world views and human values regarding science and technology
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Transcript of world views and human values regarding science and technology
World Views & Human Values
Chapter 8
Introduction
We will explore the influence of modern science and technology on phenomena belonging to a different sector of that system: the ideational realm.
World Views
Is a descriptive-interpretive mental model of the universe and its phenomena
It encompasses beliefs about various fundamental matters, such as what things are real and what are illusory in the world
The origins, natures, and destinies (if any) of things that exist
The primary forces at work in the world
This the way how human life ought to be lived
Helps its subscribers find meaning in otherwise unbearable suffering, give directions to their lives, and spur them to overcome opposing forces
The Scientific Revolution and the Rise of a Mechanistic World
First great influence of S&T is the scientific revolution of 17th century. According to works of P.M. Harman:
By around 1700, educated men conceived the universe as a mechanical structure like a clock, the earth was regarded as a planet revolving around the sun, and the mysteries of nature were supposed to be open to investigation by means of experimentation and mathematical analysis.
-to be continued
These new attitudes to the natural world contrast strikingly with the traditional conception of nature: that the earth was immobile and the center of the cosmos, the cosmos itself being envisaged as a structure of crystalline spheres enveloping the central earth like the layers of an onion; nature was conceived as a living organism, a connected structure linked by a web of hidden active powers.
However, advances of science two centuries later posed new challenges to the revised world views of educated religious believers. Advances in paleontology and geology in the nineteenth century. This is supported by Darwin’s and Freud’s theory.5
The conflicts of continuous developments of science and technology lead for beliefs to be regarded as problematic if not incredible, this is the stand the Western intellectuals are taking.
Technology and Science in the 19th Century
-> turning point Science based industries
Coal tar dye manufactureElectrical power generation
Birth of industrial research laboratoryTechnological application in
Germany
Technology and Science in the 20th Century
-> modernization of products Growth of industrial research
laboratoryGerman coal tar dyeBell telephone laboratory
Technology partially dependent on scienceGenetics, physics and chemistry
20th Century Dev’ts in Science
19th and 20th Century physics adversities
Maxwell’s eletromagnetic theory –interaction between particles
E.g. billiard ball or ball bearing Einstein’s theory of special
relativity – relation between time and space continuum
E.g. interconvertibility of matter & energy as represented at E=mc2
Werner Heisenberg
– indeterminacy of position and momentum of single subatomic particle.
Abstract Science – Rapid Technological Change and Contemporary World Views Big Bang Theory Hunting and gathering of native
American tribes Judeo-Christian tradition
“God the Father” & “wrathful Jehovah”
Bows and arrows to being agriculturized and industrialized
Happiness
A consumptional idea of happiness Changed nature of the reigning
cultural ideal of happiness reflected the new socioeconomic need to ensure sufficient demand for greatly increased supplies of goods that the new industrial system must now capable producing
A new profusion of material goods by devaluing acetic denial and celebrating a fluent consumption.
Beliefs and Expectations, Attitudes and Feelings Beliefs in the era of global
transportation and communication and post World War II period.
Expectations of parents living on after death through their children.
“Revolution of Rising Expectations”
For attitude revolution in mass communication has contributed to the weakening of traditional xenophobia and fostered greater tolerance of groups.
S&T have engendered disturbing new feelings in modern Western culture.
Juncel Reyes
Human Values
Purely matters of individual choice.
Modern Western valuesKnowledgeTechnologyScienceProgressEfficiency
Four Cornerstone Mutually Reinforcing Values in Modern Western CultureEmpirical KnowledgeMaterial TechnologySystematic ScienceSocietal Progress
Efficiency
Relationship of the “outputs” of a system to its “inputs” or to its defining parameters
Its concept has traversed six distinguishable evolutionary stages Perennial Technical Stage Modern Technical Stage Modern Human Stage Modern Socio-technical Stage Modern Institutional Stage Contemporary Stage of Everyday LIfe
Peace, Env’t, Justice & Authority The important post-World War II
values of env’tal integrity and peace became more fervently and widely held in 20th Century
The mechanism by which these values rose to prominence might be termed “reactive crystallization”
Authority is profoundly shaken by the new behavioral options and intellectual horizons especially the youth
Conclusion
It is impossible to imagine what ideational culture might be without the dev’t of the past two centuries.
Research is geared to enable or require the formulation of certain human values and engender the projection of others as antidotes for unpalatable effects of technical dev’ts or practices.
Nevertheless, the central importance of the world views, ideas, and values discussed in this chapter, be they old and surviving or new and thriving, and the widespread failure to recognize that these mental elements have been strongly conditioned by developments in science and technology, is by itself sufficient reason to include this particular influence component in an account of the difference that science and technology have made in modern Western society.
Idea and Ideals
What is idea?
What is ideal?
Idea of Progress
• Continued improvement in knowledge of the environment of man in the natural sciences, and more recently in technology derived from them.
• Technological improvement will lead in the future to improvement in the material conditions of life.
• Progress in both of these senses.
Example:
Western ideas of progress for Sydney Pollard
Societal Progress
16th century
Growing awareness of a number of impressive recent inventions and advances in technology and science
>wedding of gunpowder and improved cannon
>the invention of printing with movable type
>improved sails
18th century
General improvement in social and political life.
20th century
Wedding of science and technology in the field of weaponry
The stage was set for the emergence of s new kind of technical professional:the indusrial or
efficiency engineer.
The aim of such engineers was to determine how to train workers and organize and orchestrate the
operations of peolple,technics,materials and capital as to maximize industrial output in relation
to the resources employed in producing it.
The modern Sociotechnical Stage
Modern Institutional Stage
Efficiency enhancement was on the verge of spreading beyond the confines of the factory and
embarking on a long march through the full spectrum of
large scale institutions of 20th century industrial society.
Contemporary Stage of everyday life
Everyday life begin more complex,atleast for individyal in urban and metropolitan areas.
Activities that consume considerable amounts of time or labor where natural targets for efficiency
enhancement.
Efficiency began its career as in implicit “natural”human goal,became an expilicit,sytematically
pursued value of modern engineering.
Novelty as as a cultural value is a also a unique to industrial society.
Cosmopolitanness(in experience,taste and outlook)
Novelty,Self Realization,Cosmopolitanness