GREETINGS TO KIEV CONFERENCE
Science & Society Now
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
April 5, 2009
Lyndon LaRouche's greeting to the Kiev Conference on Physical Economy: Research Methodology and Global Mission of Ukraine, was read by Rachel Douglas. PDF version of this section.
This conference proceeds under the conditions of a moment of one of the greatest crises of modern civilization, a global crisis in the most profound meaning of those terms. This is not merely a political, financial, and physical-economic crisis; it is also a crisis which touches the foundations of what mankind has become accustomed to call science.
It is a crisis which touches some of the most fundamental achievements of that great figure of both the Russian and Ukrainian Academies of Science, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, whose work is both inseparable from his association with the subjects of this conference, here today. These include, prominently, the intertwined issues of the principles of life and physical chemistry, but, also, the matter of remedies for the profound, global political-economic crisis whose victims include both Russia and Ukraine today.
For this occasion, I have submitted a report which touches significantly on the combined political and scientific issues of that crisis, and of that relevant, leading role of the scientific achievements of Academician V.I. Vernadsky and his associates, which bear upon defining urgently required solutions for that globally systemic political-economic and social crisis which grips all nations and peoples on this planet, immediately, today.
I would propose that we reflect upon the relevance for the present crisis of the world at-large, of the great agricultural, industrial power, and role in science, in Ukraine, during past times. I also propose that we reflect on the crucially important role of the past scientific and related contributions of Ukraine and Russia which bear on the great mission of Asian development which will confront us all, globally, if we permit civilization to continue its present slide toward the brink of the abyss of a planetary "new dark age."
I would emphasize a fact which may be known to those of you assembled for this conference, but is, presently, rarely recognized in the world at-large, of the revolutionary advances in the physical condition of all mankind which exist still, as among the relevant remedies for this presently onrushing general, physical breakdown-crisis of the planet, remedies which are to be found as crucially important contributions in the signal contributions by the great V.I. Vernadsky and his collaborators of his lifetime.
