Innovate with consciousness. The P.S.I. approach

Let's take a few seconds to look at the world around us. One thing is clear: we live in an artificial world, i.e. a world designed by man, because he cannot satisfy all his needs by adopting a passive or purely predatory or consumer attitude towards Nature. The artificialization of the world is no stranger to the technical developments that have marked the evolution of mankind in the name of progress. A philosophy of progress that has made science and its applications the driving force of history, with a quasi-religious dimension. Descartes, for example, saw technical progress as the vector for the conception of a new "Garden of Eden".

Although Diderot had already raised the question of the limits of progress in the 18th century, beyond which we have as much to lose as to gain, it was not until the mid-20th century that intellectuals began to break with the idea of progress. This break was not unrelated to the fact that they had lived through the Second World War and an unprecedented moment in history: the use of the atomic bomb.

Indeed, many intellectuals agree on the growing difficulty of controlling the technical phenomenon. Such is the case of Ernst Junger, who sees technology as the work of "technical Goliaths" who, like the Cyclops, have only one eye, making them incapable of thinking through the consequences of their actions. This is a view shared by Jacques Ellul, who denounces the self-engendering process of technology, with each innovation leading to another, making the process of technicization of society even more irreversible and, in his view, making technology the issue of the century. But it's not so much the innovation itself that's disturbing as its effects on society. Hasn't rampant artificialization contributed to the creation of a monster spawned by the sleep of reason (to use the title of Goya's engraving)? Doesn't it run counter to Aristotle, revealing man as an unreasonable animal? Doesn't it lead to a blissful progressive optimism that leaves us speechless in the face of major contemporary challenges? The answer would appear to be yes, if we consider, for example, the ecological emergency in which we find ourselves today.

Indeed, since the 17th century, the association of scientific and technical progress with the idea of moral and social progress has led to the establishment of a desacralized relationship with nature, resulting in its unlimited exploitation, implicitly considered as an inexhaustible and unalterable resource. However, as the Meadows report (1972) underlined, failure to take account of our planet's physical limits and negative externalities is at the root of the environmental crisis we are experiencing today; the over-exploitation of nature has led to serious imbalances, endangering not only terrestrial...