Republic of the Philippines

Surigao del Sur State University

Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Name: Juliah M. Quiñonez Date Submitted: 9/25/20

Section/Course: 1CEB – BSCE

I. Introduction

Science and Technology indeed play major

roles in the everyday life. They make difficult and
complicated tasks easier and allow people to do
more with so little effort and time. The
developments in
this field are not just products of people’s
imagination or a one-time thought process; they
are also brought by gradual improvements to
earlier works from different time periods.

This module discusses the meaning of

Science, Technology and Society; the Historical Antecedents, Transformation of Society by Science and
Technology such as Copernican ,Darwinian Revolution, Freudian Revolution and
Information Revolution.

Lesson 1: Introduction to Science, Technology, and Society

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. discuss the general concepts of Science, Technology and Society and its interactions throughout
the history;
2. identify inventions and discoveries that changed the world over the course of history and how it
transforms over the period of time
3. discuss the scientific and technological developments in the Philippines.

Pre-test

Instructions: On the space provided, write True if the statement is correct or False if it is not.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

False 1. Science and Technology are not crucial factors in nation building.

True 2. Science required invention to devise techniques, abstractions, apparatuses,

and organizations to describe these natural regularities and their law-like descriptions.

True 3. Science and technology can be dangerous.

True 4. STS is an interdisciplinary field of academic teaching and research having as

its primary focus the explication and analysis of science and technology as complex social constructs.

True 5. STS deals with the historical development of science and technology but
does not cover their philosophical underpinnings.

Guide Questions:

1. How does science operate and sets the limitation?

Science operates by permitting us to develop new advancements, take care of

pragmatic issues, and settle on educated choices both separately and collectivity and the
limitations depend on the way that a theory must be testable and falsifiable and that
investigations and perceptions be repeatable. This places certain points past the span of the
logical technique. Science can't demonstrate or invalidate the presence of God or some other
powerful substance.

2. What are Science, Technology and society, and why should people want to study and learn it?

Science, Technology and Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that reviews the
conditions under which the production, distribution and utilization of logical information and
technological systems happen; the outcomes of these exercises upon various gatherings of
individuals. STS expands on the history and reasoning of science and technology, sociology and
anthropology, policy examines, and cultural and scholarly examinations; all of which shape the
methods of investigation conveyed in the field. Individuals need to contemplate and learn it to
comprehend information making rehearses inside the disciplines of science, and experience
those practices directly through lab sciences, mathematics and/or engineering. Likewise, to
analyze science and innovation as recorded practices and as social establishments, having the
option to clarify the theories, ideas, and techniques utilized in such assessment. What's more,

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

in conclusion, to clarify inside and out the manner in which the social and social states of
science and technology connect with science and innovation in a specific field.

3. On the box provided draw your understanding how science and technology related to each other
that give impact to the society.

1.1 The Meaning of Science, Technology and Society

What is science?

Science comes from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”. But in the perspective of
Albert Einstein science is the attempts to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to
a logically uniform system of thought. It is also considered a subject matter of nature. Every physical
entity in the extra-terrestrial and terrestrial environment is a component of nature. According to the
famous American
science historian, John Heilbron (2003,p.vii), “ Modern science as a discovery of regularity
in nature, enough for natural phenomena to be described by principles and laws. He also explained that
science required invention to devise techniques, abstractions, apparatuses, and organizations to describe
these natural regularities and their law-like descriptions.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Moreover, Science can be classified as a process and product.

1. Science as a process
a. It seeks for truth about the nature
b. concerned with discovering relationship between observable phenomena in terms of theories
c. systematized theoretical inquiries
d. it is determined by observation, hypothesis, measurement, analysis and experimentation
e. it is the description and explanation of the development of knowledge
f. it is the study of the beginning and end of everything that exist
g. conceptualization of new ideas from the abstract to the particular
h. kind of human cultural activity.

2. Science as a product
a. Systematized, organized body of knowledge based on facts or truths observations
b. a set of logical and empirical methods which provide for the systematic observation of
empirical phenomena
c. source of cognitive authority
d. concerned with verifiable concepts
e. a product of the mind

f. it is the variety of knowledge, people, skills organizations, facilities, techniques, physical

resources, methods and technologies that taken together and in relation with one another.

What is technology?

