Considerations of some key concepts in fundamental Materials Science

For years now Materials Science has been recognized as a specific scientific speciality. Does the Science which consists in preparing materials and in studying their properties possess its own basic foundations or, on the contrary, is its fundamental part only constituted by concepts from other scientific fields such as solid state physics, mechanics, electricity, crystallography, etc. It is the author's opinion that some particular key concepts such as “processing”, “non-equilibrium and evolution”, for instance, are specific to the Materials Science field and that a better definition of their content and of their mutual action may lead to a “global view” of Materials Science. An attempt is made here to look at and define such concepts and to initiate discussion and, above all, controversies.