Can you get a list of the RUNNING applications on Android for the purpose of activating them? On my Samsung Galaxy S Android phone: if I start a couple of apps, I can get an overview of them in the 'Active applications' icon on my first screen.

Clicking this icon, shows me all active applications but allows me only to end them.

I find no way to activate them.

Pressing the center touchpath at the bottom displays the last 6 clicked icons - which may or may not be the ones running.

F.i. if I start 6 applications, I see these 6 icons, if I start a 7th one I see the last 6 started. I wont see the first icon again . So how can I activate this first one, other than knowing it is running, and tapping it's icon again ?

Please don't start telling me why I should start 6 or more applications. That's not the point, here , of course  :)

ANSWER: 

You can't - at least not by using the system as it is installed. A well, no big deal, really. Just wanted to see if I was missing something here. Coming from a Windows background (and aren't we all because otherwise we should be holding an iPhone now), this did not seem to illogical. Thanks for all answers.
Sounds like you're overthinking it. Android goes out of it's way to intelligently manage applications and resources. When you leave an app it will generally keep running as long as the resources are available. Long pressing Home and selecting it or just launching the shortcut again should take you right back to the running app. 

Theoretically it shouldn't matter if it is still running or not, though -- every app is supposed to save it's state in such a way that if the OS kills it before you come back, it should still be able to launch back to the same state you left it in. This isn't universally applied in programs yet, but it does seem to be much more widespread these days -- presumably because the developers are getting used to the "android way."