1. Technology dynamics

1.1 Interpenetration of domains

Technical and scientific progress is often the result of a combination of disciplines. Optics and mathematics, for example, have been the driving forces behind cosmology since Galileo. Chemistry and physics were instrumental in the birth of telephony. Weather forecasts have been made more accurate thanks to the development of computers, and so on. Similarly, technologies progress by cross-fertilization, with periods of latency, followed by phases of unbridled development, depending on fortuitous events, easier financing or needs made more acute by the existence of an obvious economic crisis, for example.

Today's science is based on three pillars: observation, theory and computer-aided simulation. Recently, the medical field...