{"id":1933,"date":"2022-04-01T12:34:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T12:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gzanotti.com\/?p=1933"},"modified":"2026-01-22T17:18:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:18:48","slug":"the-circulation-of-ideas-in-modern-science-something-acquired-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gzanotti.com\/en\/the-circulation-of-ideas-in-modern-science-something-acquired-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"The circulation of ideas in modern science: something acquired forever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=””]<\/p>\n

The free dissemination of knowledge is probably one of the key aspects of modern science (and in particular of the natural or experimental sciences). It is probably one of the reasons to which it owes its great development in the Western world starting roughly from the beginning of the 17th century.<\/p>\n

This development has undergone a continuous acceleration that has now spread on a planetary level, thanks above all to the ever increasing number of people engaged in scientific research. In the time of Galileo and Newton, the dissemination of research results took place in the short term mostly through exchanges of letters among the few insiders, and eventually ended with the publication of a book, an expensive object at the time reserved for a limited audience.<\/p>\n

The advent of scientific journals, initially favored by the birth of the academies, has allowed the diffusion of information on a large scale. The use of the net has made it extremely fast and widespread.<\/p>\n

\n

The free dissemination of data and ideas concerns basic research, while applied research, which is cultivated above all in private research centers, is generally bound by secrecy, at least until results have been patented or fully exploited for industrial and commercial purposes. However, applied research would be reduced to very little, if he could not make free use of the discoveries of basic research, the latter financed mainly by public institutions or from foundations and donations.<\/p>\n

\n

To date, fundamental research, at least in the Western world, has been essentially free (limited only by the funds available) and the results published and available to anyone. What if in the future this will no longer the case? Let’s imagine for a moment that scientists of the caliber of Heisenberg, Schr\u00f6dinger and other Reich researchers had been forced to keep secret their ideas about quantum mechanics, and at the same time they could continue to enjoy the results of the results published by Einstein, Bohr, Fermi and others. This would have probably given German science a big advantage over the rest of the world and possibly offered Hitler the chance to develop the atomic bomb before everyone else. What has just been said is certainly science fiction, but the fact that today every scientist is free to collaborate, at least in the field of fundamental research, with colleagues from other countries without restrictions, if not that of the will of individuals, and then to make public the results obtained, it is not something we can take for granted. We can already begin to notice sometimes a certain difficulty in collaborating freely with researchers from some countries, perhaps a first indication of the restrictions to which the latter are subject. If the trend of limiting the freedom of dissemination of the results by states that have a significant weight in the scientific field would develop, this attitude would not push others to behave in the same way? The limitations and restrictions on the publication of data and theories in basic research, similar to those already in force in applied research, would mark the beginning of the end of the free diffusion of ideas, the long-term result of which would be a sharp slowdown of the speed of scientific progress.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t seem like something that’s at hand at the moment, but we cannot assume that it will never happen.<\/p>\n

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