It would be misleading to speak of an anti-scientific mood in public opinion today. Most people support advanced technology or scientific medicine, but it is true that criticism of economic modernization or hospital life is growing. Science is not widely criticized, but the idea of a scientific society is often rejected by science-educated people. We still believe in science, but no longer in progress. I would like to make some comments on this general statement.

Progress means that scientific and technological achievements trigger welfare, freedom and happiness. Condorcet, at the end of the eighteenth century, during the most violent period of the French Revolution and a few weeks before he died, wrote a most enthusiastic hymn to progress, announcing a future of abundance, emancipation and peace. The idea of eternal peace was central to eighteenth-century British, French and German political thought.

Social analysis, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to recent years, has been dominated by the opposition between modernity and tradition, categories which were practically synonymous with good and evil. Modernity was defined as rationalization, both in economic and administrative fields, and as secularization or disenchantment, to use Max Weber's terms, as far as culture was concerned. It was a global view of collective as well as individual life. Modernity was identified with the creative use of reason in all fields, and conceived as domination and mastery of nature, to use Descartes' and Bacon's ideas; also as an instrument of liberation from customs, privileges and prejudices.