Republic of the Philippines Surigao del Sur State University Tandag City , Surigao del Sur Telefax No. 086-214-4221 www.sdssu.edu.ph MODULE ONE LESSON 1 GE- STS A Course Pack in SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY By STS GROUP August 2020 Week 2 I. Preliminaries COURSE NAME : Science, Technology, and Society COURSE CREDITS : 3 units The course deals with interactions between science and technology and social, cultural, political, and economic contexts that shape and are shaped by them. (CMO No. 20, series of 2013). This interdisciplinary course engages students to confront the realities brought about by science and technology in society. Such realities pervade the personal, the public, and the global aspects of our living and are integral to human development. Scientific knowledge and technological development happen in the context of society with all its socio-political, cultural, economic, and philosophical underpinnings at play. This course seeks to instill reflective knowledge in the students that they are able to live the good life and display ethical decision making in the face of scientific and technological advancement. COURSE DESCRIPTION : PRE-REQUISITE/CO-REQUISITES : NONE COURSE OUTCOMES In the context of the specific field of specialization, the students will be able to: LO1 LO2 Design and evaluate solutions for complex computing problems, and design and evaluate systems, components or processes that meet specified needs with appropriate consideration for public health and safety, cultural, societal and environmental considerations. An ability to recognize the legal, social, ethical and professional issues involved in the utilization of computer technology and be guided by the adoption of appropriate professional, ethical and legal practices. II. Course Overview: This course pack is specifically produced for the course GE- STS (Science, Technology, and Society) intended for you, a student of SDSSU Main campus enrolled in an undergraduate program. This is the first module for the prelim period. Brief introduction to Science, Technology and Society are some of the essentials included in this course pack. Considering the description of the course, this course pack tries to incorporate discussions on the importance of studying Science, Technology, and Society. III. General Instruction This module begins with an Introduction that encapsulates the topics or lessons that students of this course have to learn, understand and value. This Module is composed of five parts of which the first part pertains to the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs). The next part is the course direction where students are directed to focus their respective course works. The nitty-gritties of the course are also placed in the lecture and discussion which is the third part of the module. Each student taking this course is also required to answer all the assessment tasks (refer to tasks and completion time matrix below) to measure whether the student have learned from the lessons. For the students to grasp all the essentials of the topics covered in a particular lesson, links, URLs, videos (in USB stick) and other supplementary reading materials are provided in this module. Deadline Midterm Requirements Conduct environmental Scanning in the Community on either of the following Issues and concerns: Finals public health and safety cultural societal or environmental considerations Info Drive on the following Community Issues and Concerns: public health and safety cultural societal or environmental considerations Through developing any of the following: pamphlets; infographics; podcasts; Vlogs; Blogs; Discussion Boards; websites IV. Academic Integrity Academic honesty is required of all students. Plagiarism--to take and pass off as one’s own work, the work or ideas of another--is a form of academic dishonesty. Penalties may be assigned for any form of academic dishonesty” (See Student Handbook/College Manual). Sanctions for breaches in academic integrity may include receiving a grade of a “Failed” on a test or assignment. In addition, the Director of Student Affairs may impose further administrative sanctions. V. Introduction Science and Technology indeed play major roles in the everyday life. They make difficult and complicated tasks easier and allow people to do more with so little effort and time. The developments in this field are not just products of people’s imagination or a one-time thought process; they are also brought by gradual improvements to earlier works from different time periods. This module discusses the meaning of Science, Technology and Society; the Historical Antecedents, Transformation of Society by Science and Technology such as Copernican ,Darwinian Revolution, Freudian Revolution and Information Revolution. Lesson 1: Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society Intended Learning Outcomes At the end of this module, the students should be able to: 1. discuss the general concepts of Science, Technology and Society and its interactions throughout the history; 2. identify inventions and discoveries that changed the world over the course of history and how it transform over the period of time 3. discuss the scientific and technological developments in the Philippines. 1.1. The Meaning of Science, Technology and Society What is science? Science comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”. But in the perspective of Albert Einstein science is the attempts to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought. It is also considered a subject matter of nature. Every physical entity in the extra-terrestrial and terrestrial environment is a component of nature. According to the famous American science historian, John Heilbron ( 2003,p.vii), “ Modern science as a discovery of regularity in nature, enough for natural phenomena to be described by principles and laws. He also explained that science required invention to devise techniques, abstractions, apparatuses, and organizations to describe these natural regularities and their law-like descriptions. Moreover, Science can be classified as a process and product. 