With this book the Scientific Society of Serbia marks three decades of its existence. This is an act of encouragement, act of bonding. 

Different in their vocations, from mathematical and technical sciences through biomedical to social studies, members of the Society in the preceding period have built their scientific legacy on the common understanding that in the mosaic of diversity there are bonding links. These foci are called: objectivity and public nature of knowledge and new discoveries that are permanently scrutinized by the lens of science as an organized and veracious doubt. 

The common dome of thought and spiritual freedom joins us. It does so not only by an axiom and paradigm of the established knowledge on one discipline or another, but by association of legitimate belief in the advent of a higher degree of scientific progress in realization of the overall natural and social justice as the basic virtue, individual and social. 

Commutative justice, as an arithmetic proportion (equally in equal cases) and distributive justice as a geometric proportion (division of the common good) has outlived all ages from ancient to modern, at each step of scientific creativity and in each and every one of the thirty years of the Scientific Society of Serbia. 

Thus, like aggressiveness is the worst adversary to justice and individual equity, every dogma is antinomy and antagonist to science since it tends to hide the richness of the life of Science and the entirety of Justice. 

This dogma, regardless of time and space appears always when senses override the reason, when in this world of terrible discord physical violence overpowers the arguments of scientific wisdom, when the notorious natural and social facts lose the battle in the war of "soul against the body". Ourselves, the cell of the civilization, know that all too well and feel the oppression of the reality.

The time that confines its scientific thought into a "prayer book" of any kind, a maze of different discriminations based on birth or belief (race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other belief, national or other origin, property, birth or other circumstances) in not the age of science, but dogmatic intolerance that leaves behind only the waste land for human dignity. This is the time of conscious or unconscious perjurers, time when even concentrated accumulation of knowledge may fall victim to faulty judgment that sweeps away personal and common goods, our natural right to live and our natural right to self-determined freedom. 

In this aspect also,  nowadays more than ever before, our entire being requires more scientific knowledge and facts on ourselves and our fellow-men, since we are all a part and creation of the nature, equal in our arrival to this world and departure from it. 

This eternal motive is the inspiration for us in the Scientific Society of Serbia, with enlarged family of scientific leaders (one hundred members make definitely an imposing number), to try to find ways to promote new ways of wisdom in different fields and to invest our scientific identity and integrity in individual as well as general issues and, at the same time, keep the pace with other scientifically more developed milieus in order to get to know better ourselves and the world in which we live. 

In this respect, the Scientific Society of Serbia has an established tradition based on scientific achievements presented to the scientific public. This volume is, among others, a witness to this tradition that makes an active illustration of the Society before the eyes of the general public. 

If this work currently or permanently passes beyond the socially relevant focus, it undoubtedly implies that the focus of social events is not at the required level of knowledge, that it is slanted to ephemeral effects or other artifacts, instead to objective laws of the nature and society. Thus, more time will be needed to join reason and senses on higher levels of culture and cultural events. 

This is not the question of current selection and decision, but the source of processes relevant to issues such as: level of philosophical enlightenment, moral foundation, economic structure, political emancipation, tradition of general code of behavior, technical civilization. Briefly, these issues are jointly defined as the cultural level as the sign of "historical inevitability" of a certain community. 

On the basis of this postulate, no patria potestas (parental authority) rules in its domain, no rule nor decree but only the right of conscience and scientifically verified truth, the power of stronger argument in the hypothesis of tolerance as the expression of spiritual freedom and accountability in democratic evolution of will, regardless of the number (many of few) of scientifically justified positions. 

Therefore, the members of the Society are not divided into sections or any other form of subgroups, as it is usually the case with other similar or dissimilar associations. The motto primus inter pares (fist among equals) ordained by the rational freedom of the Society members, has earned it full and proper place. 

Naturally, a member of the Society may be that prominent scientific authority that has influenced development of theory and practice who has, accordingly, earned reputation in the country and abroad. But, above all, the attributes of scientific conscience, spiritual freedom and accountability, tolerance as expressions of democratic culture are required. Only these qualities of the members of the Scientific Society may result in fruits presented to public in this volume. 

Accordingly, the definition of a member of the Scientific Society, in addition to the statutary requirements, implies only individuals that are veracious and peace-loving, tolerant and reconcilable, considerate to others that may belong to either minority or majority. It means, before all, that they remain, with their moral and general integrity, faithful to their personal and general knowledge, their scientific conscience.

In science, nobody has the right to place oneself above the others, to transform pluralism of life into dogmatic monism and one's own authoritarianism. Therefore, this closed non-system will never reach the level of "educated ignorance" as the final point in the relative nature of our life and limited capacity for our mental and physical beings. 

Basing the thirty years of activity on the highly developed individual and collective mind and reason, the Scientific Society of Serbia will carry on along its chosen path. This is the true way to pay the debt to our conscience  and to those who by the cruel force of natural laws are not among the living ones any longer and to those that will come after us. This is out global and realistic wish. 

Therefore, let the Scientific Society of Serbia in the decades to come bear and symbolize the words that we now in unison address to it: vivat, crescat, floreat (live, grow and flourish!).
 
 

On Saint Sava's Day, 1999 In Belgrade

Prof.Dr Slobodan Perović President of the Scientific Society of Serbia