on the patient she had in mind and the patient was cured. Since then, according to this newspaper, some fifty other cases have been treated, with forty-five cured.
Here we can see the fundamental difference between this kind of scientific practice and scientific discoveries, and those prevailing in Western countries. First of all, the patient is no longer an object in the hands of the doctor; it is no longer the doctor who is the subject who knows and applies his knowledge to the sick object. Here, in scientific investigation, the doctor is simultaneously the object of experimentation, which at the same time enables him to overcome this [...] [inaudible] [...] of the position, intolerable for the patient, of being an object without will, without personality, in the hands of the doctor. And at the same time allows, I believe, a much more direct, much more intense understanding of what's going on.
When you feel scientific research in your own flesh, when you feel for yourself the body's reactions, it's a completely different kind of knowledge than if you do something to a sick object with a few needles, or whatever, recording reactions purely quantitatively. I think there's a whole set of factors here, where the person's rational faculties are no longer separate from each other, for example where they are no longer separate from direct sensory experience, or from affective or ideological motivations, call them as you wish.
So I think there's a real integration of our different cognitive faculties, our faculties of knowledge, which is really lacking in the dominant, Western scientific practice. Here, on the contrary, we do everything we can to separate the purely rational faculties and all the rest of our possibilities of knowledge. This is, among other things, one of the factors that has led to a sort of technological delirium, such, that scientists are able to be fascinate by technical problems, such as those posed by the construction of intercontinental missiles and the like, without even considering the atrocious implications of the eventual use of what they are building.
In your opinion, society should be transformed into a post-industrial society in ten or twenty years. I'll even give you fifty years. Let me ask you the following: suppose a fairy grants you unlimited power to persuade everyone to do what you think should be done. What will you do without causing a great catastrophe, say, famine, etc.?
I think there's already a basic misunderstanding. I didn't say that anyone in particular—or anyone else, me, for example—should transform industrial society, just like that, over the next ten, twenty or thirty years years into another predetermined form of society. If a fairy were to invest me with discretionary powers, I'd tell her I didn't want to. Indeed, I'm quite convinced that what I could do would be nothing more than to create even more of a mery mess than there already is. In fact, I'm entirely convinced that absolutely no one is capable of, let's say, programming, of foreseeing the changes that are going to take place. I think that the complexity of planetary problems is so great that it absolutely defies mathematical or experimental analysis. We're in a situation where the methods of experimental science are practically useless. Because, after all, there's only one planet Earth, and a crisis situation like we're in right now, happens only once in the history of evolution. So we don't have an experience here that we can repeat at will to see what the consequences of this or that operation will be, so that we can then optimize our operation procedures. This is absolutely out of the question. This is a unique situation, with a complexity infinitely beyond our possibilities for analysis and detailed prediction.
All we can do, I'm convinced, is for each of us, in our own sphere of activity, in our own environment, to try to be a of ferment of transformation in the direction that, intuitively, seems most appropriate, starting with human relationships with our family members, our children, our wives, our friends and also our colleagues. I'm convinced that this is a first transformation that has the advantage of being communicative, of communicating itself from one to another.
Among the transformations to be carried out, there are in particular: overcoming of competitiveness between people; overcoming the attitude or desire of domination of one person over another, which in turn generates the desire of submission to an authority, two aspects of the same tendency; and, above all, the establishment of communication between people, which has become extremely poor in our civilization. Quite recently, I took stock of my own life and the human relationships I've had, and I was struck by how poor real communication was. For example, in mathematical circles, between colleagues, conversations are essentially about technical subjects connected to mathematics. I've had a number of romantic relationships in my life, as I'm sure most of you have, and, here too, I realized how much true communication, mutual understanding, was poor. I'm quite convinced that this is not a personal characteristic of mine, that I would personally be less gifted at communication than others. In fact, this is a general phenomenon in our culture, and indeed, when talking with many other people, I've made analogous observations. For myself, for example, I've made the general decision to pursue romantic relations with a woman only to the extent that it will appear to me as a vehicle of establishing deeper communication. See, this is just one particular example of a way in which each of us can immediately transform the way we approach others. Similarly, I can tell you that my relationship with my children has changed, in the sense that I realized that, on many occasions, I had been exercising a rather arbitrary authority over them, let's say, on things which, in good conscience, were their own responsibility. So these are things that can be changed.
At first glance, one might wonder how this type of change is related to, say, the global problems of survival. I'm convinced of it, but I can't prove it, because nothing important can be proved; one can only feel it, guess it. But I am convinced that these changes in human relations will be a determining factor, perhaps the most important, in the changes we're going to see from one mode of civilization to another. Once again, it has become quite clear to me that these changes will not come about by virtue of technical innovation or structural changes. The truly profound change that is going to take place is a change in human mentalities and human relations.
I'd like to come back to scientific research. Actually, you're talking about deviations in scientific research. I partly agree with some of your diagnoses: the fact that we're too interested in personal glory, subjugation to fashion, the abusive pretensions of certain scientists, etc. But is this inherent to science? In my opinion, science would like to construct a new vision of the world. What purpose would you give to another scientific practice?
When you say inherent to science: inherent to which science? I think it's inherent to science as defined by the practice of recent centuries, as it has developed since the beginning of the exact sciences. I think it's inherent in the very method of these sciences. Among the distinctive features of this scientific practice, the first is the strict separation of our rational faculties from other modes of knowledge. Hence an instinctive distrust of all that is, let's say, emotivity, of all philosophical or religious knowledge, of all ethical considerations, anything that is felt, sensory, direct. In this sense, we have more confidence in the indications of a needle on a dial, than in what we feel immediately, directly.
The following example illustrates this mistrust of immediate experience; I could cite many others, but this one is particularly striking to me. It is the case of parents that go to consult a doctor with their child, saying: "We're very unhappy, our child is becoming more and more impossible in class: he's a kleptomaniac, he fights with everyone. At home, he sulks for days on end, wets the bed, etc." And they ask the question, "Is our child sick?" So the specialist, the person who knows, is asked to pronounce a ritual formula: "your child ill" or "your child is well". In the case of "your child is ill", we expect the specialist to prescribe a drug, a method of treatment, something that will make him return to the other state, the "your child is well" case, and that's that. But if, by any chance he says: "your child is well", the parents, a little comforted, will go home and feel that there's no real problem. This, I believe, is one way of illustrating this state of mind in science, of wanting to disregard experience and state everything in terms of purely rational standards that are expressed and embodied by specialists.
