Chapter 1

Historical Antecedents in Which Social Considerations Changed

the Course of Science and Technology

A. General Concepts

What is Science, Technology and Society?

Science and Technology and Society is an interdisciplinary course designed to

examine the ways that science and technology shape, and are shaped by, our society,
politics, and culture. It explores the conditions under which production, distribution and
utilization of scientific knowledge and technological systems occur;; and the effects of
these processes upon the entire society. History and philosophy of science and
technology, sociology and anthropology are greatly interconnected to the discussion of
STS because these are the very factors that molded the development of science and
technology as we know it today.

Science is an evolving body of knowledge that is based on theoretical expositions

and experimental and empirical activities that generates universal truths. Technology, on
the other hand is the application of science and creation of systems, processes and
objects designed to help humans in their daily activities. The development of science and
technology has brought immense progress in society and men. Scientific knowledge and
technology influences individuals and society. Better understanding of science and
technology is essential to know the unique attributes of each enterprise, then addressing
their implications for society.
 Society is the sum total of our interactions as humans, including the interactions
that we engage in to understand the nature of things and to create things. It is also defined
as a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group
sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political
authority and dominant cultural expectations (Science Daily).

Science, technology and society is important to the public because it helps address
issues and problems that are of concern to the general population. Scientific and
technological principles have been and continue to be applied to solve problems that
people experience in their day--to--day aspects of living. But scientific findings must be
applied at the right scales. The impact of technological breakthroughs on people, society
and the environment must be critically assessed to preserve its value.

Figure 1 The Interrelationship of science, technology and society

Source: Ihueze et al., 2015. researchgate.net

A lot of our problems in modern society involve not only technology but also human
values, social organization, environmental concerns, economic resources, political
decisions, and a myriad of other factors. These things sits at the interface between the
three fields and can also be solved (if they can be solved at all) by the application of
scientific knowledge, technical expertise, social understanding, and humane compassion.

In the past, science is learned as an independent study from other fields. It focuses
on the scientific methods, natural processes and understanding nature. But in the current
global scenario, science is studied holistically, often in an interdisciplinary method,
emphasizing systems rather than processes, synthesis more than analysis and predicting
nature’s behavior in order to have useful application in solving contemporary problems.

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The scientific data that have built up a considerable base of knowledge led to a vast
portfolio of useful technologies, especially in the 21 st century, to solve many of the
problems now facing humankind (UNESCO, 1999).

To solve our contemporary problems, science needs to become more

multidisciplinary and its practitioners should continue to promote cooperation and
integration between the social and natural sciences. A holistic approach also demands
that science draw on the contributions of the humanities (such as history and philosophy),
local knowledge systems, aboriginal wisdom, and the wide variety of cultural values.

The influence of science and technology on people’s lives is expanding. While

recent benefits to humanity are unparalleled in the history of the human species, in some
instances the impact has been harmful or the long--term effects give causes for serious
concerns. A considerable measure of public mistrust of science and fear of technology
exists today. In part, this stems from the belief by some individuals and communities that
they will be the ones to suffer the indirect negative consequences of technical innovations
introduced to benefit only a privileged minority. The power of science to bring about
change places a duty on scientists to proceed with great caution both in what they do and
what they say. Scientists should reflect on the social consequences of the technological
applications or dissemination of partial information of their work and explain to the public
and policy makers alike the degree of scientific uncertainty or incompleteness in their
findings. At the same time, though, they should not hesitate to fully exploit the predictive
power of science, duly qualified, to help people cope with environmental change,
especially in cases of direct threats like natural disasters or water shortages.

The Role of Science and Technology

1. alter the way people live, connect, communicate and transact, with profound
effects on economic development;;
2. key drivers to development, because technological and scientific revolutions
underpin economic advances, improvements in health systems, education and
infrastructure;;
3. The technological revolutions of the 21st century are emerging from entirely new
sectors, based on micro--processors, tele--communications, bio--technology and
nano--technology. Products are transforming business practices across the
economy, as well as the lives of all who have access to their effects. The most
remarkable breakthroughs will come from the interaction of insights and
applications arising when these technologies converge.
4. have the power to better the lives of poor people in developing countries
5. differentiators between countries that are able to tackle poverty effectively by
growing and developing their economies, and those that are not.
6. engine of growth
7. interventions for cognitive enhancement, proton cancer therapy and genetic
engineering

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B. Historical Antecedents in the World

Just like with any other discipline, the best way to truly understand where
we are in science today is to look back at what happened in the past. The history
of science can teach us many lessons about the way scientists think and
understand the world around us. A historical perspective will make us appreciate
more what science really is.

From Ancient Times to 600 BC

Science during ancient times involved practical arts like healing practices
and metal tradition. Some of the earliest records from history indicate that 3,000
years before Christ, the ancient Egyptians already had reasonably sophisticated
medical practices. Sometime around 2650 B.C., for example, a man named
Imhotep was renowned for his knowledge of medicine. Most historians agree that
the heart of Egyptian medicine was trial and error. Egyptian doctors would try one
remedy, and if it worked, they would continue to use it. If a remedy they tried didn’t
work, the patient might die, but at least the doctors learned that next time they
should try a different remedy. Despite the fact that such practices sound primitive,
the results were, sometimes, surprisingly effective.

The Egyptian medicine was considered advanced as compared with other

ancient nations because of one of the early inventions of Egyptian civilization – the
papyrus. The papyrus is an ancient form of paper, made from the papyrus plant,
a reed which grows in the marshy areas around the Nile river. As early as 3,000
years before Christ, Egyptians took thin slices of the stem of the papyrus plant, laid
them crosswise on top of each other, moistened them, and then pressed and dried
them. The result was a form of paper that was reasonably easy to write on and
store. The invention of this ancient form of paper revolutionized the way
information was transmitted from person to person and generation to generation.
Before papyrus, Egyptians, Sumerians, and other races wrote on clay tablets or
smooth rocks. This was a time--consuming process, and the products were not
easy to store or transport. When Egyptians began writing on papyrus, all of that
changed. Papyrus was easy to roll into scrolls. Thus, Egyptian writings became
easy to store and transport. As a result, the knowledge of one scholar could be
easily transferred to other scholars. As this accumulated knowledge was passed
down from generation to generation, Egyptian medicine became the most
respected form of medicine in the known world. Papyrus was used as a writing
material as early as 3,000 BC in ancient Egypt, and continued to be used to some
extent until around 1100 AD.

Although the Egyptians were renowned for their medicine and for papyrus,
other cultures had impressive inventions of their own. Around the time that papyrus
was first being used in Egypt, the Mesopotamians were making pottery using the
first known potter’s wheel. Not long after, horse--drawn chariots were being used.
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As early as 1,000 years before Christ, the Chinese were using compasses to aid
themselves in their travels. The ancient world, then, was filled with inventions that,
although they sound commonplace today, revolutionized life during those times.
These inventions are history’s first inklings of science.

The Advent of Science (600 BC to 500 AD)

The ancient Greeks were the early thinkers and as far as historians can tell,
they were the first true scientists. They collected facts and observations and then
used those observations to explain the natural world. Although many cultures like
the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese had collected observations
and facts, they had not tried to use those facts to develop explanations of the world
around them.

Scientific thought in Classical Antiquity becomes tangible from the 6th

century BC in pre--Socratic philosophy (Thales, Pythagoras). In circa 385 BC,
Plato founded the Academy. With Plato's student Aristotle begins the "scientific
revolution" of the Hellenistic period culminating in the 3rd to 2nd centuries with
scholars such as Eratosthenes, Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus
and Archimedes.

This period produced substantial advances in scientific knowledge,

especially in anatomy, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geography, mathematics and
astronomy;; an awareness of the importance of certain scientific problems,
especially those related to the problem of change and its cause;; and a recognition
of the methodological importance of applying mathematics to natural phenomena
and of undertaking empirical research.

The scholars frequently employed the principles developed in earlier Greek

thought: the application of mathematics and deliberate empirical research, in their
scientific investigations. This was passed on from ancient Greek philosophers to
medieval Muslim philosophers and scientists, to the European Renaissance and
Enlightenment, to the secular sciences of the modern day.

Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic and scientific
flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the eighth century to the
fourteenth century, with several contemporary scholars dating the end of the era
to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This period is traditionally understood to have
begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al--Rashid (786 to 809) with the
inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various
parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather and
translate all of the world's classical knowledge into the Arabic language and
subsequently development in various fields of sciences began. Science and

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technology in the Islamic world adopted and preserved knowledge and
technologies from contemporary and earlier civilizations, including Persia, Egypt,
India, China, and Greco--Roman antiquity, while making numerous improvements,
innovations and inventions.

Islamic scientific achievements encompassed a wide range of subjectareas,

especially astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Scientific inquiry was practiced
in other subjects like alchemy and chemistry, botany and agronomy, geography
and cartography, ophthalmology, pharmacology, physics and zoology.

Islamic science was characterized by having practical purposes as well as

the goal of understanding. Astronomy was useful in determining the Qibla, which
is the direction in which to pray, botany is applied in agriculture and geography
enabled scientists to make accurate maps. Mathematics also flourished during the
Islamic Golden Age with the works of Al--Khwarizmi, Avicenna and Jamshid al
Kashi that led to advanced in algebra, trigonometry, geometry and Arabic
numerals.

There was also great progress in medicine during this period. Al--Biruni, and
Avicenna produced books that contain descriptions of the preparation of hundred
of drugs made from medicinal plants and chemical compounds. Islamic doctors
describe diseases like smallpox and measles, and challenged classical Greek
medical knowledge.

Likewise, Islamic physicists such as Ibn Al--Haytham, Al--Biruni and others

studied optics and mechanics as well as astronomy, and criticized Aristotle’s view
of motion.

The significance of medieval Islamic science has been debated by

historians. The traditionalist view holds that it lacked innovation, and was mainly
important for handing on ancient knowledge to medieval Europe. The revisionist
view holds that it constituted a scientific revolution. Whatever the case, science
flourished across a wide area around the Mediterranean and further afield, for
several centuries, in a wide range of institutions.

Science and Technology in Ancient China

Ancient Chinese scientists and engineers made significant scientific

innovations, findings and technological advances across various scientific
disciplines including the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, military
technology, mathematics, geology and astronomy.

Ancient China gave the world the Four Great Inventions that include the
compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing. These were considered as
among the most important technological advances and were only known to Europe

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1000 years later or during the end of the Middle ages. These four inventions had
a profound impact on the development of civilization throughout the world.
However, some modern Chinese scholars have opined that other Chinese
inventions were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact on Chinese
civilization – the Four Great Inventions serve merely to highlight the technological
interaction between East and West.

As stated by Karl Marx, "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press
were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder
blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and found
the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the
regeneration of science in general;; the most powerful lever for creating the
intellectual prerequisites.”

The Renaissance (1300 AD – 1600AD)

The 14th century was the beginning of the cultural movement of the
Renaissance, which was considered by many as the Golden Age of Science.
During the Renaissance period, great advances occurred in
geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, anatomy,
manufacturing, and engineering. The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was
accelerated after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the inventionof
printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas.

Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the
early phase of the Scientific Revolution, 1450–1630. More recently, Peter Dear
has argued for a two--phase model of early modern science: a Scientific
Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, focused on the restoration of the
natural knowledge of the ancients;; and a Scientific Revolution of the 17th century,
when scientists shifted from recovery to innovation.

But this initial period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness.

There were no new developments in physics or astronomy, and the reverence for
classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the
universe. Renaissance philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and
deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion. At the same time,
Renaissance humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate
spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. Sciencewould
only be revived later, with such figures as Copernicus, Gerolamo Cardano,
Francis Bacon, and Descartes.

The most important technological advance of all in this period was the
development of printing, with movable metal type, about the mid--15th century in
Germany. Johannes Gutenberg is usually called its inventor, but in fact many
people and many steps were involved. Block printing on wood came to the West

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from China between 1250 and 1350, papermaking came from China by way of the
Arabs to 12th--century Spain, whereas the Flemish technique of oil painting was
the origin of the new printers’ ink. Three men of Mainz—Gutenberg and his
contemporaries Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer—seem to have taken the final
steps, casting metal type and locking it into a wooden press. The invention spread
like the wind, reaching Italy by 1467, Hungary and Poland in the 1470s, and
Scandinavia by 1483. By 1500 the presses of Europe had produced some six
million books. Without the printing press it is impossible to conceive that the
Reformation would have ever been more than a monkish quarrel or that the rise of
a new science, which was a cooperative effort of an international community,
would have occurred at all. In short, the development of printing amounted to a
communications revolution of the order of the invention of writing;; and, like that
prehistoric discovery, it transformed the conditions of life. The communications
revolution immeasurably enhanced human opportunities for enlightenment and
pleasure on one hand and created previously undreamed--of possibilities for
manipulation and control on the other. The consideration of such contradictory
effects may guard us against a ready acceptance of triumphalist conceptions of
the Renaissance or of historical change in general.

