Science, reason and passion

The cultural atmosphere that presided at the origin of classical Western science is briefly discussed. One of the most characteristic features of Western science is the formulation of laws of nature, which lead to a deterministic description in which future and past play the same role. However, these characteristics, especially time reversibility, contradict everything we see around us. Everywhere we see the arrow of time. The recent developments in non-equilibrium physics and in the dynamics of unstable systems lead to a new concept of laws of nature no more associated with “certitudes” as with “probabilities.” This formulation includes the arrow of time and describes an open, evolutionary universe, overcoming the Cartesian duality that puts Humans outside Nature.