Technology subjugates the environment for economic purposes. Biotechnologies exploit life and living organisms. Science, now preoccupied with applied knowledge, has lost its ancient appreciation of beauty.

In this book, the distinguished author argues that the aim of science should not be to dominate nature but to live in harmony with it. If we do not make reference to our "common biological origin" (Jean-Paul Sartre) or find the umbilical cord that binds us to nature, his conviction is that we risk destroying the life cycles of our planet.

He demonstrates that the role of form, colour, flavour, sound, scent - and beauty - was fundamental for biological evolution, and is still fundamental today for a scientific view of complexity. This is especially so with nature threatened by the linear, mechanistic, arrogant and crude approach of science at the service of a society that "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing".

In order to avert catastrophe, Tiezzi asserts, science cannot be based only on reason but must combine reason, passion, intuition, emotion, logic and "global feeling": science cannot be cold.