The Enlightenment Period (1715 A.D. to 1789 A.D.)

The Enlightenment Period or the Age of Reason was characterized by

radical reorientation in science, which emphasized reason over superstition and
science over blind faith. This period produced numerous books, essays,
inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The American and
French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals and
respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its decline. The
Enlightenment ultimately gave way to 19th--century Romanticism.

The Enlightenment’s important 17th--century precursors included the key

natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei,
Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Its roots are usually traced to
1680s England, where in the span of three years Isaac Newton published his
“Principia Mathematica” (1686) and John Locke his “Essay Concerning Human
Understanding” (1689)—two works that provided the scientific, mathematical and
philosophical toolkit for the Enlightenment’s major advances.

In this era dedicated to human progress, the advancement of the natural

sciences is regarded as the main exemplification of, and fuel for, such progress.
Isaac Newton’s epochal accomplishment in his Principia Mathematica consists in
the comprehension of a diversity of physical phenomena – in particular the motions
of heavenly bodies, together with the motions of sublunary bodies – in few
relatively simple, universally applicable, mathematical laws, was a great stimulus
to the intellectual activity of the eighteenth century and served as a model and
inspiration for the researches of a number of Enlightenment thinkers. Newton’s

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system strongly encourages the Enlightenment conception of nature as an orderly
domain governed by strict mathematical--dynamical laws and the conception of
ourselves as capable of knowing those laws and of plumbing the secrets of nature
through the exercise of our unaided faculties. – The conception of nature, and of
how we know it, changes significantly with the rise of modern science. It belongs
centrally to the agenda of Enlightenment philosophy to contribute to the new
knowledge of nature, and to provide a metaphysical framework within which to
place and interpret this new knowledge.

Industrial Revolution (1760 -- 1840)

The rise of modern science and the Industrial Revolution were closely
connected. It is difficult to show any direct effect of scientific discoveries upon the
rise of the textile or even the metallurgical industry in Great Britain, the home of
the Industrial Revolution, but there certainly was a similarity in attitude to be found
in science and nascent industry. Close observation and careful generalization
leading to practical utilization were characteristic of both industrialists and
experimentalists alike in the 18th century.

What science offered in the 18th century was the hope that careful
observation and experimentation might improve industrial production significantly.
The science of metallurgy permitted the tailoring of alloy steels to industrial
specifications, the science of chemistry permitted the creation of new substances,
like the aniline dyes, of fundamental industrial importance, and that electricity and
magnetism were harnessed in the electric dynamo and motor. Until that period
science probably profited more from industry than the other way around. It was the
steam engine that posed the problems that led, by way of a search for a theory of
steam power, to the creation of thermodynamics. Most importantly, as industry
required ever more complicated and intricate machinery, the machine tool industry
developed to provide it and, in the process, made possible the construction of ever
more delicate and refined instruments for science. As science turned from the
everyday world to the worlds of atoms and molecules, electric currents and
magnetic fields, microbes and viruses, and nebulae and galaxies, instruments
increasingly provided the sole contact with phenomena. A large refracting
telescope driven by intricate clockwork to observe nebulae was asmuch a product
of 19th--century heavy industry as were the steam locomotive andthe steamship.

The Industrial Revolution had one further important effect on the

development of modern science. The prospect of applying science to the problems
of industry served to stimulate public support for science. Governments, in varying
degrees and at different rates, began supporting science even more directly, by
making financial grants to scientists, by founding research institutes, and by
bestowing honors and official posts on great scientists. By the end of the 19th
century the natural philosopher following his private interests had given way to the
professional scientist with a public role.

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 The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological,
socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: (1)
the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel, (2) the use ofnew
energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the
steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal--combustion engine, (3) the
invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that
permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy, (4) a
new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased
division of labor and specialization of function, (5) important developments in
transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive,
steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and (6) the increasing
application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a
tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of
manufactured goods.

20th Century Science: Physics and Information Age

The 20th century was an important century in the history of the sciences. It
generated entirely novel insights in all areas of research – often thanks to the
introduction of novel research methods – and it established an intimate connection
between science and technology. With this connection, science is dealing now with
the complexity of the real world. The scientific legacy of the 20th Century gave
proof of the revolutionary changes in many areas of the sciences – in particular,
physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, neurosciences and earth and
environmental sciences – and how they contributed to these changes.

The epistemological and methodological questions as well as the

interdisciplinary aspects become ever more important in scientific research. The
common denominator of the sciences is the notion of discovery, and discovery is
an organised mode of observing nature. Twentieth century cosmology greatly
improved our knowledge of the place that man and his planet occupy in the
universe. The “wonder” that Plato and Aristotle put at the origin of thought,
today extends to science itself. Questions now arise on the origin and on the whole,
its history and its laws.

The start of the 20th century was strongly marked by Einstein’s formulation
of the theory of relativity (1905) including the unifying concept of energy related to
mass and the speed of light: E = mc2 . He made many more contributions, notably
to statistical mechanics, and he provided a great inspiring influence for many other
physicists.

In the second half of the 20th century several branches of science continued
to make great progress and we here list physics, chemistry, biology, geology and
astronomy. For example, there was the development of the semi--conductor

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(transistor), followed by developments in nanotechnology that led to great
advances in information technology. In nuclear physics the discovery of sub--atomic
particles provided a great leap forward.

Modern physics grew in the 20th into a primary discipline contributing to all
today’s basic natural sciences, astronomy, chemistry and biology. Although it took
a hundred years since Clausius’s time for it to be fully recognized that all biological
processes have also to obey the laws of thermodynamics, the border between the
origin of the living and the non--living worlds has now at last been blurred. The year
1953 was an important landmark for biology with the description by Crick and
Watson of the structure of DNA, the carrier of genetic information (Rosch, 2014).

Physics has enabled us to understand the basic components of matter and

we are well on the way to an ever more consistent and unitary understanding of
the entire structure of natural reality, which we discover as being made up not only
of matter and energy but also of information and forms. The latest developments
in astrophysics are also particularly surprising: they further confirm the great unity
of physics that manifests itself clearly at each new stage of the understanding of
reality.

Biology too, with the discovery of DNA and the development of genetics,
allows us to penetrate the fundamental processes of life and to intervene in the
gene pool of certain organisms by imitating some of these natural mechanisms.
Information technology and the digital processing of information have transformed
our lifestyle and our way of communicating in the space of very few decades. The
20th century has seen medicine find a cure for many life--threatening diseases and
the beginning of organ transplants.

It is impossible to list the many other discoveries and results that have
broadened our knowledge and influenced our world outlook: from progress in
computational logic to the chemistry of materials, from the neurosciences to
robotics. Scientific research not only gives expression to the strength of rationality
in explaining the world and the way in which this is done. The application of
scientific knowledge can induce changes of environmental and thus living
conditions. It is these aspects, the interrelations between scientific progress and
social development, which together with insights into the epistemological structure
and the ethical implications of science play an important role in the life and the
work of scientists.

Science and Technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of

boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of
advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D
printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies. It’s the
collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming

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indispensable to modern life. Think GPS systems that suggest the fastest route to
a destination, voice--activated virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, personalized
Netflix recommendations, and Facebook’s ability to recognize your face and tag
you in a friend’s photo (https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2018/12/what--is--the--
fourth--industrial--revolution--4IR.html).

As a result of this perfect storm of technologies, the Fourth Industrial

Revolution is paving the way for transformative changes in the way we live and
radically disrupting almost every business sector. It’s all happening at an
unprecedented, whirlwind pace.

The easiest way to understand the Fourth Industrial Revolution is to focus on

the technologies driving it. Artificial intelligence (AI) describes computers that can
“think” like humans — recognizing complex patterns, processing information, drawing
conclusions, and making recommendations. AI is used in many ways, from spotting
patterns in huge piles of unstructured data to powering the autocorrect on your phone.
New computational technologies are making computers smarter. They enable
computers to process vast amounts of data faster than ever before, while the advent
of the “cloud” has allowed businesses to safely store and access their information from
anywhere with internet access, at any time. Quantum computing technologies now in
development will eventually make computers millions of times more powerful. These
computers will have the potential to supercharge AI, create highly complex data
models in seconds, and speed up the discovery of new materials.
Virtual reality (VR) offers immersive digital experiences (using a VR headset)
that simulate the real world, while augmented reality merges the digital and physical
worlds. Examples include L’Oréal’s makeup app, which allows users to digitally
experiment with makeup products before buying them, and the Google Translate
phone app, which allows users to scan and instantly translate street signs, menus,
and other text.
Biotechnology harnesses cellular and biomolecular processes to develop new
technologies and products for a range of uses, including developing new
pharmaceuticals and materials, more efficient industrial manufacturing processes, and
cleaner, more efficient energy sources. Researchers in Stockholm, for example, are
working on what is being touted as the strongest biomaterial ever produced.
Robotics refers to the design, manufacture, and use of robots for personal and
commercial use. While we’re yet to see robot assistants in every home, technological
advances have made robots increasingly complex and sophisticated. They are used
in fields as wide-ranging as manufacturing, health and safety, and human assistance.
3D printing allows manufacturing businesses to print their own parts, with less
tooling, at a lower cost, and faster than via traditional processes. Plus, designs can be
customized to ensure a perfect fit.

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 Innovative materials, including plastics, metal alloys, and biomaterials, promise
to shake up sectors including manufacturing, renewable energy, construction, and
healthcare.
The IoT describes the idea of everyday items — from medical wearables that
monitor users’ physical condition to cars and tracking devices inserted into parcels —
being connected to the internet and identifiable by other devices. A big plus for
businesses is that they can collect customer data from constantly connected products,
allowing them to better gauge how customers use products and tailor marketing
campaigns accordingly. There are also many industrial applications, such as farmers
putting IoT sensors into fields to monitor soil attributes and inform decisions such as
when to fertilize.
Energy capture, storage, and transmission represent a growing market sector,
spurred by the falling cost of renewable energy technologies and improvements in
battery storage capacity.

C. Historical Development of Science and Technology in the Philippines

The current state of science and technology in the country can be traced back to its
historical development and the latent events that helped shape it since the pre--colonial
period to contemporary time. What we have or lack today in terms of science and
technology is very much an effect of the government policies that had been enacted by
past public officials in trying to develop a technological society that is responsive to the
needs of time.

Pre--Spanish Era.

There is not much written about the Philippines during pre--colonial time but analysis
from archeological artifacts revealed that the first inhabitants in the archipelago who
settled in Palawan and Batangas around 40 000 years ago have made simple tools or
weapons of stone which eventually developed techniques for sawing, drilling and
polishing hard stones. This very primitive technology was brought by primal needs of
survival by hunting wild animals and gathering fruits and vegetables in the forest. They
learned that by polishing hard stones, they can develop sharp objects that are useful in
their day to day activities. From this early, we can see that technology was developed
because of a great necessity.

Still on its primitive state, the first inhabitants in the country are learning what can
be harnessed from the environment. They have come to understand that when clay is
mixed with 2 water and then shaped into something before sun drying, it hardens to an
object that can also be useful to them. And because clay is moldable, it can be shaped
into various objects.

As the early Filipinos flourished, they have learned how to extract, smelt and refine
metals like copper, gold, bronze and iron from nature and consequently fashion them into
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tools and implements. At this point, the inhabitants of the country are showing a deeper
understanding of their nature because they were able to obtain valuable resources from
nature.
As the inhabitants shifted from wandering from one place to another and learned to
settle in areas near the water source, they also learned how to weave cotton, engaged
themselves in agriculture and are knowledgeable on building boats for coastal trade.

From the above mentioned facts, it can be concluded that primitive Filipinos are
practicing science and technology in their everyday lives. The ancient crafts of stone
carving, pottery and smelting of metals involves a lot of science, which is understanding
the nature of matter involved. The ingenuity of the Ifugaos in building the Banaue Rice
Terraces The smelting of metals exhibited the primitive Filipino’s knowledge on the
composition of alloy and the optimum temperature that will produce the metal with
acceptable tensile strength. All in all, the primitive Filipinos were living in perfect harmony
with nature and they obtain from it what is just needed in their everyday life through a very
simple science of understanding how mother nature operates

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 Spanish Colonial Era.

