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Module 1 - Lesson 1 - Science, Technology & Society
Module 1 - Lesson 1 - Science, Technology & Society
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
PRE-REQUISITE/CO-REQUISITES : NONE
COURSE OUTCOMES
In the context of the specific field of specialization, the students will be able to:
Deadline Requirements
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The classical view began to fall apart in the process of 20 th century investigations of
scientific activity.
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Scientism
Technologically progressivism
Good = Progress
Progress = Technology
Technoscience
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.
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.
And so, what do you think is the clear boundary between the social and the political aspects?
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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.