Scienza e conoscenza, etica e cultura: la prospettiva della fisica

Doplicher, Sergio

La Matematica nella società e nella cultura, Série 1, Tome 3 (2010) no. 2, pp. 271-309

Résumé

With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, twentieth century Physics brought to evidence in a striking way an aspect of our relation to nature, which has been always neglected in the history of thought, and is still largely ignored nowadays: our thinking must adapt itself, often reluctantly, to the order of nature, and especially it must adopt mental schemes which are suggested by nature, but are foreign to the ways of thinking and to the intuitions to which we have been led by evolution. We will try to illustrate this point in a way which is accessible also to the reader without a scientific preparation, in an exposition where only few equations appear; and we will briefly touch, in more personal final considerations, some general consequences on ethics and on the role of culture.