As claimed by Caoili (1983), the beginnings of modern science and technology in

the country can be traced back to the Spanish regime because they established schools,
hospitals and started scientific research that had important consequences in the
development of the country. These schools, which are mostly run by Spanish friars,
formed the first Filipino professionals. The The 3 highest institution of learning during this
time was the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas.

But the very strict hold of the church among citizens and its intervention and
meddling to the government propelled by fear of intellectual awakening among Filipinos
have greatly hindered the progress of these professionals to further enhance their
knowledge, conduct scientific investigations and contribute to the advancement of
society. But a few of persistent Filipino scientists succeeded by educating themselves
abroad. One notable example of course is our national hero, the great Dr. Jose P. Rizal.
Dr. Jose Rizal is the epitome of the Renaissance man in the Philippine context. He is a
scientist, a doctor, an engineer (he designed and built a water system in Dapitan), a
journalist, a novelist, an urban planner and a hero. Being a doctor and scientist, he had
extensive knowledge on medicine and was able to operate his mother’s blinding eye.
When he was deported in Dapitan, his knowledge on science and engineering was
translated into technology by creating a water system that improved the sanitation of
households in the area. Dr. Jose

Dr. Jose Rizal was a brilliant man and his life stood out among his contemporaries.
But it cannot be said that there is no contribution to science and technology among the
Filipino men and women during the Spanish era. The charity hospitals became the
breeding ground for scientific researches on pharmacy and medicine, with great focus on
problems of infectious diseases, their causes and possible remedies. And in 1887, the
Laboratorio Municipal de Ciudad de Manila was created and whose functions were to
conduct biochemical analyses for public health and to undertake specimen examinations
for clinical and medico--legal cases. Its publication, probably the first scientific journal in
the country was titled Cronica de Ciencias Medicas de Filipinas showed the studies
undertaken during that time.

As the colonization of the Spaniards lengthened, they began to exploit the natural
resources of the country through agriculture, mining of metals and minerals and
establishing various kinds of industries to further promote economic growth. As such,
scientific research on these fields were encouraged by the government. By the nineteenth
century, Manila has become a cosmopolitan center and modern amenities were
introduced to the city. However, little is known about the accomplishments of scientific
bodies commissioned by the Spanish government during this time. Because of limited
scientific research and its consequent translation to technology during the Spanish
regime, none of the industries prosper. The Philippines had evolved into a primary
agricultural exporting economy, and this is not because of the researches undertaken on

15
this field, but was largely because of the influx of foreign capital and technology which
brought modernization of some sectors, notably sugar and hemp production.

American Period

If the development in science and technology was very slow during the Spanish
regime, the Philippines saw a rapid growth during the American occupation and was made
possible by the government’s extensive public education system from elementary to
tertiary schools. The establishment of various public tertiary schools like the Philippine
Normal School and University of the Philippines provided the needs for professionally
trained Filipinos in building the government’s organization and programs. The growth and
application of science were still concentrated on the health sector in the form of
biochemical analyses in hospitals. The government supported basic and applied research
in the medical, agricultural and related sciences. The University of the Philippines Los
Baños opened the College of Agriculture in 1909 while the University of the Philippines –
Diliman opened the Colleges of Arts, Engineering and Veterinary Medicine in 1910. The
College of Medicine was opened four years later.

During this time, there were already quite a number of qualified Filipino physicians
who held teaching positions in the College of Medicine, whereas most of the early
instructors and professors in other colleges such as in the sciences and engineering were
Americans and foreigners. Capacity building programs that include sending qualified
Filipinos abroad for advanced training were conducted to eventually fill up the teaching
positions in Philippine universities. Moreover, the American colonial government sent
Filipino youths to be educated as teachers, engineers, physicians and lawyers in
American colleges to further capacitate the Filipinos in various fields.

However, there was difficulty in recruiting students for science and technology
courses like veterinary medicine, engineering, agriculture, applied sciences and
industrial--vocational courses. The enrollment in these courses were dismal that the
government had to offer scholarships to attract students. The unpopularity of these
courses stemmed from the Filipinos’ disdain toward manual work that developed from the
400 years under Spanish colonization. The Filipinos then prefer prestigious professions
at that time like priesthood, law and medicine.

The government provided more support for the development of science and created
the Bureau of Government Laboratories in and was later changed to Bureau of Science.
It was composed of a biological laboratory, chemical laboratory, serum laboratory for the
production of virus vaccine, serums and prophylactics, and a library. The bureau was
initially managed by American senior scientists but as more Filipinos were trained and
acquire the necessary knowledge and skills, they eventually took over their positions. The
Bureau of Science served as the primary training ground for Filipino scientists and paved
the way for pioneering scientific research, most especially on the study of various tropical
diseases that were prevalent during those times like leprosy, tuberculosis, cholera,
dengue fever, malaria and beri--beri. Another great contribution of the Bureau of Science
to the development of science and technology in the country was the publication of the

16
Philippine Journal of Science. This scientific journal published researches done in local
laboratories and reported global scientific developments that had relevance to the
Philippine society. The Bureau of Science became the primary research center of the
Philippines until World War II. Lastly, on December 8, 1933, the National Research
Council of the Philippines was established.

Commonwealth Period

When the Americans granted independence and the Commonwealth government

was established, the Filipinos were busy in working towards economic reliance but
acknowledge the importance and vital role of science and technology for the economic
development of the country by declaring that “The State shall promote scientific research
and invention…” The short--lived Commonwealth Government was succeeded by the
Japanese occupation when the Pacific war broke out in 1941. The prevailing situations
during the time of Commonwealth period to the Japanese regime had made
developments in science and technology practically impossible. This is also true when
World War II ended and left Manila, the country’s capital, in ruins. The government had
to rebuild again and normalize the operations in the whole country.

Science and Technology since Independence

In 1946 the Bureau of Science was replaced by the Institute of Science and was
placed under the Office of the President of the Philippines. However, the agency faced
lack of financial support from the government and experienced planning and coordination
problems. In a report by the US Economic Survey to the Philippines in 1950, there is a
lack of basic information which were necessities to the country's industries, lack of support
of experimental work and minimal budget for scientific research and low salaries of
scientists employed by the government. In 1958, during the regime of President Carlos
P. Garcia, the Philippine Congress passed the Science Act of 1958 which established the
National Science Development Board (NSDB).

The Philippine government focused on science and technology institutional

capacity--building which were undertaken by establishing infrastructure--support facilities
such as new research agencies and development trainings. However good these projects
were, it produced insignificant effects because of lack of coordination and planning,
specifically technology planning, between concerned agencies which hindered them from
performing their assigned functions effectively. This was aptly illustrated in the unplanned
activities of the researchers within the agencies. Most areas of research were naively left
to the discretion of the researchers under the assumption that they were working for the
interests of the country. They were instructed to look for technologies and scientific
studies with good commercialization potential. Without clear research policy guidelines,
researches were done for their own sake, leaving to chance the commercialization of the
results.

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 Likewise, during this time, rebuilding the country involved establishing more state
funded manual and trading schools which would eventually become the current state
universities and colleges. The trade schools produced craftsmen, tradesmen and
technicians that helped in shaping a more technological Philippines while still being an
agricultural based nation. Eventually, when these trade schools were elevated to college
and university status, they produced much of the country’s professionals, although there
was a great disparity on the low proportion of those in agriculture, medical and natural
sciences with those from teacher training and commerce/business administration courses
which had higher number of graduates. The increase in the number of graduates led to
the rise of professional organizations of scientists and engineers. These organizations
were formed to promote professional interests and create and monitor the standards of
practice.

As summarized by Caoili, “There has been little innovation in the education and
training of scientists and engineers since independence in 1946. This is in part due to the
conservative nature of self--regulation by the professional associations. Because of
specialized training, vertical organizations by disciplines and lack of liaison between
professions, professional associations have been unable to perceive the dynamic
relationship between science, technology and society and the relevance of their
training to Philippine conditions.

Science and Technology in the 1960s to 1990s

During these years, the government gave greater importance to science and
technology. The government declared in Section 9(1) of the 1973 Philippine Constitution
that the “advancement of science and technology shall have priority in the national
development.”

On April 6, 1968, Pres. Ferdinand Marcos proclaimed the 35--hectare land in Bicutan,
Taguig as the site of the Philippine Science Community. Then in 1969, the government
provided funds to private universities to encourage them to conduct research and create
courses in science and technology. The government also conducted seminars for public
and private high school and college science teachers, training programs and scholarships
for graduate and undergraduate science scholars, and workshops on fisheries and
oceanography.

In the 1970s, focus on science and technology was given to applied research and
the main objective was to generate products and processes that were supposed to have
a greater beneficial impact to the society. Relative to this, several research institutes were
established under the National Science Development Board (NSDB) which includes the
Philippine Coconut Research Institute and Philippine Textile Research Institute.
Moreover, the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission, another agency under NSDB,
explored the uses of atomic energy for economic development. To prepare the pool of
scientists who will work on Philippine Atomic Commission, Pres. Marcos assisted 107

18
institutions in undertaking nuclear energy work by sending scientists abroad to study
nuclear science and technology, and providing basic training to 482 scientists, doctors,
engineers and technicians. Then in 1972, by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 4, the
National Grains Authority was created and it was tasked to improve the rice and corn
industry and thereby help in the economic development of the country. This was followed
by the creation of Philippine Council for Agricultural Research to support the progressive
development of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in the country. The Marcos
administration also established the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and
Astronomical Service Administration (PAGASA) under the Department of National
Defense to provide environmental protection and to utilize scientific knowledge to ensure
the safety of the people through Presidential Decree No. 78, s. 1972. On the following
year, the Philippine National Oil Company was created by virtue of Presidential Decree
No. 334, s. 1973, to promote industrial and economic development through effective and
efficient use of energy sources. To strengthen the scientific culture in the country, the
National Academy of Science and Technology was established under Presidential Decree
No. 1003--A, s. 1976. The National Academy of Science and Technology was composed
of scientists with “innovative achievement in the basic and applied sciences” who will
serve as the reservoir of scientific and technological expertise for the country.

In the 1980s, science and technology was still focused on applied research. In 1982,
NSDB was further reorganized into a National Science and Technology Authority (NSTA)
composed of four research and development Councils;; Philippine Council for Agriculture
and Resources Research and Development (PCARRD);; Philippine Council for Industry
and Energy Research Development (PCIERD);; Philippine Council for Health Research
and Development (PCHRD) and the National Research Council of the Philippines
(NRCP). NSTA has also eight research and development institutes and support agencies
under it. These are actually the former organic and attached agencies of NSDB which
have themselves been reorganized.

The expanding number of science agencies has given rise to a demand for high
calibre scientists and engineers to undertake research and staff universities and colleges.
Hence, measures have also been taken towards the improvement of the country’s
science and manpower. In March 1983, Executive Order No. 889 was issued by the
President which provided for the establishment of a national network of centers of
excellence in basic sciences. As a consequence, six new institutes were created: The
National Institutes of Physics, Geological Sciences, Natural Sciences Research,
Chemistry, Biology and Mathematical Sciences. Related to this efforts was the
establishment of a Scientific Career System in the Civil Service by Presidential Decree
No. 901 on 19 July 1983. This is designed to attract more qualified scientists to work in
government and encourage young people to pursue science degrees and careers.

In 1986, under the Aquino administration, the National Science and Technology
Authority was replaced by the Department of Science and Technology, giving science
and technology a representation in the cabinet. Under the Medium Term Philippine
Development Plan for the years 1987--1992, science and technology's role in economic
recovery and sustained economic growth was highlighted. In this period, science and

19
technology was one of the top three priorities of the government towards economic
recovery.

With the agency's elevation to full cabinet stature by virtue of Executive Order 128
signed on 30 January 1987, the functions and responsibilities of DOST expanded
correspondingly to include the following: (1) Pursue the declared state policy of supporting
local scientific and technological effort;; (2) Develop local capability to achieve
technological self--reliance;; (3) Encourage greater private sector participation in research
and development. moreover, funding for the science and technology sector was tripled
from 464 million in 1986 to 1.7 billion in 1992.