Basically it is the application of scientific knowledge, laws, and principles to produce services,
materials, tools, and machines aimed at solving real-world problems. It comes from the Greek root word
techne, meaning “art, skill, or cunning of hand”.

On the same view, technology is defined as both a process and a product.

1. Technology as a process
a. It is the application of science
b. the practice, description and terminology of applied sciences
c. the intelligent organization and manipulation of materials for useful purposes
d. the means employed to provide for human needs and wants
e. focused on the inventing new or better tools and materials or new and better ways of doing
things.
f. a way of using findings of science to produce new things for a better way of living
g. search foe concrete solutions that work and give wanted results
h. it is characteristically calculative and imitative, tends to be dangerously manipulative

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

i. form of human cultural activity.

2. Technology as a product
a. A system of know-how, skills, techniques and processes
b. it is like a language, rituals, values, commerce and arts, it is intrinsic part of a cultural system
and it both shapes and reflects to the system values.
c. it is the product of the scientific concept
d. the complex combination of knowledge, materials and methods
e. material products of human making or fabrication
f. total societal enterprise.

Introduction to Science, Technology and Society

Let us take some very simplistic definitions on the basic concepts of STS in the class.

Science: Hi, I am science. I can investigate of the physical world and its nature including the
people and the stuff we make.

Technology: Hello, I am technology. I can make stuff. Including stuff used in the society, and in
the production and dissemination of science.

Society: Welcome to my world! Actually, I am the sum total of our interactions as humans,
including the interactions that we engage in to figure things out and to make things.

Based on the conversation of STS it is very clear that all of these are deeply interconnected. As
this class proceeds, you will begin to develop a better picture of the fundamental nature of this interaction.

In this module you will explore the interaction of science, technology and society, especially in
the recent past 20th and 21st centuries.

Science, Technology and Society (STS) is a relatively recent discipline, originating in the 60s and 70s,
following Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). STS was the result of a sociological turn in
science studies. STS simply stands for science, technology and society. It is an interdisciplinary field of
academic teaching and research, with elements of a social movement, having as its primary focus the
explication and analysis of science and technology as complex social constructs with attendant societal
influences entailing myriad epistemological, political, and ethical questions.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

STS makes the assumption that science and technology are essentially intertwined and that they
are each profoundly social and profoundly political. Basically, science and technology are both social and
political.

Being critical:

In this section, you will try to develop a critical stance towards science and
technology. This does not mean that you are going to cast them in a negative light,
or that you need to develop a dislike for them. Many of us have regarded for
science and technology.

What is critical stance?

A critical stance is the deliberate creation of distance between us and the object you study. In
order to be critical one must step back and ask broad questions.

1. Science claims to produce knowledge about the world. What is the nature of this knowledge? Is it
absolutely certain? Are there other kinds of knowledge?
2. Technology claims to improve our lives. Who are us? What does it mean to have a better life?
What is to be gained and what is to be lost?

Internal and External Perspectives of STS

An internal perspective starts with the principle and assumptions that scientists and engineers
themselves work with and then uses these to try to explain their activities. The development of an
internal perspective requires mastering the details of the science in question, takes years of hard work
to acquire and involves nonverbal assumptions and practices picked up in this process.

In the external perspective uses a different set of assumptions and attempts to analyze the context
in which experts live and work, as well as what they say. In this perspective you are interested in the
behaviors, goals, rhetoric etc. Also, you analyze the activities of technical experts without any appeal
to the special status of their expertise.

A “classical” view of science and technology

A typical, naïve view of science might be as follows:

▪ Science is a formal activity that creates knowledge by direct interaction with nature.
▪ Science has some kind of special method that allows different scientists to produce the same
kind of knowledge whatever their social and political context might be.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

▪ Scientists perform the same experiments in the same way, and agree upon and reject the same
hypotheses.
▪ Scientists come to consensus on the truths of the natural world.

Nature Science Truth

The classical view began to fall apart in the process of 20 th century investigations of scientific
activity.

▪ Philosophers were unable to formalize the “black box”. There appears to be no single
“scientific method”.
▪ When historians began to explore past scientific activities more closely, they found
there was no such thing as “pure science” removed from social and political
interactions and assumptions.
▪ When sociologists began to open the black box of contemporary scientific activity,
they found that the inside was thoroughly social and political.

Then, why do most people still hold the naïve view?