This brings us to the second point, the second flaw which is inherent in the scientific method. It's the analytical attitude which, of course—as I'm well aware—was necessary for the development of this type of knowledge. The practice of dividing every piece of reality, every problem, into simple components to better to solve them. And this tendency to specialization, as we know, has become increasingly important. Each of us only grasps a tiny piece of reality. As a result, each of us is perfectly powerless to grasp, to understand and to take action in any of the important issues of ones life, the life of the community or the life of the world. Because any important question has an infinite number of different aspects, its division into small slices of specialization is perfectly arbitrary, and what a single specialist can't do, a symposium of a hundred specialists from different specialities will not be able to do either.
In the end, through its own internal logic, through the evolution of the analytical method, we've reached a point where, I believe, independently of the ecological crisis, there is a crisis of knowledge. In this sense, I believe that, if there hadn't been the ecological crisis, in ten or twenty years of time we'd all have realized that there was a profound crisis of knowledge, even in the sense of scientific knowledge. In the sense that we don't manage anymore to integrate a vision of the world into a coherent image—since, after all, that's what we want to achieve—into a vision of reality that enables us to interact favorably with it from our own little slices of speciality. This is a second aspect that seems to me to have become harmful.
There's a third, related to this one. It's that specialties order themselves spontaneously, according to objective criteria of subordination to one another; so that we see a stratification of society, starting with the stratification of science, according to so-called objective criteria of subordination of specialties to one another. In this sense, science, in its current practice as it has developed over the last three or four hundred years, seems to me to be the main ideological support for the stratification of society, with all the alienations that this implies. I believe that, in this respect, the scientific community is a kind of microcosm that fairly accurately reflects the trends within global society.
Furthermore, fourth point, is the separation in science between knowledge on the one hand, and desires and needs on the other. Scientific knowledge is developed according, supposedly, to an internal logic of knowledge, according to so-called objective criteria for the pursuit of knowledge. But in fact, it moves further and further away from our true needs and desires. The most striking thing in this respect seems to me to be the state of relative stagnation in which agriculture has found itself in the four hundred years since the development of the exact sciences, when compared with fast-growing branches such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and, more recently, biology. Agriculture, after all, has been the basis of our so-called civilized societies for ten thousand years. It is truly society's basic activity, from which we derive most of the resources we need to satisfy our material needs. One might have thought that, with the development of new knowledge methods, they would be applied to agriculture as a matter of priority, freeing us, to some extent, from having to work excessively to satisfy our basic needs. This has not been the case. Even today, I believe that for most of us, agriculture is not considered a science. It would seem unworthy of a brilliant mind to care about agriculture. Now precisely, with new scientific techniques, the first thing to ask is "What's the use of science, the content of the science we're developing?" I believe that among the most important topics to be studied by a new science will be the development of new agricultural techniques that are much more efficient and, above all, much more viable in the long term than the techniques that have been used until now.
Here are a few criticisms of current scientific practice. Based on what I've heard of some innovative attempts, I'm convinced that we can overcome these limitations of current science, and that we can therefore develop a science that is directly and constantly subordinated to our needs and desires; in which there is no longer an arbitrary separation between scientific activity and all our modes of knowledge; where there is no longer any arbitrary separation between science and our lives. At the same time, the human relations promoted by scientific activity would change completely. Science would no longer be the property of a caste of scientists, science would be science of all people. It would not be done in laboratories by certain highly regarded individuals to the exclusion of the vast majority of the population. It would be done in the fields, in the gardens, at the bedside of the sick, by all those who take part in production in society, that is, the satisfaction of our real needs—in other words, by everyone.
So science truly becomes everyone's science. For the New Alchemists, this group I've already alluded to, it's even a technical necessity. Indeed, their intention, their starting theme, was to develop biotechnologies which would allow, with extremely rudimentary means that don't call on the industrial and technological hyperstructure, to create artificial ecosystems highly productive in food. Technological means in the ordinary sense—such as the introduction of a continuous source of energy (electricity), or the supply of food by chemical industries (the fertilizers or feed for livestock or fish)—can be replaced by a sophisticated and comprehensive knowledge of the natural phenomena within these artificial ecosystems. To achieve this, they convinced themselves that this could not be achieved within existing academic structures. In fact, it wasn't even possible to do it inside closed laboratories, it could only be done in the field, because the development of these techniques had to take into account subtle ecological factors that vary enormously from one ecological microsystem to another—of which there are thousands and tens of thousands of them in a country like the United States, where they pursue their operations.
So, to develop these methods, we need to develop them in the field and everyone must join in virtually. The New Alchemists are in contact with millions of Americans interested in agrobiology, organic gardening and farming, through the intermediary of their Organic Gardening and Farming magazine7. Among them are thousands of small people, small farmers, small gardeners, who have written to them to join their research into the development of such ecosystems. So, currently, it's not just a matter of ideas in the air, but of things that are being done in a country as radically opposed to this kind of spirit as the United States. Once again, by cause of concrete details that John Todd, one of the founders of the New Alchemists, told me, it's absolutely impossible to promote this kind of research within existing academic structures. They've tried, but it's impossible.
Although 99% of the population doesn't have access to science, it should be noted that they have a greater respect for it than you do, and this is based on a fact that is not simply due to ignorance. For example, we could ask the question: How many people in this room owe their lives to the fact that there was this science you decry, that there have been spin-offs in medicine, for example? Which are not acupuncture, which are not the repositioning of pelvic organs, but simply penicillin and a number of other decisive things that led to an increase in the world's population. A number of us, we're living—your group is called Vivre—we're living because of this cursed science.
It's true that we're at risk of destruction, and it's only natural that we should reflect on what science is today, in the hands of guys who seem to have come from the depths of time, because they are barbarians who are ready to use it to destroy humanity. And that's true. But I find that part of this consideration is destroyed by the kind of absolute nihilism, absolute negation, that you profess with regard to science. I noted a number of peremptory assertions in your presentation that take away some of the weight of your position.
You have expressed the doubt, based on your relations with certain people at CERN, that the research done, for example by us, that we think that it has no military application; this is something that can perfectly be doubted. Maybe we're all idiots, but I don't think so. Really, I don't think any colleague would take the slightest risk in coming to us and saying: What are the concrete risks for what you're doing to have military applications?