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is the premiere science and
technology body in the country charged with the twin mandate of providing central
direction, leadership and coordination of all scientific and technological activities, and of
formulating policies, programs and projects to support national development. The Science
and Technology Master Plan was formulated which aimed at the modernization of the
production sector, upgrading research activities, and development of infrastructure for
science and technological purposes. A Research and Development Plan was also
formulated to examine and determine which areas of research needed attention and must
be given priority. The criteria for identifying the program to be pursued were, development
of local materials, probability of success, potential of product in the export market, and
the its strategic nature. The grants for the research and development programs was
included in the Omnibus Investment Law.

During President Fidel Ramos’s term, there was a significant increase in personnel
specializing in the science and technology field. In 1998, there was an estimated 3,000
competent scientists and engineers in the Philippines. Adding to the increase of scientists
would be the result of the two newly built Philippine Science High Schools in Visayas and
Mindanao which promotes further development of young kids through advance S&T
curriculum. The government provided 3,500 scholarships for students who were taking
up professions related to S&T. Priority for S&T personnel increased when Magna Carta
for Science and Technology Personnel (Republic Act No. 8439) was established. The
award was published in order to give incentives and rewards for people who have been
influential in the field of S&T.

Still under the Ramos administration, DOST established the “Science and
Technology Agenda for National Development (STAND)”, a program that was significant
to the field of S&T. It identified seven export products, 11 domestic needs, three other
supporting industries, and the coconut industry as priority investment areas. The seven
identified export products were computer software;; fashion accessories;; gifts, toys, and
houseware;; marine products;; metal fabrications;; furniture;; and dried fruits. The domestic
needs identified were food, housing, health, clothing, transportation, communication,
disaster mitigation, defense, environment, manpower development, and energy. Three
additional support industries were included in the list of priority sectors, namely,
packaging, chemicals, and metals because of their linkages with the above sectors.

20
 In the Gloria Macapagal--Arroyo administration, numerous laws and projects were
implemented which concerns both the environment and science to push technology as a
tool to increase the country’s economic level. This is to help increase the productivity from
Science, Technology and Innovations (STI) and help benefit the poor people. Moreover,
the term “Filipinnovation” was the coined term used in helping the Philippines to be an
innovation hub in Asia.

The STI was developed further by strengthening the schools and education system
such as the Philippine Science High School (PSHS), which focuses in science,
technology and mathematics in their curriculum. This helps schools produce get more
involve in this sector. Private sectors were also encouraged to participate in developing
the schools through organizing events and sponsorships. Future Filipino scientists and
innovators can be produced through this system.

Recently, the Philippines ranked 73rd out of 128 economies in terms of Science and
Technology and Innovation (STI) index, citing the country’s strength in research and
commercialization of STI ideas (DOST, 2018). However, a study by the Philippine Institute
for Development Studies highlighted the weak ties between innovation--driven firms and
the government, and it also identified the country’s low expenditure in research and
development (R&D). This is the reason the government is now extending all its efforts to
reach out with the private sector, explaining that STI plays an important role in economic
and social progress and is a key driver for a long--term growth of an economy. Technology
adoption allows a country’s firms and citizens to benefit from innovations created in other
countries, and allows it to catch up and even leap--frog obsolete technologies. Technology
adoption, the official said, allows a country’s firms and citizens to benefit from innovations
created in other countries, and allows it to catch up and even leap--frog obsolete
technologies.

Hopes in Philippine Science and Technology

Despite the many inadequacies, from funding to human capital, there are some
science and technology--intensive research and capacity--building projects which resulted
in products which are currently being used successfully and benefits the society.

One of these is the micro--satellite. In April 2016, the country launched into space
its first micro--satellite called Diwata--1. It was designed, developed and assembled by
Filipino researchers and engineers under the guidance of Japanese experts. The Diwata
(deity in English) satellite provides real--time, high--resolution and multi--color infrared
images for various applications, including meteorological imaging, crop and ocean
productivity measurement and high--resolution imaging of natural and man--made
features. It enables a more precise estimate of the country’s agricultural production,
provides images of watersheds and floodplains for a better understanding of water
available for irrigation, power and domestic consumption. The satellite also provides
accurate information on any disturbance and degradation of forest and upland areas.

21
 The country also has the Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH),
which uses the Lidar (light detection and ranging) technology. Project NOAH was initiated
in June 2012 to help manage risks associated with natural hazards and disasters. The
project developed hydromet sensors and high--resolution geo--hazard maps, which were
generated by light detection and ranging technology for flood modeling. Noah helps the
government in providing timely warning with a lead time of at least six hours in the wake
of impending floods. The country is now training the Cambodians on this technology, as
part of the partnerships among ASEAN countries, just like in the case of Japan which
assisted the country’s scientists and engineers in building its first micro--satellite.

Another hope lies in the so--called Intelligent Operation Center Platform.

Established through a collaboration between the local government of Davao City and IBM
Philippines Inc., the center resulted in the creation of a dashboard that allows authorized
government agencies, such as police, fire and anti--terrorism task force, to use analytics
software for monitoring events and operations in real time.

Current Initiatives in Science and Technology in the Country

DOST, in cooperation with HEIs and research institutions, established advanced

facilities that seek to spur R&D activities and provide MSMEs access to testing services
needed to increase their productivity and competitive advantage.

One is the Advanced Device and Materials Testing Laboratories. The center
houses advanced equipment for failure analysis and materials characterization to address
advanced analytical needs for quality control, materials identification and R&D. Closely
related to this facility is the Electronics Products Development Center, used to design,
develop and test hardware and software for electronic products.

There are also high--performance computing facilities that perform tests and run
computationally intensive applications for numerical weather prediction, climatemodeling,
as well as analytics and data modeling and archiving.

The Philippines could also boast of its Genome Center, a core facility thatcombines
basic and applied research for the development of health diagnostics, therapeutics, DNA
forensics and preventive products, and improved crop varieties.

The country also has drug--discovery facilities, which address the requirements for
producing high--quality and globally acceptable drug candidates. She said the Philippines
also has nanotechnology centers, which provide technical services and enabling
environment for interdisciplinary and collaborative R&D in various nanotechnology
applications.

There are also radiation processing facilities that are used to degrade, graft, or
crosslink polymers, monomers, or chemical compounds for industrial, agricultural,
environmental and medical applications. The Philippines could also boast of its Die and

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Mold Solutions Center, which enhances the competitiveness of the local tool and die
sector through the localization of currently imported dies and molds.

These are reflections that we are advancing, albeit slowly, to a culture that
embraces STI as a sure path to growth.
D. Paradigm Shift

What is a paradigm?

A scientific paradigm is a framework containing all the commonly accepted views

about a subject, conventions about what direction research should take and how it should
be performed.

The philosopher Thomas Kuhn suggested that a paradigm includes “the practices
that define a scientific discipline at a certain point in time." Paradigms contain all the
distinct, established patterns, theories, common methods and standards that allow us to
recognize an experimental result as belonging to a field or not.

Science proceeds by accumulating support for hypotheses which in time become

models and theories. But those models and theories themselves exist within a larger
theoretical framework. The vocabulary and concepts in Newton’s three laws or the central
dogma in biology are examples of scientific “open resources" that scientists have adopted
and which now form part of the scientific paradigm.

Paradigms are historically and culturally bound. For example, a modern Chinese
medical researcher with a background in eastern medicine, will operate within a different
paradigm than a western doctor from the 1800s.

A paradigm dictates:

what is observed and measured

the questions we ask about those observations
how the questions are formulated
how the results are interpreted
how research is carried out
what equipment is appropriate

Many students who opt to study science do so with the belief that they are
undertaking the most rational path to learning about objective reality. But science, much
like any other discipline, is subject to ideological idiosyncrasies, preconceptions and
hidden assumptions.

In fact, Kuhn strongly suggested that research in a deeply entrenched paradigm

invariably ends up reinforcing that paradigm, since anything that contradicts it is ignored
or else pressed through the preset methods until it conforms to already established
dogma.

23
 The body of pre--existing evidence in a field conditions and shapes the collection
and interpretation of all subsequent evidence. The certainty that the current paradigm is
reality itself is precisely what makes it so difficult to accept alternatives.

24
 What is a Paradigm Shift?

"The successive transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual
developmental pattern of mature science" -- Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Figure 1 Paradigm shift. Source: https://thesaurus.plus/

The shift from one paradigm to another occurs when enough anomalies to the
current paradigm build up, causing scientists to question the foundational principles upon
which their worldview rests. During “normal science,” when the current paradigm is in
place, these anomalies are discounted as acceptable levels of error. However, during
“revolutionary science” or a paradigm shift, these anomalies become the center of
attention as scientists attempt to construct a new world view that incorporates and
explains them. This period of intense focus on explaining anomalies and developing a
new paradigm is considered “revolutionary science,” and it is sparked by a “crisis”
where the old paradigm fails explain key anomalies or outliers. Once a new paradigm is
developed, however, there is a return to “normal science” under the new worldview.

Figure 2 Paradigm Shift

Source: https://edtosavetheworld.com

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 An Example of a Paradigm Shift

Many physicists in the 19th century were convinced that the Newtonian paradigm
that had reigned for 200 years was the pinnacle of discovery and that scientific progress
was more or less a question of refinement. When Einstein published his theories on
General Relativity, it was not just another idea that could fit comfortably into the existing
paradigm. Instead, Newtonian Physics itself was relegated to being a special subclass of
the greater paradigm ushered in by General Relativity. Newton’s three laws are still
faithfully taught in schools, however we now operate within a paradigm that puts those
laws into a much broader context.

Interestingly, Kuhn’s theory itself was something of a game changer at the time,
since scientists were not accustomed to thinking of what they were doing in such
metaphysical terms. Kuhn’s theories are today understood to be part of a greater
paradigm shift in the social sciences, and have also been modified since their original
publication.

Kuhn later conceded that the process of scientific advancement might be more
gradual. For example, Relativity did not completely prove Newton wrong, but merely
reframed his theory. Even the Copernican revolution was a little more gradual in replacing
Ptolemy's beliefs.

The concept of paradigm is closely related to the Platonic and Aristotelian views
of knowledge. Aristotle believed that knowledge could only be based upon what is already
known, the basis of the scientific method. Plato believed that knowledge should be judged
by what something could become, the end result, or final purpose. Plato's philosophy is
more like the intuitive leaps that cause scientific revolution;; Aristotle's the patient
gathering of data.

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 Chapter 2
Intellectual Revolutions that Defined Society

What is an Intellectual Revolution?

An intellectual revolution is a period where paradigm shifts occurred and where

scientific beliefs that have been widely embraced and accepted by the people were
challenged and opposed. Historically, this intellectual revolution can be summed up as
the “replacement of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality by a new type of decision
making which may be termed instrumental reasoning or cost-­benefit analysis” (Wootton
as cited by McCarthy, 2019).

The Birth of Modern Science

Western science, like so many other aspects of Western Civilization, was born with
the ancient Greeks. They were the first to explain the world in terms of natural laws rather
than myths about gods and heroes. They also passed on the idea of the value of math
and experiment in science, although they usually thought only in terms of one to the
exclusion of the other.

The most influential figure in Western science until the 1600's, was the
philosopher, Aristotle, who created a body of scientific theory that towered like a colossus
over Western Civilization for some 2000 years. Given the limitations under which the
Greeks were working compared to now, Aristotle's theories made sense when taken in a
logical order.

However, there were several factors that worked both to overthrow Aristotle's
theories and to preserve it. First of all, Aristotle's theories relied very little on experiment,
which left them vulnerable to anyone who chose to perform such experiments. But
attacking one part of Aristotle's system involved attacking the whole thing, which made it
a daunting task for even the greatest thinkers of the day. Secondly, the Church had
grafted Aristotle's theories onto its theology, thus making any attack on Aristotle an attack
on the tradition and the Church itself.

27
 Finally, there were the Renaissance scholars who were uncovering other Greek
authors who contradicted Aristotle. This was unsettling, since these scholars had a
reverence for all ancient knowledge as being nearly infallible. However, finding
contradicting authorities forced the Renaissance scholars to try to figure out which ones
were right. When their findings showed that neither theory was right, they had to think for
themselves and find a new theory that worked. This encouraged skepticism, freethinking,
and experimentation, all of which are essential parts of modern science.

Pattern of development

The combination of these factors generated a cycle that undermined Aristotle, but
also slowed down the creation of a new set of theories. New observations would be made
that seemed to contradict Aristotle's theories. This would lead to new explanations, but
always framed in the context of the old beliefs, thus patching up the Aristotelian system.
However, more observations would take place, leading to more patching of the old
system, and so on. The first person who started this slow process of dismantlingAristotle's
cosmology was Copernicus. His findings would reinforce the process of finding new
explanations, which would lead to the work of Kepler and Galileo. The work of thesethree
men would lead to many new questions and theories about the universe until IsaacNewton
would take the new data and synthesize it into a new set of theories that more accurately
explained the universe.

