Science, Technology and Society

SIX1015
Lecture 4: Science and Values
 Objectives:

• At the end of the lecture, students are able to understand:

i) Science and values
ii) The image of science
iii) Sociological Critique of science – science realism & anti-realist
iv) Science and religion – typology by Ian Barbour
v) Conclusion
 Outline of Lecture

• Objective of Lecture
• Science and Values
• Conflicting images of science – rational, objective, progress??
• Scientific realism and anti-realism
• Model science and religion
• Conclusion
 Science & Values
• Science – systematic study of natural phenomena.
• Values – the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong, and
how to act in various situations.
• Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses
of actions or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person's sense of right and
wrong or what "ought" to be.
• Values tend to influence attitudes and behavior and these type
include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (religious, political)
values, social values, and aesthetic values.
• Ethics – the study of what is morally right and wrong, or a set of beliefs
about what is morally right and wrong.
 Demography of Population
• The Malaysian population consists of people of different races, religions and race.
• The largest group of Malaysians consist of three main races, namely the Malays,
Chinese and Indians. Orang Asli are the natives in Peninsular Malaysia and is
generally divided into three major groups, namely the Negrito, Senoi and
Proto-Malay. Sabah’s population consists of 32 ethnic groups and the major ethnic
is Kadazandusun while Sarawak population consists of 27 ethnic groups and Iban is
the major ethnic group.
• In 2015, the prefix data of Malaysian population is 30,995,700 and the divisions by
ethnics are as follow: Bumiputera - 19,150,900 (61.8%); Chinese - 6,620,300
(21.4%); Indian - 1,988,600 (6.4%); Others - 270,700 (0.9%) and Non-Malaysian
Resident - 2,965,300 (9.6%).
Source: Malaysia 2016 (Department of Information)
• Article 3 of the constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the
Federation, but other religions can also be practised safely and peacefully in
any part of the Federation”.
• Article 11 on the Freedom of Religion on the other hand says “Every person
is entitled to profess and practise his own religion and subject to Clause (4),
develop their own religion”.
• This means that even if Malaysia has declared Islam as the official religion,
the Malaysian population which consists of various ancestry and beliefs, are
free to practise their respective faith.
• This freedom shapes a strong unity between the races and this is proven by
the peaceful environment achieved by Malaysians.
Source: Malaysia 2016 (Department of Information)
• Malaysian population – demographic background
• Values is important in the local context in order to understand
relationship between science, technology and society in Malaysia
• Modern science and technology – for wealth, power and human
development
• Positive and negative impacts.
• Spread very rapidly among non-Western countries – from
colonialization, education.
Conflicting Images of Science – Philosophy of
Science’s perspective
• Is science/ modern science value free?
• Modernist view – science is universal and value free
• Postmodernist view – science is not universal and value free
• Social constructivism - The crucial claim of social
constructivism is that a sociological analysis of science and
scientific knowledge is reveals the social nature of science.
• The development of scientific knowledge is seen to be
determined by social forces, essentially contingent and
independent of rational methods, and analyzable in terms of
causal processes of belief formation.
 Modernist’s view of Science
• If we turn to philosophy of science, we can see that up to 1960s it has
been dominated and influenced by those modernists who seek to
portray a positivistic image of science.
• Logical positivism, Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, Imre Lakatos
• In this conception, science is regarded as objective, rational, progressive
and true.
• It also influences the historical growth of philosophy of science since the
1970s beginning with critiques of science by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and the
Edinburgh School with its sociology of science.
• For them, science no longer has any special epistemic status over other
sciences, and cannot be regarded as a standard and model for other
sciences.
• The social constructivists, for example, do not regard science as reflecting the
truth about the universe, but it is merely constructed by a particular culture or
society by incorporating its own ideologies and cultural characteristics into its
system of knowledge.
• For instance, Darwinian evolutionary theory reflects the social orders during the
reign of Queen Victoria in Britain, with a sharp class struggle in British society.
• Shapin and Schaffer in their Leviathan and the Air Pump (1985) try to show how
politics influence the use of experimental methods in the study of gas
phenomena in the 17th century England. It should be noted that this study is not
genuine historical writing; but they have certain epistemological goal—as to
exhibit, through historical descriptions, how external factors influence the
formation of science. In this way they try to convince that science is not an
objective reflection of nature, but it is a human invention in which their interests
are incorporated.
 Scientific realism and anti-realism
• Debates about scientific realism concern the extent to which we are
entitled to hope or believe that science will tell us what the world is really
like.
• Realists tend to be optimistic; antirealists do not.
• Scientific realism is the view that well-confirmed scientific theories are
approximately true; the entities they postulate do exist; and we have good
reason to believe their main tenets.
• Scientific realism is the view that the universe described by science is real
regardless of how it may be interpreted.
• Anti-realism in its most general sense can be understood as being in
contrast to a generic realism, which holds that distinctive objects of a
subject-matter exist and have properties independent of one's beliefs and
conceptual schemes.
 Science & Religion

• Diverse views of how science and religion can

be related to each other.
• Classifying views – typology
• Examples: Ian Barbour
 Typology proposed by Ian Barbour
• The kinds of interactions between science and religion have
been classified using the following typology:
1) Conflict
2) Independence
3) Dialogue
4) Integration
 1) Conflict
• Stating the disciplines (science and religion) contradict and are
incompatible with each other.