And that brings me to something something that seems essential to me. You asked the question: what's the point of mathematics? We must continue: what is music for? What's the purpose of a number of activities that people do simply for pleasure? Seriously, what is your conception of the human? It's true that a certain number of people have activities that the masses don't have access to, but I don't think that by deciding that Mr. Einstein shouldn't do research, or that Mr. Evariste Galois shouldn't do research, that you'll succeed in enriching the lives of people who are neither Galois nor Einstein. There are indeed problems for people who are neither Galois nor Einstein and who are part of large institutions, where the industrial organization of research poses considerable problems and considerable anxieties. But I find that in your total rejection of science, you're joining Planète8, you join a certain number of, you know what I'm thinking of, you're joining a certain number of obscurantists.
I apologize, as I'm receiving you in the stomach for the first time, I can't criticize your positions, but there's a lot about you that merits debate.
If you'll allow me, I'd like to say a few words about your intervention.
You accuse me of anti-science nihilism. In fact, it's true that insofar as by science we mean scientific activity as it is practiced today, I've come to the conclusion that, in many respects it is one of the main negative forces at work in today's society. This was probably not the case two hundred years ago, and perhaps not even even a hundred years ago. Today, I believe the situation has greatly changed. But then again, as I said earlier, I think that today's scientific activity is likely to change very, very profoundly. I don't think this will happen without most of the current scientific sectors simply withering away. I'm absolutely convinced that current research—which involves cataloguing elementary particles corresponding to such and such operators in the Hilbert space, or the mathematical research I've been involved in so far—will wither away, not by an authoritarian decree from me or anyone else, but spontaneously. And this, when the current structures of society will collapse, when the cogs no longer work, because the mechanisms of industrial society are self-destructive—they destroy the environment, and fortunately for us I'd say. So they can't go on working indefinitely, they set irreversible processes in motion. So that there will be a collapse of our current lifestyles. When our cities, for example, collapse, when no one pays the wages that have enabled us, thanks to esoteric scientific activity, to buy in the shops the groceries we need, to buy clothes, to pay our rent and so on—and even if we had the money, it would be of no use to us, because we'll have to dig it out of the ground ourselves, because there won't be enough left—at that exact point, the incentive to study elementary particles will disappear entirely.
I myself was quite fanatical, if you will, about research. I was really very captivated; there are noble passions. But even supposing physicists remain—despite the extremely strong pressure of material necessities of survival—who would dream of continuing their research, we mustn't forget that a particle accelerator isn't made from a few pieces of wood. It's something that requires considerable social effort, and I doubt very much that the other members of society will be willing to distract themselves from the activities that are really necessary to establish a world worth living in, to rebuild particle accelerators and the like. In any case, I believe that, for accelerators and other such devices, the general public has never been consulted. Moreover, I would add that if it had been, it would probably have been consulted in such a way as to ensure that it would have said "Amen!"
After the lessons, that each of us who survives, will be able to draw from the events accompanying the collapse of industrial society, I believe that mentalities will have profoundly changed. That's why scientific research will cease, it won't be because this or that person has decided that we will no longer be doing scientific research from now on. It will simply cease, as something that, by general consensus, has become entirely uninteresting. We won't want, simply, I'm convinced, to do scientific research. That doesn't mean we won't want to do any research at all. Research, our creative activities, will go in completely different directions.
I'm thinking, for example, of the kind of research being carried out by the New Alchemists with thousands of little people who have no university training. These are fascinating things that will challenge the creativity of each and every one of us in ways as profound and perhaps as satisfying as ultra-specialized laboratory work is today.
We've been raised in a certain ambient culture, in a certain system of references. For many of us, according to the conditioning from elementary school onwards, we see society as we know it as the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the nec plus ultra. At least, most scientists do. But we forget that there were hundreds and thousands of civilizations before ours, with cultures that were born, lived, flourished and died out. Our civilization—or rather, industrial civilization, because I no longer consider it my own—will be no exception.
One thing that goes beyond this remark, in my opinion, is to realize, that this is a process that's really in front of of us, in which we're already engaged in right now. In fact, the ecological crisis, the civilizational crisis is not something to happen in another ten or twenty years: we're right in the middle of it. In fact, I believe that more and more people are realizing this. It's something that's struck me more and more over the last few weeks and months, the extent to which people for whom we were least expecting it, started feeling it. We scratch just a little bit underneath the superficial things they say, and we notice there's a real sense of disarray about, let's say, the overall sense of the ambient culture.
Here is to the accusation of nihilism. So, there's some truth in it if applied to a certain form of scientific activity. I've somewhat forgotten the other objections you were making?
We owe life to science!
I think there are some useful things to say on the subject. Assuming that some people here owe their lives to science, it's fair to say that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam who also owe their deaths—and their deaths under atrocious conditions—to this same science. This is a rather facile argument because there are many people who say: "Science has been misused, the remedy is to still do the same kind of science, but now to put it in the hands of people who will use it well." We'll be told, for example, that medicine, biological research, etc., is the kind of science that is mostly used for good. Here again, there's an easy way to respond by saying: the same kind of fundamental research in biology which, through engineering work will, for example, be used to develop vaccines against polio or other diseases, this same kind of fundamental research, through other engineering work, will be be used to produce strains of highly pathogenic microbes, highly resistant to all antibiotic agents, and will be used in bacteriological warfare. So, in the end, research has no smell, and whatever the intentions of those promoting a certain type of research—at least the type of research that is currently being promoted within our traditional science—experience has shown that it is always divertible and diverted.
As I've given the example of bacteriological warfare here, we could say that the two examples are somewhat similar. In the sense that they can be linked to an accident, namely the existence of military apparatuses, the existence of antagonistic nations. But let's suppose that these difficulties are eliminated, that the dream of the global citizens is realized, that there would be a world government. Or suppose that the United States, Russia or China, as the case may be, had absorbed the entire planet, that there was only one country left. Or suppose that the planet is smaller than it is and that it solely consists of the United States, or let's suppose that the United States, through an extreme isolationist policy is able to live in closed loop, and let's look at what's happening over there. I would argue that, in fact that the problems are deeper than that, that the essential problems still arise even if there were no longer any military problems.