A. Copernican Revolution

Nicolas Copernicus was a Polish scholar working at the University of Padua in

northern Italy. The problem he wrestled with was the paths of planetary orbits.
Through the centuries close observations had shown that the heavens do not always
appear to move in perfect, uninterrupted circles. Rather, they sometimes seem to
move backwards in what are known as retrogradations. In order to account for these
irregularities, astronomers did not do away with Aristotle's theory of perfectly circular
orbits around the earth. Instead, they expanded upon it, adding smaller circular orbits
(epicycles) that spun off the main orbits. These more or less accounted for the
retrogradations seen in orbits. Each time a new irregularity was observed, a new
epicycle was added. By the 1500's, the model of the universe had some 80 epicycles
attached to ten crystalline spheres (one for the moon, sun, each of the five known
planets, the totality of the stars, a sphere to move the other spheres, and heaven).
The second century Greek astronomer, Ptolemy was the main authority who put order
to and passed this cumbersome system of epicycles to posterity.

Copernicus' solution was basically geometric. By placing the sun at the center
of the universe and having the earth orbit it, he reduced the unwieldy number of
epicycles from 80 to 34. His book, Concerning the Revolutions of the Celestial Worlds,
published in 1543, laid the foundations for a revolution in how Europeans would view
the world and its place in the universe. However, Copernicus' intention was not to
create a radically new theory, but to get back to even older ideas by such Greeks as

28
Plato and Pythagoras who believed in a heliocentric (sun centered) universe. Once
again, ancient authorities were set against one another, leaving it for others to
develop their own theories.

It took some 150 years after Copernicus' death in 1543 to achieve a new model
of the universe that worked. The first step was compiling more data that tarnished the
perfection of the Ptolemaic universe and forced men to re--evaluate their beliefs.

Johannes Kepler

At this time, Tycho Brahe, using only the naked eye, tracked the entire orbits
of various stars and planets. Previously, astronomers would only track part of an orbit
at a time and assume that orbit was in a perfect circle. Brahe kept extensive records
of his observations, but did not really know what to do with them. That task was left
to his successor, Johannes Kepler.

Kepler was a brilliant mathematician who had a mystical vision of the

mathematical perfection of the universe that owed a great deal to the ancient Greek
mathematician Pythagoras. Despite these preoccupations, Kepler was open minded
enough to realize that Brahe's data showed the planetary orbits were not circular.
Finally, his calculations showed that those orbits were elliptical.

Galileo

As important as Kepler's conclusions was his method of arriving at it. He was

the first to successfully use math to define the workings of the cosmos. Although such
a conclusion as elliptical orbits inevitably met with fierce opposition, the combination
of Brahe's observations and Kepler's math helped break the perfection of the
Aristotelian universe. However, it was the work of an Italian astronomer, Galileo
Galilei (1564--1642), armed with a new invention, the telescope, which would further
shatter the old theory and lead the way to a new one.

Using his telescope, Galileo saw the sun's perfection marred by sunspots and
the moon's perfection marred by craters. He also saw four moons orbiting Jupiter. In
his book, The Starry Messenger (1611), he reported these disturbing findings and
spread the news across Europe. Most people could not understand Kepler's math,
but anyone could look through a telescope and see for himself the moon's craters
and Jupiter's moons.

The Church tried to preserve the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic view of the
universe by clamping down on Galileo and his book and made him promise not
to preach his views. However, in 1632, Galileo published his next book, Dialogue on
the Great World Systems, which technically did not preach the Copernican theory (which
Galileo believed in), but was only a dialogue presenting both views "equally". Galileo
got his point across by having the advocate of the Church and Aristotelian view

29
named Simplicius (Simpleton). He was quickly faced with the Inquisition and the
threat of torture. Being an old man of 70, he recanted his views. However, it was too
late. Word was out, and the heliocentric heresy was gaining new followers daily.

Galileo's work was the first comprehensive attack on the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic

cosmic model. He treated celestial objects as being subject to the same laws as
terrestrial objects. However, Galileo was still enthralled with perfect circular motion
and, as a result, did not come up with the synthesis of all these new bits of information
into a new comprehensive model of the universe. This was left to the last, and
probably greatest, giant of the age, Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton

The story of Newton being hit on the head by an apple may very well be true.
However, the significance of this popular tale is usually lost. People had seen apples
fall out of trees for thousands of years, but Newton realized, in a way no one else had
realized, that the same force pulling the apples to earth was keeping the moon in its
orbit. In order to prove this mathematically, Newton had to invent a whole new branch
of math, calculus, for figuring out rates of motion and change. The genius of Newton
in physics, as well as William Harvey in medicine and Mendeleev in chemistry, was
not so much in his new discoveries, as in his ability to take the isolated bits and pieces
of the puzzle collected by his predecessors and fit them together. In retrospect, his
synthesis seems so simple, but it took tremendous imagination and creativity to break
the bonds of the old way of thinking and see a radically different picture.

The implications of Newton's theory of gravity can easily escape us, since we
now take it for granted that physical laws apply the same throughout the universe. To
the mentality of the 1600’s, which saw a clear distinction between the laws governing
the terrestrial and celestial elements, it was a staggering revelation. His three laws of
motion were simple, could be applied everywhere, and could be used with calculus
to solve any problems of motion that came up.

The universe that emerged was radically different from that of Aristotle. Thanks
to Newton, it was within our grasp to understand, predict, and increasingly manipulate
the laws of the universe in ways no one had been able to do before. Newton's work
also completed the fusion of math promoted by Renaissance humanists, Aristotelian
logic pushed by medieval university professors, and experiment to test a hypothesis
pioneered by such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo into what we call the
scientific method. This fusion had gradually been taking place since the Renaissance,
but the invention of calculus made math a much more dynamic tool in predicting and
manipulating the laws of nature.

The printing of Newton's book, Principia Mathematica, in 1687 is often seen as

the start of the Enlightenment (1687--1789). It was a significant turning point in history,
for, armed with the tools of Newton's laws and calculus, scientists had an

30
unprecedented faith in their ability to understand, predict, and manipulate the laws of
nature for their own purposes. This sense of power popularized science for other
intellectuals and rulers in Europe, turning it into virtual religion for some in the
Enlightenment. Even the geometrically trimmed shrubbery of Versailles offers
testimony to that faith in our power over nature. Not until this century has that faith
been seriously undermined or put into a more realistic perspective.

B. The Darwinian Revolution

The publication in 1859 of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin ushered

in a new era in the intellectual history of humanity. Darwin is deservedly given credit
for the theory of biological evolution: he accumulated evidence demonstrating that
organisms evolve and discovered the process, natural selection, by which they
evolve. But the importance of Darwin's achievement is that it completed the
Copernican revolution initiated three centuries earlier, and thereby radically changed
our conception of the universe and the place of humanity in it.

The discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, had gradually ushered in the notion that the workings of
the universe could be explained by human reason. It was shown that the earth is not
the center of the universe, but a small planet rotating around an average star;; that the
universe is immense in space and in time;; and that the motions of the planets around
the sun can be explained by the same simple laws that account for the motion of
physical objects on our planet. These and other discoveries greatly expanded human
knowledge, but the intellectual revolution these scientists brought about was more
fundamental: a commitment to the postulate that the universe obeys immanent laws
that account for natural phenomena. The workings of the universe were brought into
the realm of science: explanation through natural laws. Physical phenomena could
be accounted for whenever the causes were adequately known.

Darwin completed the Copernican revolution by drawing out for biology the
notion of nature as a lawful system of matter in motion. The adaptations and diversity
of organisms, the origin of novel and highly organized forms, even the origin of
humanity itself could now be explained by an orderly process of change governed by
natural laws.

The origin of organisms and their marvelous adaptations were, however, either
left unexplained or attributed to the design of an omniscient Creator. God had created
the birds and bees, the fish and corals, the trees in the forest, and best of all, man.
God had given us eyes so that we might see, and He had provided fish with gills to
breathe in water. Philosophers and theologians argued that the functional design of
organisms manifests the existence of an all--wise Creator. Wherever there is design,
there is a designer;; the existence of a watch evinces the existence of a watchmaker.

31
 The English theologian William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802)
elaborated the argument--from--design as forceful demonstration of the existence of
the Creator. The functional design of the human eye, argued Paley, provided
conclusive evidence of an all--wise Creator. It would be absurd to suppose, he wrote,
that the human eye by mere chance "should have consisted, first, of a series of
transparent lenses ... secondly of a black cloth or canvas spread out behind these
lenses so as to receive the image formed by pencils of light transmitted through them,
and placed at the precise geometrical distance at which, and at which alone, a distinct
image could be formed ... thirdly of a large nerve communicating between this
membrane and the brain." The Bridgewater Treatises, published between 1833 and
1840, were written by eminent scientists and philosophers to set forth "the Power,
Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation." The structure and
mechanisms of man's hand were, for example, cited as incontrovertible evidence that
the hand had been designed by the same omniscient Power that had created the
world.

The advances of physical science had thus driven humanity's conception of

the universe to a split--personality state of affairs, which persisted well into the mid--
nineteenth century. Scientific explanations, derived from natural laws, dominated the
world of nonliving matter, on the earth as well as in the heavens. Supernatural
explanations, depending on the unfathomable deeds of the Creator, accounted for
the origin and configuration of living creatures—the most diversified, complex, and
interesting realities of the world. It was Darwin's genius to resolve this conceptual
schizophrenia (Ayala, no date).

C. Freudian Revolution

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, before the advent of telephones, radios,
automobiles, airplanes, and a host of other material and cultural changes that had
taken place by the time of his death in 1939. Freud saw the entirety of the first
World War–a war that destroyed the empire whose capital city was his home for
more than seventy years–and the beginning of the next. He began his career as
an ambitious but isolated neurologist;; by the end of it, he described himself, not
inaccurately, as someone who had had as great an impact on humanity's
conception of itself as had Copernicus and Darwin.

Freud's most obvious impact was to change the way society thought about
and dealt with mental illness. Before psychoanalysis, which Freud invented, mental
illness was almost universally considered 'organic';; that is, it was thought to come
from some kind of deterioration or disease of the brain. Research on treating
mental illness was primarily concerned–at least theoretically–with discovering
exactly which kinds of changes in the brain led to insanity. Many diseases did not
manifest obvious signs of physical difference between healthy and diseased

32
brains, but it was assumed that this was simply because the techniques for finding
the differences were not yet sufficient.

The conviction that physical diseases of the brain caused mental illness
meant that psychological causes–the kinds that Freud would insist on studying–
were ignored. It also meant that people drew a sharp dividing line between the
"insane" and the "sane." Insane people were those with physical diseases of the
brain. Sane people were those without diseased brains.

Freud changed all of this. Despite his background in physicalism (learned

during his stay in Ernst Brücke's laboratory), his theories explicitly rejected the
purely organic explanations of his predecessors. One of Freud's biggest influences
during his early days as a neurologist was Jean--Martin Charcot, the famous French
psychiatrist. Charcot claimed that hysteria had primarily organic causes, and that
it had a regular, comprehensible pattern of symptoms. Freud agreed with Charcot
on the latter point, but he disagreed entirely on the former. In essence, Freud
claimed that neurotic people had working hardware, but faulty software. Earlier
psychiatrists like Charcot, in contrast, had claimed that the problems were entirely
in the hardware. As psychoanalysis became increasingly popular, psychology and
psychiatry turned away from the search for organic causes and toward the search
for inner psychic conflicts and early childhood traumas. As a consequence, the line
between sane and insane was blurred: everyone, according to Freud, had an
Oedipal crisis, and everyone could potentially become mentally ill.

Psychoanalysis has had an enormous impact on the practice of psychiatry,

particularly within the United States, but today it is regarded by most sources–
medical, academic, governmental, and others–as almost entirely incorrect in its
conception of the mind. This judgment is based on the crucial test of
psychoanalysis: whether or not it really helps patients with behavioral or
psychological problems. The consensus is that is does not. Psychoanalysis in its
many varieties appears to have little or no efficacy in treating mental illness. In
contrast, psychopharmacology and cognitive-- behavioral therapies (therapies that
simply try to change what the patient thinks and does rather than analyzing the
causes of the behavior), while far from perfect, do appear to help.

If this is true–and we have a great deal of evidence that it is–why is Freud

still so important? Why do we generally speak of him as a great figure in Western
thought, instead of as a strange and misguided figure of turn--of--the-- century
Europe?

