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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
What are Science, Technology and society, and why should people want to studyand learn it? Why should students, teachers, researchers and other professionals haveinterest in the subject? Primarily, we need some background and understanding of thesignificance of science and technology in the living past and their importance in themodern world (Mosteiro,2004)DEFINITIONS OF SCIENCE.1.SCIENCE IS A PROCESSa.Concerned with discovering relationships between observable phenomena in terms of theories. b.Systematized theoretical inquiriesc.It seeks for truth about nature.d.It is determined by observation, hypothesis, measurement, analysis andexperimentatione.It is the description and explanation of the development of knowledgef.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 IS A PRODUCTa.Systematized, organized body of knowledge based on facts or truthsobservations. b.A set of logical and empirical methods which provide for thesystematic observation of empirical phenomena.c.Source of cognitive authority.d.Concerned with verifiable conceptse.A product of the mindf.It is the variety of knowledge, people, skills, organizations, facilities,techniques, physical resources, methods and technologies that takentogether and in relation with one another.
The Nature of Science
Prof. Pacifico U. Payawal
“Science is the interpretation of nature and man is the interpreter.”(G. Gore 1878)
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“Nature, with all her irregularities, might have been just as real even if there were no mento observe and to study her. But there could have been no science without human beings,or beings like them. It is the spirit of man brooding over the stream of natural events thathas given birth to science.” (A Wolf 1925).
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“Science is the attempts to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspondto a logically uniform system of thought.” (A. Einstein 1940)
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What is Science?
According to the definitions given by gore, Wolf, and Einstein, thesubject matter of science is nature. Every physical entity in the extra terrestrial andterrestrial environment is a component of nature. The galaxies, the stars in the galaxy, the planets and their moons, the asteroids and the comets, the air, water, and soil; the plants
 
and the animals, they are physical entities of Mother Nature. We are conscious of nature’s reality because of the stimuli emanating from these entities which our sense perceived. Nature is very complex. The multitudes of entities comprising nature, and their complexinteractions, make nature innately complex. Therefore, the totality of stimuli emanatingfrom her is intuitively chaotic. Science represents the attempt of man to put order to thischaotic perception of nature. Thus, Albert Einstein
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defined science as “Man’s attemptsto make the chaotic diversity of his sense experience correspond to a logically uniformsystem of thought.” And indeed, as G. Gore
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wrote,” Science is the interpretation of nature and man is the interpreter.” And as A. Wolf 
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opined
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” It is the spirit of man brooding over the stream of natural events that has given birth to science,” Clearly,science is the product of human curiosity.
Why are we curious?
It is almost an instinct for us humans to try to understand what our senses perceived because of our highly developed mental skills. These are the mentalskills to observe, infer, measure, classify, experiment, and to communicate. Through theages, our ancestors learned to use these skills in a methodical manner to investigate the‘how,’ the ‘why,’ and the ‘when’ of natural events. This methodical manner to our mentalskills to satisfy human curiosity is the scientific method.Using the scientific method, generation after generation pf scientist gradually discoveredthe natural laws that govern natural processes. As each generation described with an ever increasing accuracy the events and circumstances that prevail in nature, what was once perceived as chaotic becomes rational, and man saw the unity in the diversity of nature.In other word, the scientific endeavors spanning several generations yielded a number of natural laws. These laws reduce natural events in nature to orderly predictable events.
What sets the limitation of science?
Science is a product of the human senses and thehuman mind and that is why there could be no science in the absence of an intelligent being like a human or any other intelligent creature like him. And therein lies thelimitation of science; the limitation of the human senses and the limitation of the humanmind. We can not investigate what our senses cannot perceive, and we can not explain beyond what our human mind can understand. As a matter of fact, the optical and theelectron microscope, the optical and radio telescopes, and all the other new scientificinstruments are but the result of our attempts to extend our sense of perception.
 
 How does science operate?
Science is a self correcting and self-generating humanactivity. Using the scientific method, each generation of scientist develop explanations of natural phenomena but at the same time, within the same generation, there are scientistswho question the validity of the proposed explanations. And within the same generation,there are scientists who arrive at some new observations which lead to the identificationof new and heretofore undescribed phenomena. In this manner science is self-correctingand self-generating, it is never stagnant.
 How does the Scientific Method operate?
The scientific method is a mental processwhich serves as the “tool” of scientist with which new discoveries are made Although thescientific method is traditionally characterized as a rigid mental process consisting of (a)observation, (b) problem identification, (c) hypothesis formulation, and (d) drawing of conclusions as to the possible validity if the prediction, scientists are not in generalagreement as to exactly what constitutes scientific procedure.In reality, this rigid process called the scientific method did prove useful in some particular instances, like in biology where the problem is amenable to experimentalmanipulation. But in some other cases, the problem may not be amenable to controlledmanipulation, like in the geological process of volcanic eruption and mountain building.Under such unmanageable events, the traditional scientific procedure is unrealistic.What seems to be common to all scientific investigations is that scientific procedureinvolves postulating and testing hypothesis. The testing part may or may not strictlyinvolve experimentation but accurate observations. In other words, not all scientistsnecessarily conduct experiments to prove hypotheses.In the development and proving of hypotheses, scientists use inductive and deductivelogic, but they do not tend to think exclusively in one way or the other at different times.In practice, they use the interplay of inductive and deductive logic. Inductive logic proceeds from the specifies and arrives at a generalization. On the contrary, deductive proceeds from the general to the specific. To be sure, the following examples are in order.Inductive logic involves arriving at a probable conclusion based on several samplings.Suppose that a person tasted a green mango and found it sour and slightly tangy to thetaste buds. Then he subsequently tasted 24 other mangoes and found the same result.Based on the these 25 samplings, he may then conclude that all green mangoes are sour and tangy to the taste. Inductive logic thus proceeds from several specific observations toa generalization. Most of the major theories are arrived at I this manner. For example, the
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