Take, for example, the antibiotics, which you mentioned, precisely because they effectively save human lives. What do we see about the use of of antibiotics? We see that, when we have the slightest cold, any ailment whatsoever, we go to the doctor. What does he prescribe? Antibiotics. In fact, for a simple case of fatigue, very often he prescribes antibiotics. It seems he is under some kind of social pressure, namely, his client expects him to prescribe each time the remedy that is likely to bring about an improvement as quickly as possible. And this, without prejudice to what will happen in the long term. Any biologist will tell you, you don't need to be a genius to know that, and even I know that while not a biologist, that the routine use of antibiotics is an absurdity. Indeed, through this practice, we contribute to the formation of strains of microbes in our bodies that will develop resistance, precisely to the antibiotics we take. Such that, in truly serious cases where urgent intervention using antibiotics could save our lives, we risk being left out in the cold. Now, we're in a situation where it's difficult to assess the benefits or advantages of antibiotic use. Which outweighs the other? Do the tens of thousands of lives saved by the use of antibiotics outweigh, say, the millions of organisms whose natural resistance to microbial agents has been weakened by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics?
I'm not going to settle this issue, but I'd simply say that the question here is not a question of technology, it's not a question of knowledge. It's quite clear that biologists have the necessary knowledge to decide, right now, that the use that doctors make of it, in the clinic and in their day-to-day practice, makes no sense. It's a question of lifestyle. It's a question of civilization. In fact, I'm not saying that we must necessarily ban antibiotics in an future ideal society. Antibiotics are fungi that can be produced with extremely rudimentary means, without using the large-scale hyperstructures of heavy industry. Antibiotics could well be used in a highly decentralized society of communities of a few hundred or a few thousand inhabitants living in relative autarky. It is possible and probable that antibiotics will continue to be used in post-industrial societies, at least in some of them. Just because they were produced in our current Western scientific culture does not mean that there should be a blanket ban on this kind of process. I think that we have to judge on the evidence, and that it's not a matter of theoretical work to be done now, namely: to separate the wheat from the chaff in the body of our scientific knowledge and the techniques currently available. This is, I believe, a job that will be done day-to-day, according to the needs of the moment. In other words, it's a job that will not be done by a few specialists, biologists, doctors, psychiatrists, physicists, etc. It will be done by everyone, as and when the need arises. We'll see what we need from the great mass of scientific knowledge—most of which I'm convinced is perfectly useless and will wither away completely.
What about relations between CERN and the military?
I have no secret information on this subject. I wasn't claiming to be talking about, let's say, any real, official, or occult relations, between CERN and the military apparatus. I have no knowledge of such things. I wanted to talk about the image that the name CERN has on a large part of the more or less educated public, myself included. The name itself: Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaires [European center for nuclear research]; the fact that it's an organization that brings together a number of countries; the prestige attached to it, which I'm sure you won't deny; the fact that it's research concerns at least the atom, even if it's not "nuclear research"; and that, linked to the public's growing preoccupation with, precisely, the atom, including the peaceful atom. All this creates a certain resonance with CERN that cannot be denied. Except that, as far as I'm concerned, in any case, the kind of research, the kind of scientific practice that is pursued at CERN—as at any other scientific institution today, but even more so because of the general connotations of atomic research with the perils to our survival—all this has the effect of creating discomfort, for many people I believe, and for me in particular.
What about Evariste Galois?
He's dead, poor fellow.
You've pointed out a lot of bad things and I agree with you that they should be changed. The question is: what does this have to do with science? You point out that many scientists are greedy, honor-seeking, hierarchical and so on. Is this really different among artists, farmers, politicians and others? Similarly, you point out many deplorable things on a human level: people are committing or about to commit suicide, have nervous breakdowns. Here again, is it any different among politicians, businessmen, etc.? And is science responsible for these misfortunes? Is it only science that makes people greedy or suicidal?
To take one example, there have been poets who have written some very beautiful things without having any communication with, say, their wives. Do you think that science is really responsible for this lack of communication? I think it's instead a specificity of human nature, and I think it's bad. We have to fight against it, but it has nothing to do with science.
And finally, about wars, about Vietnam. We all agree that it's a tragedy. But is science responsible? What I mean is, three thousand years ago, do you think it was fundamentally different? Thank you.
I fully agree with you that most of the aspects of scientific practice that I've highlighted—at least some of them—are not specific to the world of scientific research. I don't think that there are necessarily more suicides, say, among mathematicians than in other professions. Why did I talk about it? It's simply because, despite everything, we talk better about the world we know first-hand. And I mentioned it, because there's a certain myth, that things are better in the scientific community, that, for example, scientific activity is necessarily a source of satisfaction, pleasure and joy. Meanwhile, in a number of cases, it can be shown that it is precisely scientific activity that is a source of constraint, repression and drama. I know of other cases in my personal practice that are, let's say, less extreme than this one. But it's in order to counter certain myths that I mentioned these cases. Otherwise, I totally agree with your objection. So, in the end, I think there's a misunderstanding, not an important difference in vision.
As for the other question, I don't think science is the only cause of the rather catastrophic situation we find ourselves in. I said at the outset that it was one of the causes. In any case, if this cause didn't exist, the problems linked, let's say, to man's survival would not exist today. They might arise in a few centuries' time, but they wouldn't arise now. Of course wars like the one in Vietnam could very well take place, and have taken place without the current development of science. What's striking, I think, for a scientist, is the extent to which the most modern techniques are applied in this war. I went to North Vietnam and I was able to talk to the people concerned about the various fragmentation bombs, for example. The fragments, balls, rotate very quickly, so that they can tear flesh more easily, and also so that they can penetrate the air-raid shelters which are dug out all along the streets and roads, for perhaps no care had been taken to close them. And finally, they explode in the air to better hit the civilian population. Moreover, despite the instructions, most Vietnamese, because they want to see what's going on, don't close the holes. So when the bombs go off, these shelters are rendered more or less illusory. Similarly, metal balls have been replaced by plastic ones to make their detection by X-ray impossible. New techniques must therefore be developed to extract these beads from the shredded flesh. The military technology employed in Vietnam is geared more towards mutilating the population than direct extermination, because a mutilated person requires the care of many other people to keep them alive, whereas a person who has been killed requires very little. So there are a number of quite atrocious aspects of technology really linked to research, to the current state of science.
One thing I didn't realize when I started thinking about these issues, is that virtually every major American firms are directly involved in the manufacture of armaments. This is true to a lesser extent for French firms. I don't know about Swiss firms. At the time when I left the institute where I was working—because 5% of the budget was of military origin—I had no problem with the fact that most of the funds came from companies such as Esso, Saint-Gobain and others. But since then, I've discovered that these firms are very directly involved in the manufacture of armaments, all of them having major contracts with the army. In such a way that, in the end, it becomes impossible to distinguish between military research and research per se, and even between, say, general-purpose firms and firms involved in the proliferation of military devices. Eventually, I came to realize that everything was inextricably linked.
