“The future is no longer configured”, Etienne Klein

Accustomed to divulging science in his programs on France Culture, Etienne Klein, a guest of Cercle Humania, did not hesitate to decipher nuclear fusion or quantum physics during a recent dinner. But beyond his capabilities as a physicist, he wanted to take the approximately 120 guests – business executives and HRDs – present at the Maison des Centraliens into another field. That of the philosophy of science, his other passion, and also of philosophy itself. Because today it is necessary to face the uncertainties that the world entails. What will be the evolution of climate change in the years to come? What will be the contributions of innovations such as nuclear fusion, as opposed to traditional fission, as a source of energy, and quantum physics to the billions of calculations performed by new computers? And what attitude, individual and collective, will citizens adopt in the face of this new reality?

How to manage in times of great uncertainty

Before answering these questions, Etienne Klein wanted, as often, to step aside, to praise the merits of uncertainty. Not only ” Kant said that an individual’s intelligence can be measured by the amount of uncertainty he can endure.he remarked, but in addition, uncertainty has a virtue. As proof of this, the novel by Hervé Le Tellier, The anomaly, Goncourt Award 2020. Due to a time warp, passengers on a Paris-New York flight actually know what has already happened to them in the future. Under these conditions, free will is abolished, since nothing can be done in the face of events already written … This certainty, this future already configured therefore means that the individual no longer has freedom.

Difficult to project

But the difference between past situations – and Etienne Klein takes in this sense the example of the fantasies and projections that, since the 1980s, surrounded the arrival of 2000 – and the present, is that “ the future is no longer configured he says. A concept that can also take the form of a question: Does the future already exist in the future? you ask. Yet no one wants to project himself anymore, or as he humorously says: ” Nobody, not even young people, wants to grow old! Another analogy, that of the alpinist, and Etienne Klein is one of them, enthusiastic on the climb, because there is a goal to reach, but depressed on the descent, since he always moves a little further from the summit. But we would be, given the latest scientific data on climate change, in this phase of descent. Since we did not take the necessary measures early enough, in the industrial age, to avoid it, we are forced to suffer it and to consent to much greater efforts to try to counter the catastrophe, and this for an uncertain outcome, which we risk not seeing, for di more. Nothing very attractive or engaging about any of this. In fact, in general, individuals agree to make sacrifices in the present, but on the condition that they derive consolation from it, in the form of dividends to be collected in the future …

“Uncertainties can become a lever for action”, Julia de Funès

The end of progress

” I also note that in the general discourse the word progress, so used in the past to describe a different and radiant future, is no longer valid., He adds. Ithe has been replaced by the word innovation. Or innovatio, in Latin, from which it originates, means what needs to be changed in an arrangement – but in order for it to last. Thus, the notion of innovation has replaced that of progress, yet it is its opposite! In other words, as Etienne Klein does, that intellectuals and academics have left a vast field of reflection and a new discourse uncultivated, while politicians must, nevertheless, convince citizens to make the individual efforts necessary today to fight climate change. and the guarantee of a collective future. But how to think about the future since ” we are glued to the present, he continues. D.In fact, when we look at the stars, the light they send us is already off. She is in the past. And no one would want to go back, as the past did not contain any of the advantages, especially in medicine, that we enjoy today.. “

However, he finds a source of satisfaction in going back and forth between present and past: the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022, obtained by the French Alain Aspect, with the American John Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, for their contributions to technology. quantum. ” It was time! The first conclusive test of one of the fundamental paradoxes of quantum mechanics dates back to his thesis “, Explains of Alain Aspect, 75 years old today. Progress that has given rise to many vocations for physicists and which he describes in detail. Applied to quantum computers, these functions, greatly facilitating the calculations “vthey changed everyone’s life, including HRDs “, He advances, to hasten to add:” But I’m not a working life specialist and I had 4 out of 20 in oral economics! He understands, however, that the responsibility of employers and HR departments is great, if only to ensure that employees find meaning in their jobs and also understand that it is likely to change. As for the climate, it is necessary, without creating panic or eliminating uncertainties, to trigger the desire to act so that employees are trained or retrained, for example. ” Everyone must give himself a project and a path “, He advises. And in this sense he seems more convinced of the ability of companies to undertake this adventure with their employees than that of governments for the social body as a whole.

Clearly, Etienne Klein doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but what he intends to do is get the audience to think. Business leaders and HRDs attending the evening may leave with questions, but either way they know that all they have to do is chart their own course.