Letn. 15 Št. 3 (2020)
Articles

Peace through science: hope or utopia?

Alyaa S. Omar & Sawsan F. Ghareeb Almamori , Iraq
University of Baghdad

Objavljeno 2020-09-11

Povzetek

Building peace through science stems from the idea that everything can be explained by science. Descartes mainly developed this thought which considers that man has the faculty of arriving at absolute truth by reason. This approach assigns to the sciences the task of contributing to conflict resolution: the social sciences determine the sources of aggression between individuals and between societies, the pure physical sciences develop non-lethal weapons, the chemical sciences work on impulses. aggressiveness and political science lead us to a sustainable and peaceful society system. It is this philosophy of science for peace that is expressed by the Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge adopted by the World Conference on Science on July 1, 1999.  According to this approach, scientific thinking is, in essence, knowing how to look at problems from different angles, looking for explanations for natural and social phenomena by constantly subjecting them to critical analysis. Science is thus based on free critical reflection, essential to democracy.