If we consider the history of science as a whole, we find that the great advances and the great scientific theories until the 18th century were produced by universal minds for whom science was part of a philosophical, humanist, metaphysical and even theological process. This “ontological characteristic” has been questioned since the early 19th century by the necessary specialisation because of technical advances and the emergence of increasingly abstract models and new subjects. We are going to show how this specialisation has cut scientific research and learning from its historical and epistmological roots, and how science has been restricted to models that are misunderstood and to “formulas” that scientists use without any critical eye and without connecting them with the history of concepts. We will use practical examples, and expose the difficulties that science teaching is now facing -particularly as students desert scientific studies- so as to conclude that it is necessary to return to a cultural and cross-disciplinary vision of science. Science should get closer to a new version of universalism than to an excessive specialisation that unfortunately cuts it from its ontological roots.