There are at least two reasons. The first is purely practical: psychoanalysis
has enormous historical significance. Mental illness affects an large proportion of
the population, either directly or indirectly, so any curative scheme as widely
accepted as was Freud's is important to our history in general. The second, more
important, reason is that Freud gave people a new way of thinking about why they
acted the way they did. He created a whole new way of interpreting behaviors: one

33
 could now claim that a person had motives, desires, and beliefs–all buried in the
unconscious–which they knew nothing about but which nonetheless directly
controlled and motivated their conscious thought and behavior. This hypothesis,
derived from but independent of Freud's psychiatric work, was the truly radical part
of his system of thought.

D. Scientific Revolution in Mesoamerica

Meso--America is the region from Mexico to Guatemala, Belize and parts of

Honduras and El Salvador. There were no major ancient civilization that developed
in North America. The Mesoamerican civilization were isolated from the
accumulated scientific knowledge of Africa, Asia and Europe. They were
confronted with much harder conditions than the ancient civilizations of the Indus
valley, Mesopotamia, and Egypt which developed in parallel with each other and
established contacts between each other at a very early stage. This exchange of
knowledge between these ancient civilizations was critical in the development of
their scientific knowledge. Because of this isolation, Mesoamerican civilization
developed on their own and became much more self--reliant.

The most advanced Mesoamerican civilization was the Maya civilization that
was well on its way to develop true science. They knew how to make paper and
had pictorial script called Maya hieroglyphs that allowed them to record all
knowledge on long strips of paper folded harmonica--style into books. One of the
three books recovered called The Dresden Codex contains predictions of solar
eclipses for centuries and a table of predicted positions of Venus. Unlike the
European scientists who used astronomical instruments like telescopes, the Maya
made predictions by aligning stars with two objects that were separated by a large
distance, a technique that achieved great accuracy of angular measurement. As a
result, the Maya developed the most accurate calendar ever designed.

The Aztec followed the same road. They kept their own script and languages
but assimilated all they could learn from Maya society. Their manuscripts describe
how the Maya performed their astronomical observations.

Several outstanding achievements can be reported in the area of technology

and invention. The manufacture of rubber was one of the earliest inventions,
documented by the use of a rubber ball in the ball game tlachtli, a game played by
Meso--American civilizations from earliest times. In architecture the Maya were the
first to use pitched ceilings in their buildings after the invention of the corbelled
vault. Aztec city builders also understood the need for public sanitation;; public
latrines were found along all highways, and to prevent pollution of Lake Texcoco
canoes transported the sewage from Tenochtitlán to the mainland every morning.
(von Hagen, 1957)

American people were gifted horticulturalists and cultivated crop plants from
the earliest times. Among the plants that originated in Meso--America are corn

34
 (maize), papaya, avocado and cocoa. Maize is the only cultivated plant that was
developed so early in human history that its wild ancestor is no longer known. It
can, however, still be crossed with two other plants found only on the Yucatan
Peninsula.

Finally, several sculptures found at Meso--American sites in 1975, 1979 and

1983 and dating back to 2000 -- 1500 BC have clear magnetic properties. In some
of these sculptures the north and south poles are in most conspicuous positions,
for example at the snout and at the back of the head of a frog or turtle. Another
magnetic object found in 1966 was shaped as if it was to be used to indicate
direction. These finds strongly suggest that the early Meso--American civilizations
knew about and used magnetism. (Malmström, 1976, 1979)

E. Asian Scientific Revolution

Aside from China, there were other Asian countries that contributed to the
development of science and technology in the world, although it varied depending
on country and time, specially in the present times. Currently, Japan is probably
the most notable country in Asia in terms of scientific and technological
achievement, particularly in terms of its electronics and automobile products. Other
countries are also notable in other scientific fields such as chemical and physical
achievements.
The general conception is that many of the cutting--edge technological
developments, and to a lesser extent scientific advancements, emanate from Asia.
For instance, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and China together produce a
staggering 90% of the world’s digital gadgets. Aside from the region’s hardware
dominance, nations across Asia are becoming increasingly important to the global
supply of digital content and services, something which will only increase as the
continent develops over the coming decades.
South Korea’s cultural popularity around the world has caused a number of
startup’s to emerge working within the digital and technology sectors, including
website viki.com.
Taiwan is following a similar path to Japan meanwhile, moving away from
hardware production, instead turning to software and content development.
Together, the points raised throughout this article proves Asia is truly a
crucible of innovative technological development;; a continent that will play an
incredibly important role in the evolution of our digital age.

F. Scientific Revolution in Middle East

During the 3,000 years of urbanized life in Mesopotamia and Egypt tremendous
strides were made in various branches of science and technology. The greatest
advances were made in Mesopotamia—very possibly because of its constant shift of
population and openness to foreign influence, in contrast to the relative isolation of
Egypt and the consequent stability of its population. The Egyptians excelled in such

35
applied sciences as medicine, engineering, and surveying;; in Mesopotamia greater
progress was made in astronomy and mathematics. The development of astronomy
seems to have been greatly accelerated by that of astrology, which took the lead
among the quasi--sciences involved in divination. The Egyptians remained far behind
the Babylonians in developing astronomy, while Babylonian medicine, because of its
chiefly magical character, was less advanced than that of Egypt. In engineering and
architecture Egyptians took an early lead, owing largely to the stress they laid on the
construction of such elaborate monuments as vast pyramids and temples of granite
and sandstone. On the other hand, the Babylonians led in the development of such
practical arts as irrigation (Albright, 2014).

Both sciences and pseudosciences spread from Egypt and Mesopotamiato

Phoenicia and Anatolia. The Phoenicians in particular transmitted much of this
knowledge to the various lands of the Mediterranean, especially to the Greeks. The
direction taken by these influences can be followed from Egypt to Syria, Phoenicia,
and Cyprus, thanks to a combination of excavated art forms that prove the direction
of movement, as well as to Greek tradition, which lays great stress on what the early
Greek philosophers learned from Egypt. Mesopotamian influence can be traced
especially through the partial borrowing of Babylonian science and divination by the
Hittites and later by the transmission of information through Phoenicia. The Egyptians
and Mesopotamians wrote no theoretical treatises;; information had to be transmitted
piecemeal through personal contacts.

Of all the accomplishments of the ancient Middle East, the invention of the
alphabet is probably the greatest. While pre--alphabetic systems of writing in the Old
World became steadily more phonetic, they were still exceedingly cumbersome, and
the syllabic systems that gradually replaced them remained complex and difficult. In
the early Hyksos period (17th century BC) the Northwestern Semites living in Egypt
adapted hieroglyphic characters—in at least two slightly differing forms of letters—to
their own purposes. Thus was developed the earliest known purely consonantal
alphabet, imitated in northern Syria, with the addition of two letters to designate
vowels used with the glottal catch.

This alphabet spread rapidly and was in quite common use among the
Northwestern Semites (Canaanites, Hebrews, Aramaeans, and especially the
Phoenicians) soon after its invention. By the 9th century BC the Phoenicians were
using it in the western Mediterranean, and the Greeks and Phrygians adopted it in
the 8th. The alphabet contributed vastly to the Greek cultural and literary revolution
in the immediately following period. From the Greeks it was transmitted to other
Western peoples. Since language must always remain the chief mode of
communication for people, its union with hearing and vision in a uniquely simple
phonetic structure has probably revolutionized civilization more than any other
invention in history.

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G. Scientific Revolution in Africa

The history of the sciences in Africa is rich and diverse. The applied sciences of
agronomy, metallurgy, engineering and textile production, as well as medicine,
dominated the field of activity across Africa. So advanced was the culture of farming
within West Africa, that ‘New World‘ agricultural growth was spawned by the use of
captives from these African societies that had already made enormous strides in the
field of agronomy. In her work Black Rice, Judith Carnoy demonstrates the legacy of
enslaved Africans to the Americas in the sphere of rice cultivation. We know also that
a variety of African plants were adopted in Asia, including coffee, the oil palm, fonio
or acha (digitaria exilis), African rice (oryza glabberima), and sorghum (sorghum
bicolor). Plants, whether in terms of legumes, grain, vegetables, tubers, or, wild or
cultivated fruits, also had medicinal implications for Africans and were used as
anesthetics or pain killers, analgesics for the control of fever, antidotes to counter
poisons, and anthelmints aimed at deworming. They were used also in
cardiovascular, gastro--intestinal, and dermatological contexts. Some of these such
as hoodia gordonii and combrettum caffrum are being integrated within contemporary
pharmaceutical systems (Emeagwali, n.d.).

Africa’s areas of scientific investigation include the fields of astronomy, physics,

and mathematics. Laird Scranton, making use of the extensive collections of Marcel
Griaule, has deepened our understanding of Malian cosmological myths and their
perceptions of the structure of matter and the physical world. Dogon knowledge
systems have also been explored in terms of their perceptions on astronomy. Dogon
propositions about Sirius B have been discussed by Charles Finch in The Star of
Deep Beginnings. The solar calendar that we use today evolved from the Egyptian
calendar of twelve months, calibrated according to the day on which the star Sirius
rose on the horizon with the Sun. Scranton suggests major interconnections between
the thought of the ancient Egyptians and that of the Malians of West Africa.

In the field of Mathematics, Nubian builders calculated the volumes of masonry

and building materials, as well as the slopes of pyramids, for construction purposes.
Bianchi points to a Nubian engraving at Meroe, in ancient Sudan, dated to the first
century B.C.E., which reflects “a sophisticated understanding of mathematics.”
Included in the engraving were several lines, inclined at a 72--degree angle, running
diagonally from the base of a pyramid. Bianchi suggests that the Nubian King
Amanikhabale of the first century BCE was the owner of that pyramid. Interestingly,
the Nubians of Meroe, who constructed more pyramids than the Egyptians, built
steep, flat--topped pyramids.

In the field of medicine, common patterns and trends emerged across the
continent. These included scientifically proven methods, as well as techniques and
strategies which were culturally specific and psychologically significant. Among the
common principles and procedures were hydrotherapy, heat therapy, spinal
manipulation, quarantine, bone--setting and surgery. Incantations and other
psychotherapeutic devices sometimes accompanied other techniques. The

37
knowledge of specific medicinal plants was quite extensive in some kingdoms,
empires, and city states such as Aksum, and Borgu (in Hausaland). The latter
continues to be well known for orthopedics (bone--setting), as is the case of Funtua in
Northern Nigeria. Many traditional techniques are still utilized in some areas. Others
have undergone change over time, have been revived in more recent periods, or have
fallen into oblivion.

Various types of metal products have been used over time by Africans, ranging
from gold, tin, silver, bronze, brass, and iron/steel. The Sudanic empires of West
Africa emerged in the context of various commercial routes and activities involving
the gold trade. In the North and East, Ethiopia and Sudan were the major suppliers
of gold, with Egypt a major importer. In Southern Africa, the kingdom of Monomotapa
(Munhumutapa) reigned supreme as a major gold producer. In the various spheres
of metal production, specific techniques and scientific principles included: excavation
and ore identification;; separation of ore from non--ore bearing rock;; smelting by the
use of bellows and heated furnaces;; and smithing and further refinement.
The use of multishaft and open--shaft systems facilitated circulation of air in
intense heating processes, while the bellows principle produced strong currents of air
in a chamber expanded to draw in or expel air through a valve. The various metal
products served a wide range of purposes, including: armor (as in some northern
Nigerian city--states), jewelry (of gold, silver, iron, copper and brass), cooking utensils,
cloth dyeing, sculpture, and agricultural tools. The technical know--how and expertise
of blacksmiths helped to enhance their status, although they were also often
associated with supernatural and psychic powers, as well.

In various parts of ancient, medieval, and contemporary Africa, building

constructions of various dimensions, shapes, and types emerged, reflecting various
concepts, techniques, raw material preferences, and decorative principles. Builders
integrated the concepts of the arch, the dome, and columns and aisles in their
constructions. The underground vaults and passages, as well as the rock--hewn
churches, of Axum are matched in Nubia and Egypt with pyramids of various
dimensions. In the Sahelian region, adobe, or dried clay, was preferred in the context
of moulded contours, at times integrated with overall moulded sculpture. Permanent
scaffolding made of protruding planks characterized the Malian region. The principle
of evaporative cooling was integrated into building design. Mats were used as part of
the decor and also to be saturated repeatedly in order to cool the room. Derelict
ruins from walled cities—such as Kano, Zazzau, and other city--states of Hausaland
in the central Sudanic region of West Africa—complement structures suchas the rock-
-hewn and moulded churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia or the Zimbabwe enclosures.
The structures of ancient Nubia, as well as those of Egypt, are parallel structures in
the northeast.

