Science,

Technology, and
Society
PSYCH1A – Week 3
H HISTORY
ORTISY
 EVOLUTION
EV LOONTUI
P IPHILOSOPHY
HHYSLPOO
 Topics to Discuss

01. History of Science Studies

02. Evolution of STS

Philosophies that Influenced

03. STS
History of

Science Studies
What is ICT?
 ICT

- A diverse set of technological tools and resources used to transmit, store,

create, share or exchange information.
Ur, Sumer
 Ur, Sumer
-First humans communicated only through speaking and picture
drawings.

-Cuneiform
THREE AGES OF HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT

Prehistory History Hyperhistory

 Hyperhistory

- Societies or environments where ICTs and their data processing capabilities are
the necessary condition for the maintenance and any further development of
societal welfare, personal well-being, as well as intellectual flourishing.
Prehistory

• No ICTs

History

• Society is enriched by ICTs that store and

transmit information.

Hyperhistory

• ICTs have overtaken other technologies

and now society depends on ICTs to
function.
Our technologies are now capable of more than just mediation between us - as users - and other
technologies or the world. ICTs are also able to control our other technologies, often removing
us from the process altogether, except as ultimate beneficiaries.

The narrative of our lives generate vast stores of data which are consumed by ICTs in ways that
we do not actively endorse or control.

Societies that have entered Hyperhistory are particularly vulnerable to attacks using ICTs.
Is it bad entering Hyperhistory?
Philosophies that
Influenced

STS
What is
Philosophy?

The term "philosophy"

means, "love of wisdom."
Meet The Philosophers
 Meet Karl Popper

- An Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social

commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential
philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of
the classical inductivist views on the scientific method in favor
of empirical falsification.

Popper and The Falsification

Principle

Karl Popper - The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper, is a

way of demarcating science from non-science. It suggests that
for a theory to be considered scientific it must be able to be
tested and conceivably proven false.
 Meet Imre Lakatos

- Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics

and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of
mathematics and its "methodology of proofs and refutations"
in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for
introducing the concept of the "research programme" in his
methodology of scientific research programmes.

Lakatos and The Methodology of Proofs

and Refutations

Imre Lakatos - Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical

Discovery is a 1976 book by philosopher Imre Lakatos
expounding his view of the progress of mathematics.
 Meet Paul Karl Feyerabend

- Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science

best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the
University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three
decades. Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic
view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal
methodological rules.

Feyerabend and Epistemological

Anarchism
Paul Karl
Feyerabend - Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological theory
advanced by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend
which holds that there are no useful and exception-free
methodological rules governing the progress of science or the
growth of knowledge.
 Meet Thomas Kuhn

- Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American philosopher of

science whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular
circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since
become an English-language idiom.

Kuhn and The Paradigm Shift

Thomas Kuhn - A paradigm shift, a concept brought into the common

lexicon by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas
Kuhn, is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and
experimental practices of a scientific discipline.
End of Discussion
Thank you for listening!