1. Science as a process a. It seeks for truth about the nature b. concerned with discovering relationship between observable phenomena in terms of theories c. systematized theoretical inquiries d. it is determined by observation, hypothesis, measurement, analysis and experimentation e. it is the description and explanation of the development of knowledge f. it is the study of the beginning and end of everything that exist g. conceptualization of new ideas from the abstract to the particular h. kind of human cultural activity. 2. Science as a product a. Systematized, organized body of knowledge based on facts or truths observations b. a set of logical and empirical methods which provide for the systematic observation of empirical phenomena c. source of cognitive authority d. concerned with verifiable concepts e. a product of the mind f. it is the variety of knowledge, people, skills organizations, facilities, techniques, physical resources, methods and technologies that taken together and in relation with one another. What is technology? Basically it is the application of scientific knowledge, laws, and principles to produce services, materials, tools, and machines aimed at solving real-world problems. It comes from the Greek root word techne, meaning “art, skill, or cunning of hand”. On the same view, technology is defined as both a process and a product. 1. Technology as a process a. It is the application of science b. the practice, description and terminology of applied sciences c. the intelligent organization and manipulation of materials for useful purposes d. the means employed to provide for human needs and wants e. focused on the inventing new or better tools and materials or new and better ways of doing things. f. a way of using findings of science to produce new things for a better way of living g. search foe concrete solutions that work and give wanted results h. it is characteristically calculative and imitative, tends to be dangerously manipulative i. form of human cultural activity. 2. Technology as a product a. A system of know-how, skills, techniques and processes b. it is like a language, rituals, values, commerce and arts, it is intrinsic part of a cultural system and it both shapes and reflects to the system values. c. it is the product of the scientific concept d. the complex combination of knowledge, materials and methods e. material products of human making or fabrication f. total societal enterprise. Introduction to Science, Technology and Society Let us take some very simplistic definitions on the basic concepts of STS in the class. Science: Hi, I am science. I can investigate of the physical world and its nature including the people and the stuff we make. Technology: Hello, I am technology. I can make stuff. Including stuff used in the society, and in the production and dissemination of science. Society: Welcome to my world! Actually, I am the sum total of our interactions as humans, including the interactions that we engage in to figure things out and to make things. Based on the conversation of STS it is very clear that all of these are deeply interconnected. As this class proceeds, you will begin to develop a better picture of the fundamental nature of this interaction. In this module you will explore the interaction of science, technology and society, especially in the recent past 20th and 21st centuries. Science, Technology and Society (STS) is a relatively recent discipline, originating in the 60s and 70s, following Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). STS was the result of a sociological turn in science studies. STS simply stands for science, technology and society. It is an interdisciplinary field of academic teaching and research, with elements of a social movement, having as its primary focus the explication and analysis of science and technology as complex social constructs with attendant societal influences entailing myriad epistemological, political, and ethical questions. STS makes the assumption that science and technology are essentially intertwined and that they are each profoundly social and profoundly political. Basically, science and technology are both social and political. Being critical: In this section, you will try to develop a critical stance towards science and technology. This does not mean that you are going to cast them in a negative light, or that you need to develop a dislike for them. Many of us have regarded for science and technology. What is critical stance? A critical stance is the deliberate creation of distance between us and the object you study. In order to be critical one must step back and ask broad questions. 1. Science claims to produce knowledge about the world. What is the nature of this knowledge? Is it absolutely certain? Are there other kinds of knowledge? 2. Technology claims to improve our lives. Who are us? What does it mean to have a better life? What is to be gained and what is to be lost? Internal and External Perspectives of STS An internal perspective starts with the principle and assumptions that scientists and engineers themselves work with and then uses these to try to explain their activities. The development of an internal perspective requires mastering the details of the science in question, takes years of hard work to acquire and involves nonverbal assumptions and practices picked up in this process. In the external perspective uses a different set of assumptions and attempts to analyse the context in which experts live and work, as well as what they say. In this perspective you are interested in the behaviours, goals, rhetoric etc. Also, you analyse the activities of technical experts without any appeal to the special status of their expertise. A “classical” view of science and technology A typical, naïve view of science might be as follows: Science is a formal activity that creates knowledge by direct interaction with nature. Science has some kind of special method that allows different scientists to produce the same kind of knowledge whatever their social and political context might be. Scientists perform the same experiments in the same way, and agree upon and reject the same hypotheses. Scientists come to consensus on the truths of the natural world. Nature Science Truth The classical view began to fall apart in the process of 20 th century investigations of scientific activity. Philosophers were unable to formalize the “black box”. There appears to be no single “scientific method”. When historians began to explore past scientific activities more closely, they found there was no such thing as “pure science” removed from social and political interactions and assumptions. When sociologists began to open the black box of contemporary scientific activity, they found that the inside was thoroughly social and political. Then, why do most people still hold the naïve view? ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ _________ Scientism Scientism goes back at least as far as the Scientific Revolution (c.1550-1700) and originates in the claim that there is a sharp divide between “ facts” and “ values”. According to this view, when we do science, we set aside values and study only facts. The authority of science rests on its claim to be “value free” and hence “objective”. Scientism promotes the idea that all of society’s problem can be solved by experts who are specially trained to unearth the facts of the matter. Scientism, and the scientistic movement, make the claim that science is for the benefit of all humanity Technologically progressivism Technological progressivism has its roots in the European Enlightenment (c. 1700-1800), when progress became a synonym for good and technology came to be seen as a fundamental tool in progressive projects. Good = Progress Progress = Technology Technological progressivism assumes that technological change is inherently good and sees it as self-propagating, moving by the internal constraints of technology itself. For example, we view new technologies as progressive and older ones as old fashioned and use this as a reason for changing technologies. We advocate the adoption of new technologies with little reflection on their social impact or the broader question of whether or not we want those impacts. Technoscience In the classical view of the relationship between science and technology, science leads the way by creating knowledge from nature and technology follows by following this knowledge to creation of new things. In this case, you will investigate the complex interaction between science and technology and the social environments in which they are produced, and which they, in turn, produce. The sum total of scientific and technological activities as technoscience. Technoscience is the combined total of scientific and technological ideas and activities in their social, political and economic relaities. Nobody has any doubt that modern society is technoscientific. Modern nation-states and the global economy,itself, could not function if they were not based on technoscience. Thus, it is impossible to understand modern society without studying the effects of technoscience. What makes something social? Society is the result of people, and institutions interacting with one another. It is a sort of epiphenomena of these individuals. Society in turn shapes the people and institutions that form it. Most people experience society as though it were external force acting upon them. The effects of society operate through the vague mechanism of social norms. Norms tell us what we should and should not do, what we should and should not think. But they are not rational- or rather, their rationality is not universal. Norms produce the values that we use in interacting with others. They produce many of our core ideas- such as ideas of the place of class, the role gender, meaning of the race, the function of justice, the importance of objectivity, the criterion of truth, the significance of evidence, etc. Technoscience is social In the simplest sense, technoscience is the product of people, and people are social. But it is possible to claim something much stronger than this: The social norms of technoscientists affects where they will look, what they will see and what they will say about it. (Their worldview). Technoscientists’ norms are shaped by their discipline (Basic scientific concepts mean different things in different fields). Professional norms affect the value that technoscienctists place on judgements. We find disagreement about what counts as science across time and from place to place. The development of technology is highly social, and depends on the manipulation of social norms. What makes something political? Politics is about control. It is the result of the distribution and utilization of power in our societies. Political activity functions by employing various structures, resources and discourses in order to consolidate and wield power. Political structures are formal and informal rules to play. Formal rules are things like laws and procedures, informal rules are things like social norms. There are many kinds of political resources: natural resources, money, military force, knowledge, access, charm, etc. Politics uses discourses to control what is sayable and what is not, to control the way in which something is said and the framework of what is discussed. Dominant discourses lend a kind of cultural authority. And so, what do you think is the clear boundary between the social and the political aspects? ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ _____________________ Technoscience is political There are formal and informal rules that dictate who can make decisions about how to proceed with technoscientific work. Different political structures create different opportunities, at the national level, the level of institutions, and the level of individuals. Individual knowledge workers (technoscientists), various institutions, and different professional groups all use economic and cultural resources to advance their aims. Discourses can be developed by appeal to both social and scientific norms. These discourses can then be used as resources to advance technoscientific work. This is often referred to as the production of social capital.
