Science Technology and

Society
LUIS REGALO PURAL
 The Human Person
Flourishing in Terms of
Science and Technology
 Science and Technology
• The goal of science is the pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake.

• The goal of technology is to create products that solve

problems and improve human life.

• Technology is the practical application of science.

- Ayush Raj
For Analysis
Technological products as extension of the
contemporary human’s life.
Human Person as a Being Who is Rational and Free

The Vitruvian
Technology as a Product of Human Reason
and Freedom
• Man is rational and with this rationality
comes also his creativity.

• This creativity means man has the

capacity to innovate whatever are those
available and “create” new things which
other animals cannot.
 St. Augustine and Human Freedom
• Freedom is the capacity of choosing what is good and of performing good deeds,
because freedom is fixated on the good things, to choose the good things and to
reject those which are bad.

• Our freedom should make us recognize what appropriate material things that we
have to use with freedom and thanksgiving and what we have to love as a final
goal.

• All material things are to be used but we have to be free enough to recognize
that the only person for whom we have to be slaves is God, in whom we find our
rest and our final goal.
 Technology and the Desire for the Good

• Augustine acknowledges that the Supreme Good must be the source

of happiness.

• Everyone wants to be happy and to live a good life.

• The desire for happiness and satisfaction may be expressed in the

way humans want comfort, efficiency, security, and peace of mind.
 Technology and the Desire for the Good

• Our intelligence, freedom, and creativity is our inner desire to attain

what is good; hence our inclination to do good is what guides our
freedom.

• We are then reminded that in order for technology to serve its

purpose, our intent in the practice of it must be to do good.
 Activity: What are these things for?
Commonly Used Things Main Purpose of the Accessory Reasons that
Making of the Thing Go with the Main Purpose
of the Thing

1. Cellular Phones Distance Communication Camera, Calculator,

Internet Browsing, Flash
Light, Radio, Applications

2. Cars

3. Watches

4. Light Bulbs

5. Paper
• The things we desire for a specific purpose may contain other elements that
might make us forget their real purpose.

• The same with the Highest Good; we can even question if we are making
progress in attaining it because of the distraction caused by the lesser goods.

• Technology has combined the camera, phone, internet browser, flashlight,

calculator, and a library into one powerful device. The real purpose of having a
phone has been drowned by other features.

• Technology as a way for us to ascend towards the Highest Good has now
become a distraction that may hinder from reaching the Good.
• Augustine thinks that we cannot be happy unless we attain the object of our
desire but it is not a guarantee either that we can really be happy if we get what
we desire.

• Not all our desires guarantee happiness. Certain desires and certain things may
even bring us to misery if we desire what is not really the Good.

• This can happen to technology too. Some technologies distract us from reaching
the real Good, they may even lead us away from what really matters.
Technology as a Way of
Revealing
 Martin Heidegger and Technology
• For Heidegger, presently, we tend to be chained to technology.

• There is also a pervasive instrumentalist interpretation of technology as a human

activity that provides the means to our ends.

• But this interpretation opens up to a deeper question, namely, what is

technology essentially? And if it is instrumental then what is its end?
 Martin Heidegger and Technology
• Heidegger considers that technology involves the bringing-forth (poiesis) and
suggests that with technology comes a distinctive mode of disclosiveness, or
revealedness, that is, a kind of ontological truth (aletheia).

• Our activities, the things we encounter and deal with, and even we ourselves all
seem to happen together in a “world” where everything is set up and
“enframed” as part of a stockpile of available materials and personnel –
“standing-reserve” (Bestand), always ready for technologically determined
purposes.
 Martin Heidegger and Technology
• Enframing (Gestell), then, is the “essence” of the technological – essence, not in
the traditional sense of a permanent and unchangeable character or set of
properties, but in the sense of a predominant way of disclosing meaning which
“gives” the instrumentally useful its familiar “instrumental” sense.

• Everything is seen as calculable and just mere instruments in order to attain what
is intended as an end.

• This is the danger of the age.

 Martin Heidegger and Technology
• But where the danger is, there is also the “saving power”.

• This saving power is still through enframing but in another way, namely, the
possibility of opening up a “FREE relation with technology.” Free here means not
conditioned by measure and the rigid ways of science and calculations.

• A free relation with technology would thus have to happen “in a realm that is, on
the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally
different from it.”
 Calculative and Meditative Thinking
• Calculative thinking is seemed favored in the modern world because of its efficiency and exact
or definite answers to questions.

• Meditative thinking, on the other hand, is a very important type of thinking for Heidegger than
the calculative; it helps us to understand our life’s meaning, placing significance on the individual
rather than the collective.

• Calculative thinking makes our individual lives less important. It implies that there is a way to
categorize everyone and everything in the world, taking away any real free will.

• Calculative thinking, then—if taken as the entire truth—makes us entirely mechanistic. It

suggests that there is complete, objective truth and order in the world. There would be no free
will, because every action would fit into a greater structure. 
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on Art
Aside from the use of reason, arts
unveils the truth.
• We have art so that we may not
perish by the truth.

• Art is not merely an imitation of the

reality of nature, but in truth a
metaphysical supplement to the
reality of nature, placed alongside
thereof for its conquest.

• Admiration for a quality or an art

can be so strong that it deters us
from striving to possess it. 
 Immanuel Kant on Disinterested Pleasure and
Aesthetics
• Therefore, a true judgment of beauty is disinterested; it is not based on any
known concept, simply a sensation of unconstrained, completely
detached pleasure. Along these same lines, a beautiful object is purposive,
containing the property or quality of purposefulness, without actually having a
concrete purpose.
 The Use of Art as a Way Out of the
Enframing of Modern Technology
• The “pattern” followed by art is not the rigid pattern that follows
much the calculative thinking. Art is spontaneously expressed and is
open.
Questions to Ponder:
•  How many times in our lives when instead of seeing the beauty of trees, we calculate
the profit we earn from the fruits or logs that come from them?

 
• How many times have we forgone the experience of seeing the beauty of roses
rather than seeing them as gifts for lovers or from our loved ones?

 
• How many times have we forgotten the goodness of people around us and ceased to
respect them when they can no longer provide the favors and things we need from
them?
 

• How has been technology influencing us? Why do we need always to be calculative?
Think About These:
 
Why is it that doing whatever I want can be considered false freedom?
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How is technology related to the desire to do what is good?
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Differentiate calculative thinking from meditative thinking.
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