Science is a word that comes from Latin which means both knowledge and collective knowledge, upon hearing the word collective we understand that it is something that belongs to everybody and therefore should exist for the benefit of all, is that right?
From the enlightenment until 1914 generally society had a positive outlook towards science and scientists seeing progress, life improvements and advancements in every field; World War I and its destruction changed that perception, once witnessing the destructive capacity of progress, leaving a traumatised humanity, and a trauma persevered through the development of nuclear arsenals and other inventions that led to more sophisticated means of destruction, pollution and come what may. A legacy of this trauma can be the growing anti-science movements around the globe that we are witnessing today, propagation of hoaxes, conspiracies and a disinformation. There is a need to heal that trauma and to restore a covenant between science and humanity and mutual faith. On the one hand acknowledgement and recognition that thanks to science no human society of the past has ever had the health and wellbeing we have today, on the other hand the rejection of those sciences that are being applied to create more sophisticated and efficient ways to deliver war, destruction and pollution, which means gain back science’s etymology, collective knowledge that belongs to all and for the benefit of all.
This year the World Science Day for Peace and Development’s theme is “Science For And WIth Society”, inevitably humanity is moving towards a more interconnected world where more often than not the challenges that we face make national borders irrelevant, its enough to look at global warming, or COVID-19, a very clear example of problems that can be overcome if we put together our collective-knowledge, our science, meaning not only the scholars and researchers, we mean everybody from health practitioners to policymakers to the civil-society through the private sector until science as we know it becomes Open Global Science, as the progress of one becomes progress for all.
“To rethink the links between people and nature, developing powerful tools for bringing people closer to nature by testing and applying integrated approach to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use and sustainable development, making the scientific process inclusive and the outputs of science more readily available for all” UNESCO.
L.Nava