Прогресс фундаментальных научных концепций и деятельность Международной академии наук (здоровье и экология)

Президент Ìеждународной академии наук (Здоровье и Экология), Èнсбрук, Àвстрия

“We should not expect to be able to solve the problems of the future just with the tools of the past. We have to respond to the fact that obviously the relevant problems are complex as well in their origin and as in their consequences"

• a)    Therefore there is not only a need for higher and higher specialized knowledge. We need scientific tools to deal appropriate with the interdependences between the different scientific disciplines. This awareness can be understood as a new paradigm for science. It seems to be generally accepted.

• b)    Science is just a prerequisite for more appropriate answers. Therefore we need such paradigmatic changing in technology, not only an increase of the efficiency of given techniques.

Therefore we need a better interaction between science, application and the decision makers e.g. politicians and stakeholders in industry etc. This was a topic of the European Forum Alpbach this year – organized by the Austrian Ministry of Science. Helga Nowotny, President of the European Research Council (Brussels) brought it on the point: We have to respect the three C: “Communication, communication, communication”. She recommended that scientists should qualify them primarily with highly specialized research and should learn later to understand the terminology of other scientific disciplines including humanities and social sciences, but of economy and politics too.

But how realistic is the expectation that this ongoing can cause the so urgently needed “paradigmatic technological progress”?

We are in an untypical status of paradigm shift.

Th. Kuhn introduced the term “paradigm”. It can be understood as worldview or the used ontology in science. We can distinct between “normal science” and “paradigmatic science”. Normal science is using the epistemological offers of the given paradigm. Paradigmatic science focuses on the development of a new paradigm and its application with additional epistemological tools. The new paradigm got the chance to replace the old paradigm within a “bloody fight” because of the lack on power of the old. But Th. Kuhn could explain that no paradigm will be the final / true ontology. It is just the actual preferred one because of the increase of power in relation to the former paradigm. Therefore there should be no scientific reason that an efficient paradigm must be replaced by the new paradigm. Two or more scientific world views should exist parallel and applied depending on the problem which should be solved. The parallel existence of QuantumTheory and Relativity Theories demonstrates the practicability of this option.

We are now in an untypical status of a progress of the paradigmatic status. The limitations of power of the given paradigms in natural and non natural sciences to deal with the most urgent problems in daily life, ecology, economy, health etc. are obvious. Therefore the “new paradigm” of a complex world is widely accepted even between scientists. But there are no relevant discussions about the need of paradigmatic research. This has curious consequences: Leading scientist use especially in the communication with the public (and scientists outside of the highly specialist community) terms which include implicit assumptions which are not covered by the official paradigm: One example: Ralph Steinman, how received posthum the Nobel Price for Medicine, pointed out. “They [dendritic cells] constantly prove the environment, search for hazards and if they have recognized them they … teach the immune system what to do.” He is describing processes similar to activities of entities like policemen: Such processes are based on abilities and effects of an idealistic ontology. But the actual accepted paradigm of natural sciences has no idealistic positions, terms, abilities etc.

The dilemma of communication and interdisciplinarity versus the need of higher and higher specialization: Empathy as substitute of knowledge

The key problem of the transfer from science to application is the same as the key problem between different scientific disciplines and the comprehensive understanding of problems: We need more communication. But communication is only possible if you understand your partner. And this communication should take place between experts which are more and more specialized in smaller and smaller sectoral disciplines. Actually even experts of different fields in medicine have extreme problems just to understand each another. But we need a communication between natural and non naturals scientific disciplines. They have not only totally different terms. Very often the same term covers a not identical content.

Therefore the carrier of the ideal scientist of the 21st century calls for a specialist in a subdiscipline which would learn to understand as many other disciplines as possible – natural and not natural ones. But this is very difficult: Such a person

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has not to extend only his vocabulary e.g. if a psychologist is willing to understand a physicist and vice versa. We have to take in consideration: As Einstein teaches us: Each scientific term is a free invention of the human mind to deal better with the given world but on the basis of a special world view, paradigm or – ontology.

Therefore the “ideal scientist of the 21st century” should learn to “think with the head of the other” – This needs to deal with epistemology, ontology and logic too – as it was common for the natural scientists of the 19th and early 20th century. But there is no time – and no money - for the scientist during his carrier at the university for these prerequisites: Therefore our actual scientific based interdisciplinarity focus just on such topics in which the differences in the content of the terms of the different disciplines seem to be not relevant. So very relevant questions are excluded automatically – just because of a system -immanent principles of communication: We prefer to speak about topics which can be handled with terms which are understood by us and our partner.

There is one relevant exception we know from applied medicine: We call it “empathy”: Especially a good general practitioner has to integrate aspects of different natural sciences but of psychosocial, cultural, economic and daily life aspects into the understanding of health and illness of an individual, too. He has to do daily what science is not able to do. Therefore we call “medicine” an “art”. We have no idea about the principles of the related processes in the brain. But we know that this ability is depending on complex experiences over many years and an open mind to listen with patience to information about many aspects. Such an art can be observed similar within members of interdisciplinary teams. Therefore such teams can show surprisingly result. But art is not science. As long as we are not able to explain the related processes with adequate terms we cannot teach others. Therefore “empathy” is just a temporary help – not the final solution.

Dilemma two: Indicators guide unconsciously but effective

The above statement of the natural scientist Ralph Steinman with the implicit use of idealistic aspects/terms causes an additional question: Where is this difference coming from between the explanations of scientific results to the public and the insisting in a dogmatic ontological position?

Maybe the used indicators are one (of many) reason. We use indicators to measure the effect of science and of application. But indicators are not only indicators: They guide processes in economy, but in science too. They do this system immanently, unconsciously and often against the officially accepted goals and therefore into the “old”/ “wrong” direction (e.g. the GNP see Stiglitz et al):

And one consequence of the used indicators in science are dramatically contra productive to reach the goal of paradigmatic progresses in science and technology: especially impact factor points and similar indicators as basis for the ranking of universities, but of individual scientist too. Therefore scientists have only the chance to survive in a university setting if they publish and publish as quick as possible and in journals which are high ranked. And the high ranked journals are the journals of the high specialist sectoral disciplines and they exclude contributions about epistemological considerations.

Especially young scientist have really no chance to deal with a paradigmatic topic. And the pressure to “bring points” for the university guides their intentions more and more to research topics which let expect quick publications. These tendencies support the focus on improvement of “normal science” and of “normal technological progress”.

And we deal – effective - with the long term goal to develop a theory which allows to link natural and non natural sciences on the level of causality. I remind my Sechenov Lecture 2004. .