QUOTE : how are we to explain that science became such a 'risky' activity that, according to some top scientists, it poses today the principal threat to the survival of humanity? Some philosophers reply to this question by saying that Descartes's dream - 'to become master and possessor of nature' - has turned wrong, and that we should urgently return to the 'mastery of mastery'. They have understood nothing. They don't see that the technology profiling itself at our horizon through 'convergence' of all disciplines aims precisely at nonmastery. The engineer of tomorrow will not be a sorcerer's apprentice because of his negligence or ignorance, but by choice. He will 'give' himself complex structures or organizations and he will try to learn what they are capable of by way of exploring their functional properties - an ascending, bottom-up approach. He will be an explorer and experimenter at least as much as an executor. The measure of his success will be more the extent to which his own creation will surprise him than the conformity of his realization to the list of preestablished tasks.