"Musica Universalis" and the geometric world harmony: Johannes Kepler described the general laws of planetary motion. Kepler's laws still remain a solid point of view to describe our solar system. In the 1600s, a ‘radical’ scientific publication of this kind could get you killed. Today, junior scientists argue about which journals have better ‘impact factors’. It would seem that scientific research today would be freer but this is not the case everywhere. Scientific research is not as free as we think and creationists in the USA, Islamists in Turkey, the communist party in China - and everywhere in the world where there are nationalists and autocrats - have confiscated science for their purposes.

Then there is an even bigger danger from the inside: Scientists cannibalize themselves for financial funding or for the maximum amount of attention. Creativity has been sacrificed out of sheer acceleration (according to Hartmut Rosa). There is increasing alienation.

This symposium on October 24 will look at various issues pertaining to the freedom of science and will celebrate the 400^th anniversary of "Harmonices Mundi" written by our university’s namesake.