Manifesto
Scientific ingenuity has never made advances at as great a pace as today. Scientific knowledge has never before amounted to as large a volume. Society relies on access to scientific competence for its maintenance and for future development. Society also puts much implicit trust in scientific solutions to global challenges such as preventing climate changes and environmental deterioration caused by human activity, curing diseases and controlling infections, and improving the quality of life for all.
Scientific understanding is becoming increasingly necessary for a citizen’s full participation in a democratic society. A world-wide sharing of scientific knowledge is also a requirement for global development and global security.
Knowledge thus represents the single most important asset for dealing with today’s and future global challenges. Despite this, public esteem can no longer be taken for granted in the scientifically most advanced parts of the world. This trend is accompanied by a shrinking appeal of scientific education and research among young people, increasingly difficult funding situations for investigators and an uncertain status of science for describing reality. To ensure preparedness for future demands, today’s possessors of scientific expertise have a responsibility to manage the current knowledge heritage, to share it globally and to pass it on to new generations without breach in continuity.
A science-based intellectual platform could provide a universal approach to addressing local as well as global problems. Such a platform could gain legitimacy from economical, political and religious independence. Global access to scientific knowledge and an even distribution of scientific competence must therefore be given high priority in education and international exchange.
Molecular science, with its fundamental importance to life sciences, medicine and technology, holds a key role in this context. Chemistry constitutes the core discipline of molecular science, explaining how atoms bond to form molecules and how molecules interact to form new compounds or weak complexes that perform essential processes or functions. Failing interest in chemistry proper as a professional focus threatens the preservation of a large heritage of knowledge and may prohibit new insights and advances. Such a disruption thus threatens progress in all molecular sciences, which all rely on competence and development in chemistry for continued progress.
Molecular Frontiers, a world-wide virtual institute, will seek to strengthen the position of science in society—among the public, in education and among politicians—as a primary approach to describing and analyzing reality. The institute will provide a forum for exchange and analysis of scientific advances and their implications, and will employ various strategies to engage the public in an open dialogue. The institute’s activities will promote scientific knowledge in general with special emphasis on the molecular perspective. As knowledge may be considered a right to all, global open access will be a guiding principle.