By the way, I realize there's a question I haven't answered, perhaps related to Galois. It was the assertion that it was good to pursue scientific research for its own sake, for the pleasure of knowledge, in the same way as one pursues an artistic activity. So there are perhaps one or two things to be said here.
The first is that, in order to understand and appreciate the kind of mathematics that I was doing, for example, just three years ago—even if you bypass the usual channels in teaching, if you go straight to the point, to the essentials—you're looking at something like five to ten years of specialized training. But it's clear that such training is, in the current state of things, the appanage of a tiny minority of the population. Likewise, hundreds of other mathematicians are doing equally esoteric things in their own corners. So that in the end, those who manage to understand the kind of thing I was doing—something I'd been pursuing intensely for a few years—are, what do I know, maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty people in the world, something like that. So, the importance that mathematical activity can have from an artistic point of view... let's say, mathematical activity is very different from the importance of music, for example. To feel music, we don't need long training. In fact, we don't even need to be born yet, because even an embryo, in its mother's womb, already reacts to musical stimuli. I think a lot of people have experienced this, at least my wife did. When there was jazz music, when she was five or six months pregnant, the baby danced in her belly. Of course, when I talk about art here, I'm talking about elementary art, art that we can appreciate, and even make ourselves: music, drawing, pottery, things like that, which require relatively little training. But it's true that in the arts, as in the sciences, as in virtually all human activity, including physical activity, the sports, the competitive aspect is becoming increasingly important. Nowadays, when almost anyone says art, the reflex is to think of people like Rubinstein, Gieseking or Heifetz, or Picasso and so on. In other words, we immediately think of the great virtuosos of art, those who have reached a position of extraordinary prestige. Finally, art becomes the prerogative of a very small number of people who make art for us, by proxy, because it's absolutely out of the question for each and every one of us to do the same in our own lives.
Now, this is another thing we could say on the question of what we mean by a life worth living: it's a life which, precisely, contains its share of creativity, including its share of artistic creativity. It's much more important for each of us to be capable of being an artist in their own field and at their own level, to produce music, to perform it on, say, a harmonica, a piano or a guitar, and to derive direct pleasure from it. This pleasure, I believe, will be infinitely more profound than the pleasure one might derive from listening to a record by Heifetz or Gieseking. It's of a different nature, in any case, it's at another level. Maybe one doesn't preclude the other, this is is unclear. I have the impression that the kind of mentality that prevails among the great virtuosos—which makes them perform, for example, five hours of scales a day, day after day—ends up killing much of the joy they feel in making music. And this is necessary if they are to keep up in the fierce competition between virtuosos. I think it's more or less the same as the competition, sometimes unconscious, between scientists. Competition, which means that people I know, including myself, spend fifteen hours of their day, day after day for a long time, trying to develop mathematical theorems increasingly sophisticated, increasingly esoteric. I have the impression that this type of mentality will disappear in the generations to come.
You have realized that our world is a world where there is no dialogue. Or at least where there is a sad monologue under somewhat speculative appearance. You're calling on us to become aware of this world. Admitting we become aware of this world, like you do, let me ask you the following question. Don't you think there's something more, whatever the mode of civilization, something which is unique to humans: this unsettling freedom to ask questions, to ask why, for example, do the planets revolve around the sun in this way? Why does the seed grow? Why are we sick? Why are we unhappy? This great freedom seems to me to be condemned at the same time as science. Because, in fact, we also have this freedom to say that science is a misfortune. By making us aware that current science is bad, you may be taking away the freedom of others. Perhaps one day science might appear good. In a way, like a pendulum, man is simultaneously cohabited by the angel and the devil. You simply want him to be inhabited by the angel. I'd be delighted, but human history has often shown, hasn't it, that he oscillates between bad and good. Perhaps you're expecting the pendulum will swing in the right direction this time. I hope so with you, but I don't know if this pendulum will be stopped at that position in the future.
One of your questions is whether, by turning our backs on science as it currently practiced, and, possibly, by taking away people's freedom to ask the kinds of questions that current science is asking, we won't be at the same time suppress freedom, or a substantial part of it.
I would like to say in this regard that myself and my friends at Survivre et Vivre are not recommending coercive measures to prevent anyone from doing science. That's not the point. If I predict that science, as it is currently practiced, will wither away, that, for example, that the whole of mathematics, more or less, will disappear in the next few generations, it will be a natural decline, because people will no longer feel motivated to do it. So, to make a parallel on a smaller scale—I believe it was in the first century of our era—the science of hyperplane sections, conic sections and conic bundles had reached such a degree of complexity that the mathematicians of the time thought it was the end of mathematics, because, in any case, going further, things would become so complex that it would be impossible for the human mind to make sense of them. What happened was that, purely and simply, we dropped this kind of speculation, and mathematics has continued along entirely different paths, and it's clear that mathematics has not stopped producing new facts to the present day. In the same vein, I think that the direction of research that has developed over the last 400 years, let's say, in a certain spirit, will wither away just alike, just as the human mind will take very different avenues. Not in a coercive way, simply because it will no longer be practiced. There will be other imperatives linked to our real needs.
I think that agriculture, stockbreeding, decentralized energy production, medicine of a certain kind, very different from the medicine that prevails today, will come to the fore. It's impossible to say which part purely creative joy will play in these new developments. My hope is, it will be a creative development in which there will be no essential difference between conceptual activities and manual physical activities. When people become masters of their own needs to the point where an appreciable part of their creativity remains free—and this will take a time we can't predict, it may be a generation, it may be ten, no one knows—at that point, anyone, not just a certain scientific elite, will be able to devote a significant part of their time to purely creative, purely speculative, purely playful research. Even if we resume research directions that may have been abandoned in the meantime, for example, certain directions in current mathematics or even physics—if society is prepared to take them on, because today's physics isn't just done with your head, it's done with serious instrumentation, with capital outlays, involving the mobilization of significant collective energy—then I have no problem with it; but I think it's absolutely impossible to predict it now. In any case, I agree with you that freedom is an essential criterion for the directions to be taken, well, for me it certainly is. I believe that nothing new will be created without freedom, and even, once again, that the decline of present-day science will increase our freedom, and this will not be at the expense of anyone's freedom.
