Energy and Society A Practical Guide

Umberto Eco s novel The Name of the Rose can also be read as a story of curiosity and its limits. The old, blind monk Jorge was well aware of the reason he deprived his (not only monastic) contemporaries of the Second Book of the Aristotelian poetics of curiosity After all, a philosophy of laughter would change the world and entail tolerance and open-mindedness for new ideas - old, conservative, authoritarian, even fanatic structures would be put to the test. Finally, curiosity wins out in the film based on the book, Sean Connery in the role of Eco s former inquisitor William of Baskerville solves the apocalyptic murder cases - monastery and book, however, burst into flames. Something new is coming. 

But this new does not arise without failures. Sometimes it takes effort sometimes painful delivery processes are necessary - in short, a crisis, which, according to Antonio Gramsci, consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be bom [2].2 However, the new is unstoppable at best, it can be prudently shaped. 

It was mainly the natural sciences that established the new in an unparalleled triumphal procession through history and that pushed it forward again and again, finally accompanied by a justifiably strict scientific theory Do not verify - falsify which Karl Popper claimed in contrast to the positivists. Those who wanted to put forth a hypothesis and wanted to prove it would mostly look for what supported it contradictory findings would gladly be overlooked. Popper elevated the search for error to a principle. Consequently, there were no final truths because the principle was to attempt to disprove each new theory [3]. However, truth was approaching - adaequatio intellectus et rei, which was what Thomas Aquinas called it. 

But science either remained in the ivory tower for centuries or threw itself into the arms of the ruling class, which had the power and the means to satisfy the craving for recognition and the urge to discover. At the same time, the findings in science meant 

Not only Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project, Durrenmatt s play The Physicists have changed the (self-) conception of serious science or represent symbols for this change of mind-set. Science is responsible for what it realizes, discovers, and invents. It is responsible for the effects it has, for how it is used, and for what consequences it has for humankind. Science must leave the ivory tower of unprejudiced but responsibility free (if not irresponsible) knowledge. Earth has reached a point where science must assume responsibility for its further existence, where it must intervene. It is not just a question of not being allowed to do all we are able to do (contrary to the viewpoint of the American Christian Right, which claims that God has created the world in such a wonderful way that humankind will not be able to destroy it is disproved daily), but it is also a question of science, primarily natural science, making greater efforts than ever to explain what has been researched. Science must intervene - but those who want to intervene successfully must want to be understood. 

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Johannsen B, Narasimhan DVS (eds) (1992) Preparation of kits for Tc-radiopharmaceuticals. International Atomic Energy Agency lAEA-TECDQC-649. Vienna Robbins PJ (1985) Chromatography of Tc-99m-radiopharmaceuticals - a practical guide, 2nd printing. Society Nuclear Medicine, New York Theobald AE (1990) Quality control of radiopharmaceuticals In Sampson CB (ed) Textbook of radiopharmacy theory and practice. Gordon and Breach, New York, pp 115-148... 

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