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H. Information Revolution

Information revolution is a period of change that describes current

economic, social and technological trends beyond the Industrial Revolution. The
information revolution was fueled by advances in semiconductor technology,
particularly the metal--oxide--semiconductor field--effect transistor (MOSFET) and
the integrated circuit (IC) chip, leading to the Information Age in the early 21 st
century (Lukasiak, 2010;; Orton, 2009).

Information revolution might prove as significant to the lives of people.

Computer technology is at the root of this change, and continuing advancements
in that technology seem to ensure that this revolution would touch the lives of
people. Computers are unique machines;; they help to extend the brain power.
Computerized robots have been replacing blue-­collar workers;; they might soon be
replacing white collar workers as well. Computers are merely devices that follow
sets of instructions called computer programs, or software, that have been written
by people called computer programmers. Computers offer many benefits, but there
are also many dangers. They could help others invade one's privacy or wage war.
They might turn one into button pusher and cause massive unemployment. User--
friendly systems can be easily used by untrained people. The key development
that made personal computers possible was the invention of the microprocessor
chip at Intel in 1971.

The information revolution led us to the age of the internet, where optical
communication networks play a key role in delivering massive amounts of data.
The world has experienced phenomenal network growth during the last decade,
and further growth is imminent. The internet will continue to expand due to user
population growth and internet penetration: previously inaccessible
geographical regions in Africa and Asia will come online. Network growth will
only be accelerated by improvements in integrated circuits. Transistor
size has been halved every two years since the middle of the last century. The new
internet--based global economy requires a worldwide network with high capacity
and availability, which is currently limited by submarine optical
communication cables.

New ideas keep coming from the information transport community. Since
the first edition of Undersea Fiber Communication Systems in 2002, the optical
fiber communication industry moved into the “coherent” era. We transport an order
of magnitude more bits than just five years ago. We encode information into phase,
polarization, and amplitude of electromagnetic waves. Michael Faraday would be
proud, knowing that we send over 10,000,000,000,000 bits every second across
the Atlantic Ocean in a single strand of fiber. We would leave in awe Sir William
Thomson (known as Lord Kelvin), who was the scientific leader of an 1858
endeavor that built the first submarine cable with a transmission speed of one word
per minute. Sir Thomson and Cyrus Field, an American businessman and
telecommunications pioneer, would be surprised to find out how many tools

39
developed during their first transatlantic expedition are still in use today. At first
glance, the modern cable looks similar to the 1858 cable, which was copper based
with a gutta--percha (trans--poly isoprene) isolator. In modern day cables, gutta--
percha has been replaced with polyethylene. We still use copper to power
submarine repeaters, and have added optical fibers during the last decade of the
last century.

The uniqueness of this engineering marvel is a combination of information

science, nonlinear optics, electrical engineering, material science, engineering
practices, project management, marine expertise, and high reliability standard.
Undersea fiber communication systems will continue to serve society.

Impact of Information Revolution

The truly revolutionary impact of the Information Revolution is just beginning

to be felt. But it is not "information" that fuels this impact. It is not "artificial
intelligence." It is not the effect of computers and data processing on decision--
making, policymaking, or strategy. It is something that practically no one foresaw
or, indeed, even talked about ten or fifteen years ago: e--commerce—that is, the
explosive emergence of the Internet as a major, perhaps eventually the major,
worldwide distribution channel for goods, for services, and, surprisingly, for
managerial and professional jobs. This is profoundly changing economies,
markets, and industry structures;; products and services and their flow;; consumer
segmentation, consumer values, and consumer behavior;; jobs and labor markets.
But the impact may be even greater on societies and politics and, above all, on the
way we see the world and ourselves in it.
At the same time, new and unexpected industries will no doubt emerge, and
fast. One is already here: biotechnology. And another: fish farming. Within the next
fifty years fish farming may change us from hunters and gatherers on the seas into
"marine pastoralists"—just as a similar innovation some 10,000 years ago changed
our ancestors from hunters and gatherers on the land into agriculturists and
pastoralists.
It is likely that other new technologies will appear suddenly, leading to major
new industries. What they may be is impossible even to guess at. But it is highly
probable—indeed, nearly certain—that they will emerge, and fairly soon. And it is
nearly certain that few of them—and few industries based on them—will come out
of computer and information technology. Like biotechnology and fish farming, each
will emerge from its own unique and unexpected technology.
Of course, these are only predictions. But they are made on the assumption
that the Information Revolution will evolve as several earlier technology--based
"revolutions" have evolved over the past 500 years, since Gutenberg's printing
revolution, around 1455. In particular, the assumption is that the Information
Revolution will be like the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. And that is indeed exactly how the Information Revolution
has been during its first fifty years.

40
41
 1862
Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois plotted
the atomic weights of elements on paper tape and
wound them, spiral like, around a cylinder. He called
his model the telluric helix or screw.
1864
English chemist John Newlands proposed
his Law of octaves based on the periodic
similarity every seventh element.

1868
Lothar Meyer compiled a periodic table based on
regular repeating pattern of physical property such
as molar volume. Once again the elements were
arranged in order of increasing atomic weights.

1869
Dmitri Mendeleev produced a periodic table
based on atomic weights but arranged
“periodically”. Elements with similar
properties appeared under each other. Gaps

1894 were left for yet to be discovered elements.

William Ramsay discovered the noble gases

and realized that they represented a new group
in the periodic table. The noble gases added
further proof to the accuracy of Mendeleev’s

1913
table.

Henry Moseley determined the atomic number

of each of the known elements. He realized that
arranging the elements in order of increasing
atomic number rather than atomic weight gave
a better fit within the “periodic table”.

1944
Glenn Seaborg proposed an ‘actinide hypothesis’
and published his version of the table in 1945. The
lanthanide and actinide series form the two rows
under the periodic table of elements.

42
 Chapter 3
Science, Technology and Nation Building

A. The Philippine Government Science and Technology Agenda

Scientists and technologists are the backbone of an industrialized nation that

propels socioeconomic gain and national progress. They are the key players and
lifeblood of research and innovation and plays an important role in the industry and
manufacturing sector. As such, it can be said that scientists and technologists are
essential players in nation building.

In the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is tasked

to oversee and manage national technology development and acquisition, undertake
technological and scientific research and promote public consciousness of science
and technology. DOST is responsible for formulating and adopting a comprehensive
National Science and Technology plan for the Philippines and subsequently, to
monitor and coordinate its funding and implementation. It undertakes policy research,
technology assessment, feasibility and technical studies, and maintains a national
information system and databank on science and technology.

In 2017, DOST launched the Science for the People thru Administrative Order
No. 003 s. 2017. This is in response to the government’s call to address inequity in
developments within and among countries and is aligned with the national goals and
plans. It aims to make science and technology more relevant to the conditions, needs
and opportunities for contributing to regional development while keeping abreast with
the trends and development in the country and in the world. Likewise, the program
intends to maximize the use of science, enhance innovation and the creative capacity
of the Filipinos towards the achievement of inclusive and sustainable growth.

43
 Stipulated in the strategic plan are the seven outcomes that the agency strives
to achieve. These are as follows:

1. Innovation and stimulus

2. Technology and adoption promoted and accelerated
3. Critical mass of globally competitive STI human resources developed
4. Productivity and efficiency of communities and the production sector,
particularly MSMEs improved
5. Resiliency to disaster risks and climate change ensured
6. Inequality in STI capacities and opportunities reduced
7. Effective STI governance achieved

The strategies to attain these outcomes are embodied in the DOST Eleven Point
Agenda as follows:

1. Pursue R&D to address pressing national problems.

2. Conduct R&D to enhance productivity and improve management of
resources.
3. Engage in R&D to generate and apply new knowledge and technologies
across sectors.
4. Strengthen and utilize regional R&D capabilities.
5. Maximize utilization of R&D results through technology transfer and
commercialization.
6. Develop STI human resources and build a strong STI culture.
7. Upgrade STI facilities and capacities to advance R&D activities and expand
S&T services.
8. Expand STI assistance to communities and the production sector,
particularly MSMEs.
9. Provide STI--based solutions for disaster risks and climate change
adaptation and mitigation.
10. Strengthen industry--academe--government and international STI
collaboration.
11. Enhance effectiveness of STI governance.

Agenda 1 highlights the latest advancements in research and development

geared towards the shared goal of improved nutrition and health for all. Focused on
health technology development, drug discovery and development remains to be the
high--impact and big ticket program supported by the Department in the area of health.
Central to this R&D program is the study of endemic resources, partnered with
documentation of traditional knowledge and practices in health, that could eventually
lead to decreased cost of medicines and health interventions for diseases that affect
the quality of lives of many Filipinos.

Agenda 2 presents how R&D can be utilized to make key traditional industries
steadfast and competitive through technological innovations that can address gaps in
productivity and increase production yield. Enhancing the capacity of marginalized

44
sub--sectors and people groups to use better and new technologies can expand their
access to participate in economic activities and progress. The primary industries that
will benefit from the featured major R&D programs include the agriculture, specifically
coconut and rice production, non--wood forest products, i.e., bamboo processing and
utilization, and natural textile among others.

Agenda 3 engages R&D in emerging scientific and technological platforms

which lay the inroads to the development of new products, services, and industries.
Promising new technologies may potentially disrupt and change the way things are
done. Recognizing this, the Department anticipates impact of new technologies in
existing industries in the country by supporting local capability programs in the areas
of artificial intelligence for new industry development and supporting research in
nanotechnology for new materials development.

Agenda 4 focuses in strengthening institutional capacity to undertake research

and development and contribute to regional development. Utilizing local researchers
equalize opportunities in generating new knowledge and technologies suited for the
specific need of the region. The Department partners with Higher Education Institutions
in the regions in establishing niche R&D centers which may also serve as hubs for
developing R&D capability of adjacent localities.

Agenda 5 includes mechanisms to encourage technology transfer and avenues

where R&D results are promoted in the bid to maximize its utilization. The Department
provided support in bringing R&D results to its final stage of development up to
commercialization.

Agenda 6 aims to build a critical mass of competitive researchers, scientists,

and engineers (RSEs) and promoting a culture of STI. Towards this goal, the
Department continues to provide scholarship programs to scale up the number of
RSEs.

Agenda 7 features various S&T facilities that offer technical services for carrying
out research and development, as well as addressing the needs of the industry in terms
of quality assurance, adherence to standards, product development, and innovation.
The electronics, semi--conductor, automotive parts, gear assembly manufacturing,
agriculture produce, and food manufacturing industries can benefit from the various
S&T facilities and technical services.

Agenda 8 focuses on S&T assistance provided to upgrade the technological

capabilities and improve the productivity and efficiency of Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises (MSMEs). The Department has continued to provide technological
interventions such as process and system improvement, technical consultancy,
packaging and labelling, training, testing and calibration, and product development to
empower MSMEs to innovate, move up the technology scale and become more
competitive.

45
 Agenda 9 highlights the role of the Department in building a disaster--resilient
community through the provision of accurate and timely information. Specifically,
progress was made by establishing and upgrading observation and monitoring
systems, efforts in hazard and risk assessment, and researches for disaster risk
management, as well as climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Agenda 10 focuses on the linkages and networks being pursued by the

Department in terms of S&T collaboration. In 2017, the Department took part in 24
bilateral engagements and participated in a number of activities which involved 14
international organizations.

Agenda 11 (Enhance effectiveness of STI governance) provides the policy

framework that governs the implementation of the programs, projects and activities of
the Department in contribution to national development and progress. Taking off from
the National 0+10 Socioeconomic Agenda and Philippine Development Plan, the
Department crafted the Science for the People 11--point Agenda, Harmonized R&D
Agenda, and Regional Offices Strategy Map.

In Focus: Batangas State University KIST Park

Batangas State University made history as it officially launched the country’s first
Knowledge, Innovation and Science Technology (KIST) Park on July 20, 2020. This
milestone placed Batangas State University at the forefront of national development.
BatStateU KIST Park was designated as a Special Economic Zone under Presidential
Proclamation No. 947, s. 2020. The theme of the launching event was “Towards a New
Frontier of Knowledge--building and Innovation in Science and Technology.”

