Chapter 1 STS - Historical Antecedents in Science and Technology PDF

 CHAPTER 1 Historical Antecedents in Which Social Considerations Changed the Course of Science and Technology Introduction This section presents an overview of how science and technology evolved from ancient times to the present. It shows how man was able to develop crude technological...

 CHAPTER 1 Historical Antecedents in Which Social Considerations Changed the Course of Science and Technology Introduction This section presents an overview of how science and technology evolved from ancient times to the present. It shows how man was able to develop crude technological tools and eventually improve them through time to make his way of living more convenient and the society more progressive. Intended Learning Outcomes: Discuss the interactions between science and technology and society throughout history Discuss how scientific and technological developments affect society and the environment Identify the paradigm shifts in history 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.  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.  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).  The Role of Science and Technology 1. 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  The Role of Science and Technology 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 Reflective Question: Directions: With the whole world suffering from CoViD-­19 pandemic, discuss the interplay between science, technology and society in mitigating this problem. ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Historical Antecedents in the World Justlike 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 Some of the earliest records from history indicate that 3,000 years before Christ, the ancient Egyptians already had reasonably sophisticated medical practices. 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. 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. 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. 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" The Advent of Science (600 BC to 500 AD) 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. Islamic Golden Age 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.  Islamic Golden Age 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.  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 Europe1000 years later or during the end of Science and Technology in Ancient China 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 Renaissance (1300 AD – 1600AD) The 14 century was the beginning of the cultural th 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. Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate the early phase of the Scientific Revolution, 1450–1630. The Renaissance (1300 AD – 1600AD) 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. The Renaissance (1300 AD – 1600AD) 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 from China between 1250 and 1350.  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.  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 Enlightenment Period (1715 A.D. to 1789 A.D.) 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.  Newton published his great work Principia, in which he described the universe as fixed, with Earth and other heavenly bodies moving harmoniously in accordance with mathematical laws. That approach of systematizing and classifying was to dominate biology in the 17th and 18th centuries.  An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. 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.  Industrial Revolution (1760 -­1840) 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 of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-­combustion engine,  Industrial Revolution (1760 -­1840) (3)important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio 20th Century Science: Physics and Information Age 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. 20th Century Science: Physics and Information Age 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.  Einstein went on to present his findings mathematically: energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared (2), or E=mc2.  What is general relativity? Essentially, it's a theory of gravity. The basic idea is that instead of being an invisible force that attracts objects to one another, gravity is a curving or warping of space. The more massive an object, the more it warps the space  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. 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. Science and Technology in the Fourth Industrial Revolution 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. Activity: Directions: List down the scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs in each period. You may conduct additional researches. 1.Ancient Times to 600 BC 2.Advent of Science (600 BC to 500 AD) 3.Islamic Golden Age 4.Ancient China and the Far East 5.Renaissance 6.Enlightenment Period 7.Industrial Revolution 8.20 century th 9.Fourth Industrial Revolution 2. If given a chance to live back in time and considering the influence of science and technology in the society and the environment, which period would you choose and why? Would you prefer a less technologically driven society or you wouldn’t trade the comforts of modern life? _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ ___.