Allons-nous continuer la recherche scientifique?

Four years after winning the Fields Medal, Grothendieck gave a talk at CERN with the title "Are we going to continue scientific research?"

At this stage of his life, Grothendieck was doing a balancing act between mathematics and ecological activism. One of his claims is that in some future, the ecological disaster will be so clear and impactful that scientific research will simply stop being a priority.

His talk wasn't a call to stop research to do ecological activism. It was instead a premonition on why activism or survival will naturally take the energy and the minds of people who would otherwise do scientific research.

Grothendieck's talk clearly anticipated today's dilemmas: "Has the Last Great Space Observatory Already Launched? Astronomy's future may be slipping away—one climate disaster at a time" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-the-last-great-space-observatory-already-launched/

Please listen to the talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW9JpZXwGXc