“In a country like ours, obscurantism takes a deceptive form.”

Physicist, Catherine Brickignac, President of the CNRS, was at Haut conseil des biotechnologies and is today an elected member of the Academy of Sciences, where she was permanent secretary from 2011 to 2018. Published at the end of September Back to obscurantism (Le Cherche midi), which relives the way man sought to tame the world around him. With, in particular, an interesting twist on the relationship of humans to light throughout history.

Marian: How do we define obscurantism, and what is the relationship between it and the Enlightenment in our country?

Catherine Preciniak: The French language treasure obscurantism is defined as A political or religious position, belief, or system aimed at opposing the dissemination of enlightenment, scientific knowledge, education and progress, especially among the working classes.” This definition is correct. Remember the Inquisition, burning books to ashes to prevent them from being read. It was necessary to avoid spreading knowledge by all means to enslave people. This, unfortunately, is still true today in some countries. In others, like us, obscurantism takes a more deceptive form. Science spreads freely on the Internet, is theoretically available to everyone, but is presented as an opinion by those who, for ideological or commercial reasons, want to dominate others. However, science is not an opinion, it is based on the scientific method, it does not have an answer to everything, but it is an instrument of understanding that angers those who want to impose their ideas.

About science, I talked about Lysenko: who was he? Is science still subject to ideology in our time? Is it wrong to think that environmentalists’ relationship with nuclear energy is a form of lysinism?