About your picture of the angel and the daemon, I don't believe in this dichotomy of good and evil. I don't share that view, rather, there's a complex mixture of two opposing principles. If you don't mind, I'd like to do a little philosophical digression on the subject of mathematical thinking and its influence on general thinking. One thing had already struck me before I came to the overall criticism of science almost two years ago: the crudeness, shall we say, of the mathematical mode of reasoning when confronted with the phenomena of life, with natural phenomena. The models provided by mathematics, including logical models, are a kind of Procrustean bed for reality. A special thing about mathematics is that every proposition, putting the logical subtleties aside, is either true or false; there is no middle ground between the two, the dichotomy is total. Actually, this doesn't correspond at all with the nature of things. In nature, in life, there are no propositions that are absolutely true or absolutely false. In fact, to fully grasp reality, it is often necessary to take into account seemingly contradictory aspects, or at any rate, complementary aspects, and both are important. From a more elementary standpoint, no door is ever completely closed or completely open, this doesn't make sense. This dichotomy, which perhaps stems from mathematics, from Aristotelian logic, has really permeated our way of thinking, including in everyday life and in any debate about ideas or even personal life. This is something I've often noticed when talking to people, whether in private or in public. In general, people see two extreme alternatives and see no middle ground between the two. If the person I'm talking to has chosen a certain alternative and I have a vision that lies beyond the one they considers good, they'll immediately accuse me of having chosen the opposite extreme alternative, because they can't see the middle ground.
I think there's an inherent flaw in the mathematical way of thinking and I have the impression that it's also reflected in this Manichaean vision of human nature. On the one hand, there's the good, and on the other, the bad, and in the best case scenario, we see both living side by side. I have the impression that what we call bad is just a natural reaction to a certain number of repressions we've been subjected to since birth; in a way, they're just as natural, just as necessary as, for example, the appearance of fever: a sign that our body is reacting to a microbial invasion. The doctor's task is not to eliminate the fever, but to try to combat the microbial invasion with drugs. This, at least, is the official thesis. Perhaps the task of the physician of the future will be above all to understand the psychosomatic cause of microbial proliferation at this time rather than another, since there are always microbes in the environment, and we're exposed to them all the time: what are the real causes? What stresses have we been subjected to that make us vulnerable? But that's a different kettle of fish. So, I have the impression that the Manichaean vision isn't very good. It's part of the air we breathe with the prevailing culture, and I believe that this vision will continue to change.
You think that this view of right and wrong is air we breathe and that it comes from mathematics. I think the opposite is true. Modern mathematics is younger than all our medieval philosophy or even theology. Because the idea that there's a good God and the Devil, the two adversaries, is very old. It may be that medieval mathematicians of the 15th and 16th centuries were so impregnated with this idea that it was natural to think like this.
About the other example, the doctor, I think that before medicine got to where it is today, people also tried to expel evil spirits, the Devil. So it was the same idea. I just wanted to cast a doubt, I just see it backwards.
The third point is the question: should we use digital or analog data? It's a question we ask ourselves at every level. By digital is meant binary, yes or no, and this is currently very fashionable. Maybe we can say that this idea came from ancient philosophy and infused mathematical language. Let's go for the other one, the analog, continuous scale, which you preferred before; but I wouldn't say that prevalence of digital thinking is a vice that's due to mathematics alone, I would say that mathematics may have inherited it from the past.
Bourbaki is not the originator of mathematics. Bourbaki traces it back to the Greek mathematicians, let's say from Pythagoras onwards. So it's already a very old tradition. Take Euclid, for example, who developed this systematic spirit in absolutely perfect fashion, such as which was taught until not so long ago. It's possible, then, that mathematics has something to do with this state of mind; even if there isn't—I can't swear to it—a causal effect. Finally, the fact that the two things go in the same direction, mathematical dichotomy and Manichaeism, or this tendency to see only two extremes of an alternative, it can hardly be chance. There's certainly a correlation between the two. These things are linked in the dominant culture. This dominant culture, in any case, is not new. I think it's been developing for over two thousand years. I'm not very well versed in history, but, for example, people like Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford9, for example, have precisely studied the ideological ins and outs of science and technology from its very origins. As far as Mumford is concerned, it seems to me that he dates it back already to the time of the Pharaohs, of the great works of Egypt. So, I believe that our ancestors, in this respect, go back quite a long way.
But there was another question I believe?
[inaudible] [...] the part that serves of demystification or denunciation of the role of science and, above all, the motivation of the scientist, even if this is perhaps incomplete. I believe, for example, that we could discuss at length and note the important role that science plays, in my opinion, in preserving the very social structures of our society. I found a little worrying the sort of interpretation that could be derived from your presentation of the solution to this difficulty. The solution of withdrawing, let's say, from work—which is ultimately what society pays you for—is a luxury solution that can only be accessed by very few people, and cannot be erected as an answer. Materially, a worker cannot withdraw from work to develop his sensibility. In my opinion, if a worker doesn't cultivate himself, it's not because he doesn't want to, or doesn't understand what the real issues are; it's because the crushing weight of society—and, of the pace of work, the living conditions to which he is subjected—leave him no other choice. In my opinion, it's not the symptoms that need to be treated, it's the sickness, it's the disease itself. The disease is entirely based in the social structure. In my opinion, it's only by participating in these structural changes that we could one day envision finding a new role either for any individual's sensibility, or for science itself. It's not by a little theorizing—in this case, about the role of science—that we'll be able to find our place. I believe that participation in this struggle is difficult for a scientist, precisely because the fragmentation of social activities makes it difficult. I believe that participation in this struggle can only take place from one's own workstation because the workstation is everyone's weapon, and I don't see why it should be any different for a scientist.
I think there's a misunderstanding in that you think I'm advocating this or that solution. In fact, I've spoken from my personal experience, my personal practice, as an illustration of a type of action, of conclusions, that can be drawn when confronted with certain contradictions. However, it is absolutely not my intention to set myself up as a model for anyone. I realize that the conditions are extremely different, both the so-called objective conditions, and also the subjective conditions, let's say, the state of readiness required to make draconian steps, such as the one I made when I left the institute where I worked, and a little later when I decided to stop scientific research. Which, by the way, doesn't mean I'm not still paid to teach, last year and this year, very esoteric science at the Collège de France [prestigious higher education establishment], and that next year I'll either be teaching at the Orsay faculty of science or research director at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique [CNRS, french national research agency]. In other words, I won't have escaped the contradiction of my scientific status.
