Science and Technology and the Future Development of Societies International Workshop Proceedings (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix C: Science, Technology, and Society - The Tightening Circle--George Bugliarello
Appendix C: Science, Technology, and Society - The Tightening Circle--George Bugliarello
Pages 103-111
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From page 103... ...
put it, the messiness of the interactions among science, technology, and society; but we can attempt to adopt a systematic framework for addressing them and to exemplify some salient points. Repeatedly, the two unstoppable quests to understand and modify nature have changed societal views, have expanded the human reach, and have fundamentally transformed society, from the discovery of agriculture and metals to the industrial and information revolutions, to today's biotechnological revolution. At times science has preceded technology and vice versa, often with large time lags.
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From page 104... ...
Religious dogmas and political and social ideologies as well as different p hilosophies have in various periods exerted a determining influence on the course of science and technology (Pool, 1997) , all the way to today's stem cell FIGURE C-1 The double circle.
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From page 105... ...
In Europe in the seventeenth century, formal logic retarded independent thinking and became clearly inadequate to handle change. Thus, philosophical views set the stage for scientific and technological developments but can also channel and confine them.
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From page 106... ...
Furthermore, there can be vast societal and scientific underestimates of the time to future developments, as when Aldous Huxley in 1931 predicted that human spaceflight would not occur before 2970 (Barrett, 1990) or when Wilbur Wright reportedly said to Orville in 1901, two years before their first successful flight in 1903: "Man will not fly for fifty years." THE TIGHTENING OF THE CIRCLE The circle of reciprocal impacts of science, technology, and society and their propagation around the world have greatly accelerated in the past 100 years and even more in the past few decades, as exemplified by the spread of automobiles and cell phones, by the diffusion of new forms of entertainment, by rapid changes in the global economy, or by the proliferation of nuclear weapons since 1945.
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From page 107... ...
Rocketry, probably an early Chinese invention and used extensively in India in the late 1700s by Tippu Sahib, eventually made possible intercontinental missiles, Sputnik in 1957, and the 1969 Moon landing, with geopolitical impacts from militarization of space to the concept of "Spaceship Earth," to new international laws defining the limits of national sovereignty in space. Information is yet another example of recent acceleration of a long cycle, with a 1,600-year gap separating the Library of Alexandria from Gutenberg and the Reformation, 500 years separating Gutenberg from the first Apple computer, 22 years from the Apple to the Internet, and only four years from the Internet to the World Wide Web in 1993.
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From page 108... ...
The questions of expectations and of progress loom large in the public understanding of science and technology, often leading to exaggerated expectation of further developments (Sigma Xi, 1993)
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From page 109... ...
The question whether science and technology represent real progress inevitably arose after the hecatombs of World Wars I and II and also persists because of the enduring poverty of billions. Closely connected to these questions are those of the relation of science and technology to religion, ethics, freedom, and government, crystallized by the debates about stem cells or creationism and about the relation of scientific truth to other truths.
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From page 110... ...
Our species must endeavor to agree as to the fundamental issues it faces, forming, as it were, a superhighway of fundamental principles receiving inputs from various local ethics. That is, can our field of view be expanded to possibly identify ethical and behavioral aspects to which, consciously or not, all cultures subscribe?
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From page 111... ...
Ethics, Values and the Promise of Science, Forum Proceedings. Research Triangle Park, NC: Sigma Xi.
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