Norms and conformities that decide ethical beliefs had been concocted such a long time ago –
far enough to do most people mature thinking in the adjusting promulgations of those conservatives
considering about their own perception on virtues. Since the vast majority accept the possibility that
our faculties permit us to see object legitimately and with no interceding cycles and a few people
actually have confidence in realism.

Scientism

▪ Scientism goes back at least as far as the Scientific Revolution (c.1550-1700) and
originates in the claim that there is a sharp divide between “ facts” and “ values”.
▪ According to this view, when we do science, we set aside values and study only facts.
▪ The authority of science rests on its claim to be “value free” and hence “objective”.
▪ Scientism promotes the idea that all of society’s problem can be solved by experts who
are specially trained to unearth the facts of the matter.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

▪ Scientism, and the scientistic movement, make the claim that science is for the
benefit of all humanity

Technologically progressivism

▪ Technological progressivism has its roots in the European Enlightenment (c. 1700-
1800), when progress became a synonym for good and technology came to be seen as
a fundamental tool in progressive projects.

Good = Progress
Progress = Technology

▪ Technological progressivism assumes that technological change is inherently good and

sees it as self-propagating, moving by the internal constraints of technology itself. For
example, we view new technologies as progressive and older ones as old fashioned and
use this as a reason for changing technologies. We advocate the adoption of new
technologies with little reflection on their social impact or the broader question of
whether or not we want those impacts.

Technoscience

▪ In the classical view of the relationship between science and technology, science
leads the way by creating knowledge from nature and technology follows by
following this knowledge to creation of new things.
▪ In this case, you will investigate the complex interaction between science and
technology and the social environments in which they are produced, and which they,
in turn, produce.
▪ The sum total of scientific and technological activities as technoscience.

Technoscience is the combined total of scientific and technological ideas and activities in
their social, political and economic relaities. Nobody has any doubt that modern society is
technoscientific. Modern nation-states and the global economy,itself, could not function if they
were not based on technoscience. Thus, it is impossible to understand modern society without
studying the effects of technoscience.

What makes something social?

Society is the result of people, and institutions interacting with one another. It is a sort of
epiphenomena of these individuals. Society in turn shapes the people and institutions that form it. Most
people experience society as though it were external force acting upon them. The effects of society
operate through the vague mechanism of social norms. Norms tell us what we should and should not do,
what we should and should not think. But they are not rational- or rather, their rationality is not universal.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Norms produce the values that we use in interacting with others. They produce many of our core ideas-
such as ideas of the place of class, the role gender, meaning of the race, the function of justice, the
importance of objectivity, the criterion of truth, the significance of evidence, etc.

Technoscience is social

In the simplest sense, technoscience is the product of people, and people are social.

But it is possible to claim something much stronger than this:

▪ The social norms of technoscientists affects where they will look, what they will see and
what they will say about it. (Their worldview).
▪ Technoscientists’ norms are shaped by their discipline (Basic scientific concepts mean
different things in different fields).
▪ Professional norms affect the value that technoscienctists place on judgements.
▪ We find disagreement about what counts as science across time and from place to place.
▪ The development of technology is highly social, and depends on the manipulation of
social norms.

What makes something political?

▪ Politics is about control. It is the result of the distribution and utilization of power in our
societies.
▪ Political activity functions by employing various structures, resources and discourses in
order to consolidate and wield power. Political structures are formal and informal rules to
play. Formal rules are things like laws and procedures, informal rules are things like
social norms. There are many kinds of political resources: natural resources, money,
military force, knowledge,

access, charm, etc. Politics uses discourses to control what is sayable and what is not, to
control the way in which something is said and the framework of what is discussed.
Dominant discourses lend a kind of cultural authority.

And so, what do you think is the clear boundary between the social and the political aspects?
My supposition is that I think the boundary among social and the political perspectives is
the convictions of the individuals where political angle can't govern or direct what individuals may
accept. It is likewise called moral subjectivism which is expressed that we can't change or appoint
the individual convictions. In any case, at that point as I accumulate more data I discovered that
there is, clearly, no clear boundary between the social and the political.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Technoscience is political

▪ There are formal and informal rules that dictate who can make decisions about how to
proceed with technoscientific work.
▪ Different political structures create different opportunities, at the national level, the level
of institutions, and the level of individuals.
▪ Individual knowledge workers (technoscientists), various institutions, and different
professional groups all use economic and cultural resources to advance their aims.
▪ Discourses can be developed by appeal to both social and scientific norms. These
discourses can then be used as resources to advance technoscientific work. This is often
referred to as the production of social capital.