BatStateU headed by Dr. Tirso A. Ronquillo became a key partner of the

government in fostering industry--academe linkages, knowledge and technology
transfer, and promoting the commercialization of innovations. The KIST Park will serve
as a catalyst for industrial productivity and increased economic growth inCaLaBaRZon.
This manifestation of the strong collaboration between government, industry and
academe is central to inclusive innovation strategy.

BatStateU KIST Park is now open and spearheads a long-­term vision for “state
universities and colleges in the country to expand their programs for industry, academe,
market synergy, technopreneurship, [innovation--based] business incubation and
acceleration, and knowledge co--creation in science and technology.”
(http://batstateukistpark.com.ph/#/main/home)

Question: Which of the 11--point Agenda relates to the launching and operation of
BatStateU KIST Park? Expound your answer.

46
B. Major Development Programs and Personalities in Science and
Technology in the Philippines

Major Development Programs in Science and Technology

The Science for Change Program (S4CP) was created by the Department of
Science and Technology (DOST) to accelerate STI in the country in order to keep up with
the developments in our time wherein technology and innovation are game changers.
Through the Science for Change Program (S4CP), the DOST can significantly accelerate
STI in the country and create a massive

S4CP focuses on Accelerated R&D Program for Capacity Building of R&D

Institutions and Industrial Competitiveness which is composed of four (4) programs
namely: (1) Niche Centers in the Regions for R&D (NICER) Program, (2) R&D Leadership
(RDLead) Program, (3) Collaborative R&D to Leverage PH Economy (CRADLE) for RDIs
and Industry Program, (4) Business Innovation through S&T (BIST) for Industry Program.

The NICER Program capacitates Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the

regions to make significant improvement in regional research by integrating its
development needs with the existing R&D capabilities and resources. It provides
institutional grants for HEIs in the regions for R&D capacity building to improve their S&T
infrastructure. The NICER Program was established in consultation with the academe
and industry;; and endorsed by the Regional Development Council (RDC). Hence, a
NICER is a unique center for collaborative R&D to address specific S&T needs of local
communities and industries, thereby accelerating regional development. It caters to the
specific needs of the Regions, which include upgrading, development, and acquisition of
R&D equipment to undertake collaborative R&D activities. Currently, there are 18 existing
NICERs across 14 regions for a total funding of P641M.

The R&D Leadership Program complements the establishment of R&D Centers

thru the NICER Program. RDLead provides the mechanism to bring in experts and highly
skilled professionals with strong leadership, management and innovative policy--making
proficiencies to be in charge of strengthening the research capabilities of the HEIs,
National Government Agencies (NGAs) and Research Development Institutions (RDIs)
in the regions. Together, the RDLead and NICER Programs will capacitate HEIs to help
improve and hasten the use of research results that will contribute to the socio--economic
development of the country and help address pressing challenges. The NRCP is the
implementing agency for this program.

The Collaborative Research and Development to Leverage Philippine Economy

(CRADLE) Program is specifically designed to foster collaboration between academe and
local companies to improve competitiveness and catalyze innovation. It aims to improve
the country’s innovation ecosystem by facilitating the smooth transition of new
technologies from universities and research and development institutes (RDI) to
industries -- from lab to market. The framework of CRADLE is a trihelix partnership

47
between the government, the industry and the academe wherein the government finances
the collaboration of the private company and the partner university or RDI. The Program
aims to address a problem of a Filipino company using R&D to develop innovative
solutions. To date, the DOST has already provided almost Php 125 M of funding to 29
academe--industry collaborations all over the country.

The Business Innovation through S&T (BIST) for Industry Program aims to level--
up the innovation capacity of the Philippine Industrial Sector through R&D by helping
private companies and industries acquire novel and strategic technologies, such as state-- of-
-the--art equipment and machinery, technology licenses and patent rights among others. The
program will cover up to 70% of the total eligible cost of the needed technology at zero
percent interest. To date, the BIST Program has approved one project from an herbal
company, Herbanext Laboratories Inc., providing a total financial assistance of
Php11.7M.

A Steering committee for CRADLE and BIST Programs was created through the
DOST Special Order No. 0276 which was approved on 02 April 2018. The Steering
Committee is headed by Dr. Rowena Cristina L. Guevara, Undersecretary for R&D, and
the members include the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Federation of
Philippine Industries (FPI), Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI),
Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and
Development (PCAARRD), Philippine Council for Health Research and Development
(PCHRD) and Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology
Research and Development (PCIEERD)

The committee performs the following functions: (1) Review/formulate policies

relating to the implementation of CRADLE and BIST Program;; (2) Provide advice and
guidance in the management and administration of the projects;; and (3) Other functions
necessary for the successful implementation of CRADLE and BIST Programs. Since the
implementation of the S4CP in 2017, the DOST has spent a total of Php 407,585,946.60
to the four programs.

48
Personalities in Science and Technology in the Philippines
Aisa Mijeno

To light up the rest of the

Philippines sustainably was the vision of
Filipina scientist Aisa Mijeno when she
made the Sustainable Alternative Lighting
(SALt) lamp. The product concept was
formed after living with the Butbut tribe for
weeks relying only on kerosene lamps and
moonlight to do evening chores. Her
mission and advocacy is to address the
light inequality gap and end the use of
combustion based light sources(kerosene
https://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/features
lamps and candles) for the 16 Million /asias--rising--scientists--aisa--mijeno/
Filipinos and 1.4 Billion people across the
world.

The SALt Lamp is an environment--friendly and sustainable alternative light source

that runs on saltwater, making it suitable to those who live in coastal areas. It can also
function well in remote barrios. With just two table spoons of salt and one glass of tap
water, this ecologically designed lamp can run for eight hours.

The idea behind the SALt lamp is the chemical conversion of energy. It utilizes the
scientific process behind the Galvanic cell, but instead of electrolytes, the SALt lamp uses
saline solution, making it harmless and non--toxic. Compared with kerosene lamp, the
SALt lamp is also a lot safer since it does not have components and compounds that may
spark fire. Moreover, it does not emit toxic gases and leaves minimal carbon footprint.
Because of its inspiring vision and ground--breaking innovation, the SALt lamp has
received various awards and recognition from organizations in the Philippines, Singapore,
Japan, and South Korea. SALt have won several awards including KOTRA Top 5 Best
Global Startup at Startup Nations Summit 2014, People's Choice at Startup Nations
Summit 2014 and recognized by the ASEAN Corporate Sustainability Summit andAwards
2015 giving them the SME Sustainability Commitment Category.

One of Mijano’s career highlights was when she was invited as an APEC CEO
Summit panel member together with ex--President Barack Obama and Alibaba CEO Jack
Ma. Looking forward, she wishes to distribute more lanterns to communities across the
Philippines and possibly throughout South East Asia.

49
Ramon C. Barba

He is a Filipino scientist, inventor and

horticulturist who is known for his successful
experiment on the inducement of flowering of
mango trees by spraying them with ethrel and
potassium nitrate. He developed a process
that caused the flowering and fruiting of
mango trees three times a year, instead on
once a year, so dramatically improving yields.
Since his discovery, the mango industry in the
Philippines expanded. Apart from the mango
producers themselves, other business
sectors such as the producers of the pest
control chemicals, harvesters, sellers, and all
the other smaller groups of workers related to
mango industry have benefitted from his
invention. This technology has also been
successfully applied on other fruit trees including cashew.

Barba also developed a tissue culture procedure for the banana plant and sugar
cane which enabled production of large quantities of planting materials that were robust
and disease--free. With his research team, Barba devised micro propagation protocols for
more than 40 important species of fruit crops, ornamental plants, plantation crops,
aquarium plants, and forest trees. In 2013, Ramon C. Barba was conferred the rank and
title of National Scientist in the Philippines for his distinguished achievements in the field
of plant physiology.

Fe V. del Mundo
She is known as the Mother of Philippine
Pediatrics, a very great scientist and a symbol of
female empowerment in medicine, both in the
Philippines and abroad. The first Asian woman
admitted into Harvard, she pursued graduate
degrees in America after receiving her medical
degree from the University of the Philippines. Del
Mundo pioneered numerous inventions throughout
her more than 70--year medical career. She
revolutionized Philippine medicine, making major
breakthroughs in immunization and in the
treatment of jaundice, and providing healthcare to
thousands of poor families. She is credited with https://www.thefamouspeople.com/pro
studies that led to the invention of the incubator files/fe--del--mundo--25104.php
and a jaundice relieving device. Her methods, like

the BRAT diet for curing diarrhea, have spread throughout the world and saved millions.
Del Mundo’s field of natural science and the field of public health was something she was
50
actively involved in. When she was not busy treating and taking care of children, she did
some pioneering work on infectious diseases in Philippine communities and authored the
Textbook of Pediatrics, as well as hundreds of articles and medical reports on diseases
such as dengue, polio and measles.
During her lifetime, del Mundo won numerous awards and recognition for her
outstanding work. Among these was the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service,
which she received in 1977. She became the Philippines’ first female National Scientist
in 1980, in recognition of her work in Pediatrics. The rank of National Scientist is awarded
to science practitioners with “distinguished individual or collaborative achievement in
science and technology.” In 2010, del Mundo was awarded the Order of Lakandula, rank
of Bayani, as a Filipina who lived a life “worthy of emulation.” Posthumously, she was
conferred the Grand Collar of the Order of the Golden Heart Award in 2011, by President
Benigno Aquino III.

Maria Y. Orosa
Advances in modern Filipino food
technology owe a great deal to the creative
researches and salutary inventiveness of a
woman chemist and pharmacist from
Batangas – Maria Y. Orosa. The now--
commercially available thirst quencher, the
calamansi juice, is just one of the popular
native food products in whose preparation and
preservation she had a hand. She produced
the “calamansi nip,” the desiccated and
powdered form of the fruit which could be
made into juice. The most notable of her food
inventions, is “Soyalac,” a powdered
preparation of soya--beans, which helped save
the lives of thousands of Filipinos, Americans, https://food52.com/blog/24700--maria--
orosa--profile
and other nationals who ever held prisoners in
different Japanese concentration camps

during World War II. It became known to them as the “magic food.”
She is also credited with the making of the banana ketchup;; wines from native
fruits, like casuy and guava;; vinegar from pineapples;; banana starch;; soyamilk;; banana
flour;; cassava flour;; jelly from guava, santol, mango, and other fruits, as well as the
invention of rice cookies, known as ricebran or darak, which is effective in the treatment
of patients with beri--beri. Aside from making food preparations, Miss Orosa taught
Filipinos how to preserve such native delicacies as the adobo, dinuguan, kilawen and
escabeche. Together with her associates in the Bureau of Plant Industry, she invented
“Oroval” and “Clarosa.”
In 1923, she helped organize the food preservation division under the Bureau of
Science. On June 3, 1927, she became the acting division head. Orosa also tried her
hand in improving household wares. She invented the “Orosa Palayok Oven” for cooking
various dishes. In 1928, the government, recognizing her dynamism and strong
leadership, sent her to various countries as a state scholar to specialize in food
51
processing and canning. To perpetuate her memory, the government has named after
her a street stretching from T.M. Kalaw to Padre Faura in Ermita, Manila, as well as a
building in the Bureau of Plants and Industry. She was one of the 19 scientists who were
conferred awards on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Institute of Science and
Technology. On November 29, 1983, the National Historical Institute installed a marker
in her honor at the Bureau of Plant Industry in San Andres, Manila.

Angel Alcala
He is a Filipino scientist whose
biological contributions to the
environment and ecosystems have made
him a hero for natural sciences. During his
30 years of experience as a biologist,
Alcala made major contributions to
marine biology research efforts in the
Philippines and authored over 160
scientific papers as well as books. Alcala
was the first Filipino scientist to engage in
comprehensive studies concerning
Philippine reptiles and amphibians and
minor studies on mammals and birds.
http://heroes.aseanbiodiversity.org/2017/09/
From the 400 already known species of 07/asean--biodiversity--hero--dr--angel--c--
reptiles and amphibians, 50 more species alcala--philippines/
were identified due to his efforts. Because
of his work, conservation programs in the
Philippines are now well established.

Alcala also made a highly valuable and groundbreaking contribution to marine

ecosystems when he established the first artificial reef around the coastline of the
Philippines, greatly boosting the ecosystem's health and viability.
. In 1994, he was given the Field Museum Founders’ Council Award of Merit for
contributions to environmental biology. He is a recipient of the Magsaysay Award for
Public Service. In September 2011 he received the Gregorio Y. Zara Award for Basic
Science from the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science Inc. In 2014, he
was proclaimed National Scientist by President Benigno S. Aquino III through Presidential
Decree 782 on June 6, 2014.

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53