Science Religion
 1) Conflict
• Example of the conflict of religion with modern science:
• Italian astronomer Galileo Galilie in 1663
- challenged the respected authority of Aristotle – geosentric (sun and planets
revolve in orbits around the earth).
- challenged the authority of the Catholic church – literal interpretation of scripture
 1) Conflict
• Example: Responses to Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of
Species (1859).
- a long, gradual process of evolution conflicts with the seven days of creation in
Genesis, which some theologians interpreted literally.
- “ the survival of the fittest” - was also used by social philosophers to justify
ruthless economic competition and colonialism.
- the idea of an impersonal process of variation and natural selection challenged
the traditional idea of purposeful design.
 2) Independence
• Treating each as quite separate realms of enquiry.

Science Human life Religion

 2) Independence

• Conflict between science and religion can be avoided if they

are taken to be inquires in separate domains.
• Employ differing languages fulfilling contrasting functions in
human life.
 2) Independence
• Science – asks about lawful regularities among events in nature
• Religion – asks about ultimate meaning and purpose in a wider
interpretive framework.
 2) Independence
• Separate domains – starting 19th century, biblical scholars used
historical methods to study the cultural context in which
various parts of the Bible were written.
• They noted that the creation stories of the Bible made
significant affirmations that the world is good, orderly, and
dependent on a purposeful God.
 2) Independence
• These convictions were conveyed through a symbolic and
poetic story that assumed the prescientific cosmology of its
day, which included a seven-day creation, an earth-centered
astronomy, and a three-part universe with heaven above and
hell below the world.
 2) Independence
• But the central message of Genesis can be accepted today
because it is not dependent on its ancient cosmology, and it is
also quite independent of modern scientific cosmology.
• Its message is not actually about events in the past, but about
the fundamental relation of God to the world and to persons in
every moment, which is not a scientific question.
 2) Independence
• Cultural anthropologist point out that creation stories around
the world provide models for human behaviour.
• Communities participate in such stories by enacting them in
rituals.
• The role of creation stories is primarily to provide patterns for
human life in the present rather than to provide explanatory
accounts of events in the past.
 2) Independence
• Differing languages
• – logical positivists took scientific statements as the norm for
all cognitive assertions – empirical verification.
• - science & religion do different jobs and neither should be
judged by the standards of the order.
 3) Dialogue
• Potray more constructive relationship
• Emphasizes several kinds of similarity
• Presuppositions and boundary questions of the scientific
enterprise and methodological and conceptual parallels
between the two fields.
 3) Dialogue

Science Religion
 3) Dialogue
• Idea of creation gave religious legitimacy to scientific inquiry.
• Modern science – studying the handiwork of Creator.
• Boundary questions are raised but not answered by science.
 3) Dialogue
• Methodological & conceptual parallels
• All theory are theory-laden, not theory-free. Theoretical
assumptions enter the selection, reporting, and interpretation
of what are taken to be data.
• Theories – from creative imagination.
 3) Dialogue
• Focus on limits questions – ethical issues connected with the
use of the result of scientific research.
 4) Integration
• Science and religion can be integrated.
• 3 areas for integration:
• i) natural theology – the existence of God can be inferred from
(or is supported by) the evidence of design in nature.
 4) Integration
• ii) theology of nature – even though the sources of theology lie
outside of science, its doctrines must be consistent with
scientific evidence if theology wants to have intellectual
credibility in modern society.
• - starts from a religious tradition based on religious experience
and historical revelation.
 4) Integration
• iii)Process philosophy – denies the duality of matter and mind
– it understands nature as a permanent process of change and
God as the source of novelty and order.
4) Integration

Religion

Science
 Conclusion
• Ian Barbour – to bring together a knowledge of histories of
science, theology and philosophy of science in a
comprehensive fashion within the framework of a study of
“science & religion”; more over, he provided a framework for
scholars to follow with his classification of possible models of
interaction between the two disciplines.
 Conclusion
• Science and Values.
• Values – religious values
• Independence, dialogue, integration and conflict.
• Models of interaction between science and religion
 • Thank you
• Any question, you can email to:
• maisara@um.edu.my (Group 1)
• mdzufri@um.edu.my (Group 2)