In the end, what counts for me is not so much achieving the position of moral purity, which is perfectly impossible within this society—that's one of the many things I've learned over the last two years—what counts is that we are a ferment of transformations, a factor of transformations wherever we find ourselves. Of course, if we find ourselves in a certain professional environment, it doesn't necessarily mean to leave that professional environment. But what I'm convinced is that this transformation won't be achieved by the magic virtue of joining a certain party or, from time to time, handing out leaflets, join certain unions, or cast ballots. I'm entirely convinced that this kind of transformation will start with personal relationships. Insofar that if personal relationships don't change profoundly, nothing will. If we think that personal relationships can only change after structures have changed—which means that everything is postponed until the big D day of the revolution—then the revolution will never come, or the revolution that does come won't change anything. In other words, it will put a technocratic management team in the place of another technocratic team, and industrial society will walk its way just as before.
As an example of relationships that will have to change radically, I'm thinking, for example, of the relationship between teachers and students. I'll be confronted with this situation as early as this autumn. It's the first time in my life that I'll be in a lecture hall with students to whom I should teach for real the mathematics that will prepare them for certain exams, give them certain diplomas, which I'm convinced are useless. First, they're of no use to society as a whole, and second, it's not even clear that they're of any use to those who will have these diplomas, because it's not at all clear that they'll have a job afterwards. Even today, most scientists either refuse to see the problem or, if they do, put a demure veil over it in their relations with students. The relationships between students and scientists are hence traditional teacher-student relations; in other words, they give a technical lecture, the one they've been asked to give, and that's it. When, exceptionally, students ask technical questions, we answer them as best we can, and that's it. As far as I'm concerned, I've decided not to stick to this type of relationship, to no longer separate mathematical teaching from a cards-on-the-table discussion with students—or anyone else who wants to join in—to review: why are we here? What are we going to learn together? Why? What does the exam at the end of this year's program mean? What is its meaning? What is our mutual role, me as teacher and you as students? And finally, deciding together what we're going to do. No doubt, in the first few years, unless the situation matures even faster than I anticipate, it's likely that the majority of students insist that, once these discussions are over, we follow more or less the traditional program and the customary ritual of the exams. It's also possible that they'll decide otherwise, in which case I'll go along with their opinion. In any case, there's the possibility of a dynamic exchange, and a maturing of the general atmosphere.
In fact, I started putting these ideas into practice this very year at the Collège de France, where I had announced, as the first part of the planned mathematics course, a discussion on the same theme as today's discussion. This proposal gave rise to a lively debate among my colleagues at the Collège de France. For the vast majority of them, it was unthinkable that a mathematics course could be partly and officially devoted to a question of this type. In fact, the longer title was: "Science and technology in the current evolutionary crisis. Will we continue scientific research?" So I was putting forward the question of the crisis of civilization, which seems to me to be the urgent issue to be debated at the moment. Now, as perhaps for the first time, or one of the few times that, in this august institution, is raised a truly burning question for the civilization in which we find ourselves, and that we propose to discuss it publicly and in depth, it's practically the only time that the assembled faculty has refused to give its approval to this course. In fact, the vote was something like thirty-five against and nine in favor, and I myself was surprised to find nine colleagues supporting my initiative. This surprise was, I'm sure, much greater among the other thirty-five. From the tone in which this discussion was taking place, it was clear that, for them, it was unthinkable that a scientist in his common sense could fail to be shocked by the kind of proposal I was making for this, supposedly, mathematics class.
This, of course, is just an example, not to say that anyone can do the same thing, but as a concrete example of what, I personally, try to do, to make the most of a simply contradictory situation. Instead of trying to hide these contradictions, I try to explode them as brutally as possible, and this as a way of maturing a certain situation.
You've made constant reference to scientific research, but I have the feeling that you use the term too narrowly. It seems that for you it's mathematics of course, then physics, something like that, at a pinch medical research. But it seems to me that you're ignoring the fact that there's also research in the social sciences, research in the humanities. You talk in apocalyptic terms about what's about to happen to society, to civilization, as if it were fate, something that mankind can't control. I don't agree with you, because people already try to control this evolution. We can already observe the concrete work of advertising agencies, not to mention things much more serious than Coca-Cola consumption. You speak in apocalyptic terms about things that are bound to happen. I think you're wrong there, because if you want to change society in a certain sense—and I totally agree with you that it has to be changed, even if I'm not entirely sure it's in the same direction, but in any case we agree on the principle—I believe, we have to use this damned science, as the gentleman said, so that we too can control this evolution, that you describe with characteristics of fatalism. Additionally, when you say you're going to discuss with the students how you're going to relate to them, you're going to do human science. There are phenomena, called for example pedagogical communication, which one does study with scientific methods. It's not mathematics, but it's science. I'm afraid that inevitably you'll fall back into either religion or science, because either you're making apocalyptic prophecies or you're trying to reinvent with your students science that's already been done.
You speak of an apocalyptic vision of civilization, and this is a term that comes up a lot when we talk about civilization. It's always this same conditioning that makes us think there's only one civilization, as if there weren't hundreds, and as if there won't be hundreds more to come. So, first of all, a point I'd like to reiterate, in my vision at least: it's that we're talking about a certain kind of civilization, which we can well and truly reject, and which we can well and truly predict will disappear like many others. When, almost two years ago, I envisaged the disappearance of civilization, I was still too caught up in my own conditioning: I identified civilization, the only one I knew, with humanity. The destruction of civilization appeared to me as an apocalyptic image of the end of the human species. However, half an hour or an hour ago, I explained that this vision has now entirely changed. The collapse of this civilization is not an apocalyptic vision; it is, let's say, something highly desirable. I even consider it our great good fortune that there is, let's say, a biological basis of human society that refuses to follow the path of the dominant industrial civilization. In the end, the ecological crisis will force us, whether we like it or not, to change our course and develop lifestyles and modes of production radically different from those of industrial civilization.
Also, when you talk about the role of the human sciences, you're saying that there's not only the so-called exact sciences; I'm well aware of that. You also know as well as I do—and this is a very serious criticism that we can make of the human sciences—that they are increasingly trying to mould themselves to the model of the so-called exact sciences, mathematics in particular. In such a way that, to the extent that the human sciences want to achieve true scientific status—since only science according to universally accepted standards is considered serious—these humanities are increasingly confined to a jargon that is often mathematical. We know the influence of numerical tests and quantitative methods, in psychology for example. We could also point out that that a good number of economics treatises, big ones, begin, for two-thirds of the book, with heavy mathematical formalisms whose only purpose is to make them incomprehensible to mere mortals. A professor of economics in Bordeaux literally told a friend of mine that the purpose of this mathematical formalism in a book of his own was to hide the fact that the true scientific content could be understood by anyone with the level of education of the Certificat d'Études [primary education certificate]. We can thus make a very serious reproach to the humanities in this respect.
