Unit 2 Why Study Science and Technology in Society

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Unit 2 Why Study Science and Technology in
Society

• Key concepts from Chapter 1 of Science,
  Technology, and Society and Chapter 6 ,
  Technology and the Future
• McGinn
• 1. Science and Technology characterize
  contemporary society more than anything else.
• 2.Science and Technology are responsible for the
  greatest promises and the greatest threats to
  modern civilization, e.g., weapons of mass
  destruction, pollution, medicines, genetic
  engineering
• 3.Science and Technology have a tremendous impact
  on the three leading concerns of most citizens,
  i.e., the economy, medical well-being, the
  military.
• 4.Technologys social and cultural role in
  society is to sustain the private corporation,
  provide a source of personal identity and
  integrate and stratify society

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Unit 1 Why Study Science and Technology in
Society

• Mesthene The Role of Technology in Society
  (report to Harvard University on assessing a
  Science, Technology and Society program of
  studies that was funded by IBM Corp.)
• Technological Advancements usually generate
  Threats and Opportunities
• Three Helpful Views of Technology

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Opportunity/Problem Model

• The heightened prominence of technology in
  society makes the interrelated task of profiting
  from its opportunities and containing its dangers
  a major intellectual and political challenge of
  our time. (Mesthene)
• Examples
• Y2K
• Gene Therapy
• Genetic Engineering
• Cloning

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Three Unhelpful Views about Society

• 1. Technology is an unalloyed blessing for
  society. Technology is seen as the motor of all
  progress, as holding the solutions to most of our
  social problems, as helping to liberate the
  individual, and as the source of permanent
  prosperity.
• Origin Social philosophies of Saint-Simon,
  Karl Marx, and August Comte. Generally held by
  many scientists, engineers, and aerospace
  industrialists
• 2. Technology is an unmitigated curse.
  Technology robs people of their jobs, their
  privacy, their participation in a democratic
  government. It is seen as autonomous and
  uncontrollable, as destructive of religion, and
  ultimately is seen to poison nature and blow up
  the world.
• Origin Artists, popular social critics, and
  existentialist philosophers, and by segments of
  society that have suffered dislocation as a
  result of technological change.

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Three Unhelpful Views about Society (cont.)

• 3. Technology is not worthy of special notice
  because it has been well recognized as a factor
  of social change at least since the Industrial
  Revolution.
• Origin Historians and Economists

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Why Scientific Literacy Is Important.Robert
Hazen. Science Matters

•   The argument from Civics.
• Every citizen will be faced with issues whose
  discussion requires some scientific literacy.
  The threats to our system from a scientific
  illiterate electorate are many, ranging from the
  danger of political demagoguery to the decay of
  the entire democratic process.
• The argument from the aesthetics.
•   We live in a world that has a few general laws
  of nature. Everything you do from the time you
  get up in the morning to the time you go to bed
  at night is governed by these laws. There is
  intellectual and aesthetic satisfaction to be
  gained from seeing the unity between a pot of
  water on a stove and the slow march of the
  continents, between the colors of the rainbow and
  the behavior of the fundamental constituents of
  matter. The scientific illiterate person has
  been cut off from an enriching part of life.

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Why Scientific Literacy Is Important.Robert
Hazen. Science Matters

• The argument for intellectual connectedness.
• It has become commonplace to note that
  scientific findings often play a crucial role in
  setting the intellectual climate of an era, e.g.,
  Copernicuss discovery of the heliocentric
  universe played an important role in ushering in
  the Age of Enlightenment, Darwins discovery of
  the principle of natural selection made the world
  seem less planned and caused humans to rethink
  their importance among all life.

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Importance of Technology and Science to the
Culture of the 21st Century

• Scientists, Technologists and others believe that
  science and technology, more than anything else,
  characterizes or defines the current culture.
• What evidence supports this?
• Technology and Science have been major
  disruptive and creative forces during the last
  50-100 years. (e.g., blackout of 1965, Y2K,
  genetic engineering, weaponry, pollution)

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What distinguishes our age from the past?

• Belated recognition of the significance of
  science and technology in human affairs (e.g.,
  Love Canal, 1965 Blackout, Ozone, Times Beach)
• Accelerated pace of technological developments
• Realization that technology is not simply a
  limited or local factor but encompasses all
  humans everywhere. It is interrelated with
  nearly all human endeavors (e.g., acid rain,
  ozone, pollution, weapons of mass destruction,
  climate changes).

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What is our Obsession with Science and Technology?

• Science and Technology POWER
• Governments, individuals and companies are trying
  to be the first to get it (I.e., the latest
  scientific and technological advances)

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Three Leading Concerns of Governments in
Contemporary Society

• 1. Military Power
• Outcome of WWII dependent on science and
  technology (I.e., atomic bomb)
• The modern plastics industry
• Computer Technology (ENIAC)
• A substantial portion (75) of he federal
  governments RD budget goes to the Department of
  Defense

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Three Leading Concerns of Governments in
Contemporary Society (continued)

• 2. Economic Strength
• Increasing the productivity of industry. In 1900
  approximately 98 percent of the population was
  engaged in agriculture. Today less than 2 are
  engaged in agriculture. Science and technology
  in the form of improved chemistry, biology and
  technology have allowed a much smaller part of
  the population to feed the rest of the
  population.
• Seven of ten U.S. major corporations are science
  or technology companies (e.g., Microsoft, Google,
  ATT).
• Commercial aircraft, semiconductors, and
  computers were among the bright spots for the
  United States in balancing trade during the
  troubling 1970s and 1980s

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Three Leading Concerns of Governments in
Contemporary Society (continued)

• 3. Medical Well Being
• Quality of life and life expectancy have greatly
  improved (10 years in the United States).
• Life threatening diseases have been controlled or
  eliminated (e.g, Polio)
• DNA has contributed to solving many medical
  mysteries.

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Human Successes and Failures in the Age of Modern
Science and Technology

• Successes
• Polio Vaccines
• Genome Project
• Fertility Treatments
• Airplane
• Space Travel
• Organ Transplants
• Splitting of the Atom
• DNA

• Failures
• Nuclear Weapons
• Pollution
• Industrial Accidents (Bhopal)
• Pesticides (DDT)
• Thalidimide
• Valdez Exxon
• Chernobyl
• Biological Warfare
• Three Mile Island

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Ethical Dilemmas Related to Science and Technology

• Science and Technology have Precipitated many
  Ethical Dilemmas.
• Life extending technologies
• Life creating technologies (i.e., cloning,
  fertility drugs, in-vitro)
• Mutually assured destruction
• Big Brother Technologies
• Gene Therapy