Are you more of a historian or more of a scientist?
I am increasingly aware that over the years your originality as a scientist declines, but you improve as a historian by having more experience… As long as your brain works.
Is a scientific genius the improved summary of the sum of geniuses that precede him?
From the sum of the geniuses and the animals…
¿…?
Our Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal…
Aragonese and professor in Barcelona.
…he revolutionized medicine not only thanks to those who preceded him in the study of the brain, but also thanks to the chickens, which he dissected daily in the laboratory…
Thank you, chick friends: you save lives.
…and the brains of the unborn.
They had no lives, but they saved others.
When praised for his genius, Newton said: “I walk on the shoulders of giants,” referring to his scientific predecessors; but Cajal also walked on his boat.
You ranked the geniuses: Newton, Darwin, Einstein… Is the order still valid?
As I delved into the history of science these years, I have been discovering that Darwin has been the one who has been gaining the most integers.
He was also an excellent person and a great family man; not like Einstein.
Einstein dedicated himself to science and humanity, but mistreated his family; Darwin was great as a scientist and as a person.
Was Einstein more cosmic than human?
Newton’s laws, even transcended by Einstein’s, remain valid here and now. What Einstein discovered, however, is valid here now and on Venus or Andromeda and the cosmos. What Darwin said is not certain to be useful for life outside the planet.
Are you sure there is no extraterrestrial DNA?
The fortuitous solution that arose on Earth and Darwin intuited (today we know it is DNA) to transmit genetic inheritance does not have to be the same on other planets.
And Freud? Fallen from the altar of science?
He has lost a lot to Darwin. No one seriously questions Darwin today and, on the other hand, Freud as a scientist is questioned.
Was Freud a scientific ideologist?
It is a unique case. Although today we know that many of his solutions are not correct, he opened a field of inquiry regarding dreams, and that is also doing science.
Is Carlson’s Silent Spring science: the first ecological science?
It is foundational and scientific to the extent that it uses scientific arguments with rigor in its criticism of the chemicals we use and poison nature.
Does Spain hurt you in science?
The history of science in Spain is that of the land of lost dreams.
Are we still snoring in an ignorant nap?
In the 16th and 17th centuries, science in Spain is not bad; but it is a science mixed with technology, because it was necessary to deal with astronomy; and mathematics, at least so that the Spanish sailors knew how to find their way to America.
We discovered it thanks to the Chinese compass.
Our 19th century in science… is a horror.
From Torrente and tenttieso.
Only Cajal is saved.
Scientists still cite it in many Contras.
With democracy we have enjoyed a certain flourishing. And what we have in the 21st century is incomparably better than the past.
But…? There is always a but.
But, even so, in science you have to be the first for it to be a source of wealth and power, and we are not the first.
In nothing?
There are exceptions such as the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands, but we still have a long way to go in almost everything.
Any remedy?
It is not enough to advertise the public resources that we allocate to I D i, but we need a relationship with the industry in a strong public-private connection, which raises new problems and implements solutions between science and business.
We are leaders in gastro and hospitality.
But the industry dependent on scientific knowledge is still very poor and without strong companies there is no advanced science.
Because?
History shows this: look at the birth of high energy physics in the 1930s in the USA.
Bell Labs?
They invented the cell of civilization: the transistor, which today is the chip. And with it the microwave radiation background is discovered…
…The big bang! Wouldn’t we know how the universe began without Grandma’s radio?
Without a prosperous company that sells and makes money there is no advanced science, and vice versa.
What will be the next big bang?
Biotechnology will allow eugenics for those who can pay for it and will give offspring with greater capabilities.