Exercise 1. Reflection Task 1 (Individual Task)

Name: Juliah M. Quiñonez Date Submitted: 9/25/20

Course/Section: 1CEB – BSCE Score:

Instructions: Answer the following questions comprehensively.

1. Trevor Pinch has said that STS shows that “politics, culture, economics, and society can be found
in the hardest of artifacts” (Science and Technology Studies: The Next Twenty” panel session,
Harvard University, April 7-9, 2011). Use the writings of two different STS authors to support
and/or refute this claim.

I considered the works of the two STS creators that STS shows; legislative issues,
culture, financial matters and society can be found in the hardest of ancient rarities. Science
and innovation should be founded on human need and qualities at an individual,
hierarchical and additionally cultural level, without human there is no science that can
make things into innovation.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

2. Using the concepts from Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, discuss the progression
of STS theories.

The movement of STS dependent on the idea of Kuhn, STS created by ideas, error
rationales, systems of getting strategies, methods, or information that make conceivable to
reveal marvels or test clarifications of them. As the years go by, humans are more curious
about things and therefore, the interest of human turned into the development of STS.

3. Discuss the role of quantification in science and technology from your own perspective.

The role of quantification of science and technology is that it spares time, it assists
making with detecting and dissecting huge informational collection and quickens broad
exploration, arranging, the executives and settling on choice. Technology and science are
major in present day contemporary society. The comprehension of how social, social and
material components impact the creation of new practices, better approaches for
understanding and new foundations is imperative in our comprehension of contemporary
postmodern culture. Investigations of technology and science gives understudies
understanding into how various cycles of information are started and advanced, and how
imaginative mechanical cycles are created, utilized and increment in significance.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Exercise 1. Reflection Task 1 (Individual Task)

Name: Juliah M. Quiñonez Date Submitted: 9/25/20

Course/Section: 1CEB – BSCE Score:

Instructions: On the space below you create a slogan that reflects your view of science and technology. It
should be specifically state whether you view science and technology as good or bad, both, or neutral.
You can use different art materials to make it visually appealing and impactful.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

Exercise 1. Reflection Task 1 (Individual Task)

Name: Juliah M. Quiñonez Date Submitted: 9/25/20

Course/Section: 1CEB – BSCE Score:

Instructions: On the space below, paste a magazine or newspaper cut out of any photograph that depicts
an issue or problem in science and technology. Then, answer the questions that follow.

1. What is the issue or problem depicted in the photograph?

Making Sense of the Adolescent Brain

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980
 Republic of the Philippines
Surigao del Sur State University
Tandag City, Surigao del Sur
Telefax No. 086-214-4221
www.sdssu.edu.ph

2. How does this particular issue or problem impact the well-being of humans today?

A period of noteworthy development and improvement inside the teenage brain is the
thing that the issue is about. The effect of it in prosperity of people is that teenagers have
dynamic, open, and hungry personalities. People are will in general be inventive, fearless and
trinkets. Through their interest they can make things or maybe they need to encounter a ton
of things that occurs in the earth, regardless of whether it may be positive or negative.

3. Why is it important for people to study and learn about STS as an academic field, especially in
addressing the issue or problem depicted in the photograph?
STS teaching tries to advance cross-disciplinary integration, civic engagement, and
basic reasoning. It gives understanding into comprehension and have information to
innovation just as the view purpose of the humanities. Considering STS clarifies on how
science make innovations that causes individual to comprehend what we are really going
after the general public. This causes us to more readily know and comprehend different
societies and social orders.

4. What was the key crisis that helped drive the development of the field Science and Technology in
Society? How did those crises change our understanding of science and technology? What impact
has this had on how science is practiced by scientists and perceived by non-scientists?
Making sense of the adolescent brain gives social changes, young people know their
personality which makes their selves occupied with working out who they truly are and
where they fit on the planet. They become free, capable, making new understanding, values
impact and sexual character. By at that point, as time passes by we gradually know our
motivation of living. These progressions can help keep youngsters beneficial and serious in
what they do.

GE-Science Technology & Society

Lsg1980