Preface

Like most of those who study history, he [Napoleon III] learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones. (Taylor 1963)

Intuition for the writer is what experiment is for the learned, with the difference that in the case of the learned the work of the intelligence precedes and in the case of the writer it follows. That which we have not been forced to decipher, to clarify by our own personal effort, that which was made clear before, is not ours. Only that issues from ourselves which we ourselves extract from the darkness within ourselves and which is unknown to others. (Proust 2016)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. (Einstein 2018)

To have to play for ten years to become a passable musician, what a miserable thing for man. (De Musset 2003)

Among all the techniques, there is a technique of discipline, and it cannot be satisfied with the old obedience obtained, worth as much as it is by empirical processes, and which should have been said to be less discipline than moderate indiscipline. The technique will at some point claim to train collaborators committed to its principle, that is, they will accept without unnecessary discussion its conception of order, of life, of its reasons for living. In a world dedicated to efficiency, to performance, does it not matter that every citizen, from birth, is dedicated to the same gods? The technique cannot be discussed, as the solutions it imposes are by definition the most practical. (Bernanos 2015)

The creator is an archer who shoots in the dark. (Mahler 2018)

Machinism depends on the goals that man gives it and therefore it must recognize that the machine - apparatus, regulations, state - is a means, not an end, in the service of a reality that surpasses it: the personal life of man. (Ellul 2017)

All models are fake, some are useful. (Box, quoted by (Berthert 2018))

Epistemologists call 'disposition term' a word that refers not to a property of a physical system that would be directly observable [...], but rather the disposition of a system to manifest such and such a reaction P° under specified circumstances P'. (Hempel 1956)

We must therefore resolve, that the original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had towards each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other. (Hobbes 2007)

They [English intelligentsia] have also become infected with the inherently mechanistic Marxist notion that if you make the necessary technical advance the moral advance will follow of itself (Orwell 2017).

The network, obviously, became tighter and more capacious with each technical improvement. (McNeill and McNeill 2003)

Routine is the god of every social system. (Whitehead 1967)

We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast. (Koestler 1974)

Morality is opposed to the formation of new and better morals: it stupefies. (Nietzsche 1911)

There's nothing worse than the status quo!

"You have a promising sector here, don't hesitate to get involved, you will be actors in these great transformations. You will have a job that is exciting. If you go into industry, it is a sector of almost full employment, with wages higher than the national average." This is what the president of the IESF (Ingénieurs et scientifiques de France) said during the JNI (20e Journées Nationales d'Infectiologie) (Ventre 2019). Further, "The training of French engineers promotes the capacity for innovation and creativity, much more than other systems elsewhere in the world." So then, why ask questions and write a book about major changes to be made? For the IESF, creativity does not seem to be the priority. Examining engineering training courses, including those in process engineering (see Appendix 1), reveals the lessons are essentially focused on needs related to the second industrial revolution - the fourth is explored in André (2019) - requiring operators capable of "demonstrating imitation, identical production in the era of mechanical reproduction. The adjoining programs focus on literacy and numeracy as basic skills" (Frau-Meigs 2019). Creativity that is often claimed, but ultimately poorly taught and poorly supported, is relegated to the rank of non-conformism.

However, Serieyx (2014) writes that we have "enormous and expensive education systems that are exhausting themselves in making more and more poorly filled heads, less and less prepared to face the uncertainty of time". Between a structuring ideology, based on specialization and therefore on compartmentalization, designed to effectively manage stability, in a world that moves too fast in relation to possible incremental transformations, the resilience of the production system is necessarily questioned. What should we think of an organization (of which I am a member) that does not question the essence of its functioning, that is not really clear (in its words) on current and future problems, but that is justified (again with good reason in our country) by the development of a feeling of belonging to a conditioned, even dogmatized community?

At the same time, a country in a constrained situation like Israel has more agile and visibly more effective ways of creating startups (Challenges 2019) because the idea is to bring creations from laboratories to the industrial world via startups (see Technion in Haifa which has enabled the creation of 800 companies). If Israel has one startup for every 1,450 inhabitants, it is because behind it, there are choices, decisions and financing (4.5% of GDP) that allow this dynamic. Israel's example is not unique. So, what should we do? In the field of processes, with fairly traditional technologies in basic chemistry, can we be satisfied with a status quo or should we revise our copy? The challenge of this work is to try to position oneself in relation to this question.

Bauman (2006), Cohen (2012) and Serieyx (2014) describe a planet that involves more and more complexity with shocks linked to digital technology, the increase in cultural diversity, globalization and the emergence, in France, of new attitudes towards its own accomplishments (relationship to work, growing individualism, distance from work, the notion of the value of work questioned, casualization of labor, etc.), all in a context where the refuge state must think of the place of citizens who expect resources. Don't we have the right ingredients to be late to the party!

The liberal economy, supported by decision-makers in most developed countries, has introduced a stabilized, ideological framework, assimilated into rapid technological movements that do not adequately take into account major trends such as global warming, depleted reserves or social criteria. According to The Beam (2019), the environment appears to be an exogenous externality in most economic models. "The misconception arose at the dawn of the industrial revolution, a time when Western civilization first believed humankind, through the power of technology, could subdue the rough edges of the natural world."

The production systems of products, consumer goods and energy have undergone some historical revolutions, from artisanal methods and the direct use of what nature produced and not artificial stocks of coal and oil, to production optimized in terms of financial value, linked to the exploitation of the disposable principle. Engineering sciences have enabled such radical transformations by introducing rationality and efficient models. The process engineering that is included in this context is no exception to this observation. For years (and this is probably not the end), these sciences have enabled considerable technological advances that have obviously led to material well-being and life expectancy inconceivable two centuries ago. So, with the ever-present success of technology, why move away from its beliefs, which are shaped by an education that goes to the heart of the matter and is translated into application facts? But, without considering the value of exploring other possibilities, is there not a risk of sclerosing the actors of industrial production, engaged in forms of single thought?

Livio (2013), in his book, "Brilliant Blunders", reminds us of cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957). When engineers receive external information through different media that is not compatible with their initial training, what do they do? What does their company do? In a form of mental storytelling, our cognitive system must build a coherent representation of its environment, which, for Berthet (2018) and Silver (2013), is a heuristic agreement between reality and what we perceive, with the consequence of what, in a reductive way, makes sense (illusion of validity). Livio (2013) writes:

To relieve cognitive dissonance, in many cases, instead of acknowledging an error in judgment, people tend to reformulate their views in a new way that justifies their old opinions.

But when the system cracks, how can a status quo be maintained?

Can we easily use traditional training and proven scientific research in the field of matter and energy transformation to meet the needs of a new world; exploiting impoverished reserves, digital performance, the complexity or use of the powerful citizen of ecological...