Con algo de esbonismo se habla ahora de los tales "metaversos" como un recurso que controlará hasta lo imprevisto en materia de ciencia y tecnología. Bueno... eso no está mal. Claro, teniendo conciencia de que el factor sorpresa no dejará de tener una invisible carta debajo de su manga para la infelicidad y la felicidad de todos.

Both in the manuals that deal with topics about the "should be" of scientific research (that is, those of Methodology of...), as well as in other books of a similar nature, it has been very usual that the surprise factor is not considered in an important way. What's more... they evade the thing given the intimidation imposed on them by the poor judgment that underlies that attitude; that is to say, considering that scientific research is a work "so unequivocal" that everything that smells of surprise, error, the unexpected is inadmissible...

It should be added that this factor is also recurrently underestimated, even in the reports made on investigations already carried out. When, for example -following university protocols-, thesis presentations on research in the scientific field are made, these "hides" (assembled by the student himself and with the unconscious and complicit acceptance of the juries!) they do a bit on purpose...

This situation, apart from suffering from high epistemological and pedagogical myopia, is unheard of.

Plato (427-347, before our era) stated with great acuity that no one investigates what is known to him, since he knows it; neither does that which is not known to him, since being so, he would not even know where to start (*). This being the case, it is practically impossible that, entering the wonderful field of research with a view to being scientific, one does not find at some point the surprising.

As is well known, the old (but tentatively respectable) logical-analytic law of the excluded third establishes that a thing (or an idea of ​​a thing) cannot be itself and its opposite at the same time and under the same conditions. There are few -then- the characters that make life in the academic environment who linearly embrace such a conception. Conception that they curiously call "correct thinking".

We can inscribe within this last criterion (of admitting that the surprising is not only inevitable but enlightening), notions that in the light of our times, are somewhat familiar; namely: serendipity, Murphy, meta-verse, "virtual reality" and others.

As is known, serendipity is the situation that occurs in investigative work (also in life) in terms of finding oneself without thinking about it beforehand, with a phenomenon that precisely for this reason revolutionizes the effort that is made. On many occasions, such a surprising event even leads "without warning and without looking to the sides" to significant (and even radical) turns in the work. One of the most emblematic examples that virtuously collects the history of science (natural) and technology (pharmacology) is, without a doubt, the one that has to do with the discovery that at the beginning of the second decade of the last century was made of the penicillin. Alexander Fleming's brilliant experiment with certain bacteria at the time was accidentally contaminated with "rare and unwanted" fungi that had the property of killing them. Well... later that led (hallelujah!) to that revolution which embodied and embodies penicillin.

As is also known, the word "Murphy" is associated with a notion that is handled with some assiduity in scientific research (and in life in general) which realizes that "if something bad can happen, then it will happen! ". Of course... it's about getting out early to that undesirable factor that has the vocation to surprise (and spoil). It must be said that there are many occasions in which, even handling the Murphy notion, surprise does its thing, spoiling things. Ah, but there has also been the case in which Murphy, far from being a "cruel angel", is a "good angel"...

There is no doubt that one of the greatest benefits brought about by the stabilization in the world of science and technology, of the resource of virtuality, has been control of the unforeseen in the work of research. Be careful... We are talking about virtuality as the strength provided by that scientific and technological world of playing with time, as if it were chewing gum; this in order to exercise control over "the whole" and over the details... even what is not planned!

They say that for some time now the business of creating video games has been so commercially successful by managing virtualities in space and time, that now the great machinery of electronics and information technology has decided to make use of that fantastic experience of naughty dolls, rogue car races and ogre-faced boxers, in the form of "serious things" in the fields of science and technology. They now call that transfer "metaverse"... Thus, the achievements achieved (in video games) in terms of turns and more turns of space and time will be used to the maximum extent; this for "higher" ends.

Well... How good that in the heat of social events new mechanisms are increasingly being invented to control the unforeseen in the work of scientific research! We reiterate... How good! Ah, but if there is something inexhaustible in life, in thought and in emotions (all of which are the object of the theory), it is the factor of surprise. Perhaps this is the meaning that moves everything, including birth and death...