Moreover, the human sciences are subject to misappropriation, and hence subject to the same criticism as other sciences. For example, in the penultimate issue of Survivre, we go into some detail about the use of anthropology in the South-West Asian war. In fact, American anthropological science is largely at the service of the military: in order to map out the indigenous populations in South-West Asia; in order to study by computer the impact of such and such policy, such as burning crops, for example; in order to know whether the fallout will be more beneficial to American settlement or, on the contrary, resentment might prevail. Studies like these are carried out in the field by anthropologists.
In the end, I don't think there's that much of a difference to be made on the practical and ideological role, between the humanities and the so-called exact sciences, let's say the natural sciences.
I'd like to ask you about the aims of the Survivre movement and what contacts you have with existing movements in the region, such as the Comité Bugey-Cobaye [Bugey guinea-pig committee]10.
What are the goals of the Survivre movement? In the beginning, our vision was apocalyptic and our aim was to fight for the survival of the human species, threatened by the dangers of military conflict and the ecological crisis, caused by pollution and the depletion of natural resources. But in the year and a half of existence, we've evolved quite a bit, and I think the way most of us see our purpose is the following: to help prepare for the transition from one type of civilization to another through immediate transformations. Up until now, our work has mainly been critical. Nevertheless, it's been a long time, six months, since we've been able to see quite clearly that we need to move past critical work to be able to do something in a constructive direction. For example, disseminating information about the community movement on the development of light technology, of biotechnology, in the sense of the New Alchemists; disseminating information on the experiences of new schools like Summerhill11 and things like that. But, between the intention to do it and, let's say, the preparation from the point of view of experience, from the point of view of contact, and so on, there's another step. I think that this transformation, in the content of the journal and our action, will take place gradually, over the coming year or years. I hope that within a year, for example, at least half of the publications we put out, whether newspaper or otherwise, will be in this constructive direction, rather than being purely critical.
As for our relations with the Comité Bugey-Cobaye, well, we're on good terms with them! Five Survivre members took part in Bugey-Cobaye's big party-event last June. We're in fairly close contact with them. We even had someone at the picket in front of the Bugey nuclear power plant for a month or two last autumn. He was a member from the Hérault region, an editor of Le Courpatier12, a small regional ecological newspaper in Provence.
From a practical point of view, one of the useful things we can do, say, as a specific action, particularly because we're a lot of scientists within Survivre and are therefore better placed than many others, is to help denounce a certain number of scientific myth, and we're going to start vigorously in this direction from starting with issue no. 9 of Survivre. Its editorial is devoted to a new critical description of scientism, with the title "The New Universal Church"13.
On the other hand, we believe that a very important phenomenon is taking place. Namely, the growing number of people isolated in their corners, or in their family, or professional environment, who are beginning to be aware of the existence of a real, civilizational, crisis. They feel isolated and thus paralyzed, and we want to contribute to create a network of contacts between these people. In fact, this network is is in the process of being set up through all kinds of factors; I believe that, for example, Fournier's articles in Charlie-Hebdo14 contributes to it, and I think the existence of our group also contributes to it. Moreover, this phenomenon of creating a network of links between previously isolated entities applies not only to individuals, but also to groups. For example, for quite some time, the Survivre group believed it was the only one of its kind to critically analyze science. But we have since realized that similar groups are springing up all over the place. We are particularly familiar with LASITOC15 and another group in the United States, Science for the People16. There are other groups created more or less simultaneously with us and under the same name "survival" in the USA. These groups, each based on a specific aspect of the crisis of civilization, are gradually broadening their starting point along with all kinds of other groups, sometimes starting from very different points. I have the impression that this extremely rapid process will be completed in the coming year. In other words that anyone in Western society, at least anyone who begins to sense quite clearly that something is not quite right from a civilizational point of view, who begins to be gripped by a feeling of incoherence in his own life—but an incoherence with a global meaning—it will be impossible for him to be isolated, he will immediately find himself in this network. It's a process to which a group like ours can make an excellent contribution. These are fairly modest things, which everyone does in their own sphere of activity, but as there are so many people and groups doing it, the overall effect is by no means negligible.
— So, that sounds like a good conclusion to the questions, because I think we can go on all night, but we've got to come to an end sometime. I think we can thank you very much, because a lot of very profound points have been treated and many aspects of these problems are certainly worthy of further reflection. We'll be continuing this kind of discussion next time with another speaker.
— Just if I can add anything? Of course, if there are people here who would like to continue, let's say, discussing certain points in particular—I don't know, can we do it here on the spot?
— It would be better to continue downstairs.
— Right. Because in my personal experience, in the end, the discussions that take place in small groups, after the fact, once the meeting's adjourned, are more fruitful, are more interesting than the general discussion, which was particularly orderly here, but which in general is much more anarchic, much more chaotic—I see we're dealing with scientists, in other words, disciplined people. [laughter and applause]
Footnotes
-
https://sciences-critiques.fr/allons-nous-continuer-la-recherche-scientifique/ ↩
-
https://sniadecki.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/grothendieck-recherche ↩
-
Archived by archivesautonomies.org ↩
-
The New Alchemy Institute is a group of agrobiology researchers founded by Dr. John Todd and Dr. William McLarney in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA ("The Book of the New Alchemists", ed. Nancy Todd, pub. Dutton, NY, 1977). ↩
-
Internationally acclaimed initiative of semi-professional healthcare workers in rural China (1965–1981), focused on preventive and primary healthcare, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_doctor. ↩
-
Archived by archive.org ↩
-
Planète (1961–1971), a french magazine publishing on the topics of science history, science fiction, fantastic, futurology. ↩
-
TODO: book reference ↩
-
One of the first anti-nuclear group in france, organizing protests against the Bugey power plant construction, such as July 10th and 11th, 1971. TODO: get hands on https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb42564802q ↩
-
See Alexander Sutherland Neill, "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing", pub. Hart, 1960. ↩
-
Archived by archivesautonomies.org. ↩
-
TODO: find it ↩
-
Look At, Search Into, Try Out (LASITOC), an international group promoting critical science founded in 1967. Notably organized a workshop on "Threats and Promise of Science" at the Imperial College in July 1970. ↩