Republic of the Philippines

North Eastern Mindanao State University

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

MODULE 1
Lesson 1

GE- STS

A Course Pack in
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Week 2

I. Preliminaries
COURSE NAME : Science, Technology, and Society

COURSE CREDITS : 3 units

COURSE DESCRIPTION The course deals with interactions

:
between science and technology and social, cultural, political, and economic
contexts that shape and are shaped by them. (CMO No. 20, series of 2013). This
interdisciplinary course engages students to confront the realities brought about by
science and technology in society. Such realities pervade the personal, the public,
and the global aspects of our living and are integral to human development.
Scientific knowledge and technological development happen in the context of
society with all its socio-political, cultural, economic, and philosophical
underpinnings at play. This course seeks to instill reflective knowledge in the
students that they are able to live the good life and display ethical decision making
in the face of scientific and technological advancement.

PRE-REQUISITE/CO-REQUISITES : NONE
COURSE OUTCOMES

In the context of the specific field of specialization, the students will be able to:

Design and evaluate solutions for complex

LO1 computing problems, and design and evaluate
systems, components or processes that meet
specified needs with appropriate consideration
for public health and safety, cultural, societal
and environmental considerations.
An ability to recognize the legal, social, ethical
LO2 and professional issues involved in the
utilization of computer technology and be
guided by the adoption of appropriate
professional, ethical and legal practices.

II. Course Overview:

This course pack is specifically produced for the course GE- STS (Science, Technology, and Society)
intended for you, a student of NEMSU ______ campus enrolled in the Bachelor of
______________ program. This is the first module for the prelim period. Brief introduction to
Science, Technology and Society are some of the essentials included in this course pack.

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Considering the description of the course, this course pack tries to incorporate discussions on the
importance of studying Science, Technology, and Society.

III. General Instruction

This module begins with an Introduction that encapsulates the topics or lessons that
students of this course have to learn, understand and value. This Module is composed of five parts
of which the first part pertains to the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs). The next part is the
course direction where students are directed to focus their respective course works. The nitty-
gritties of the course are also placed in the lecture and discussion which is the third part of the
module. Each student taking this course is also required to answer all the assessment tasks (refer
to tasks and completion time matrix below) to measure whether the student have learned from
the lessons. For the students to grasp all the essentials of the topics covered in a particular lesson,
links, URLs, videos (in USB stick) and other supplementary reading materials are provided in this
module.

IV. Academic Integrity

Academic honesty is required of all students. Plagiarism--to take and pass off as one’s own
work, the work or ideas of another--is a form of academic dishonesty. Penalties may be assigned
for any form of academic dishonesty” (See Student Handbook/College Manual). Sanctions for
breaches in academic integrity may include receiving a grade of a “Failed” on a test or assignment.
In addition, the Director of Student Affairs may impose further administrative sanctions.
V. 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.

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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.

_________1. Science and Technology are not crucial factors in nation building.

_________2. Science required invention to devise techniques, abstractions, apparatuses, and

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

_________3. Science and technology can be dangerous.

_________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.

_________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?

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2. What is Science, Technology and society, and why should people want to study and learn
it?
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3. On the box provided draw your understanding how science and technology related to each
other that give impact to the society.

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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 Heilbronn (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.

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.

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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
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.

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 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.
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

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 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.
 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?

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 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.
 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 realities. Nobody has any doubt that
modern society is technoscientific. Modern nation-states and the global economy, itself,

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 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. 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 techno scientists affects where they will look, what they will see
and what they will say about it. (Their worldview).
 Techno scientists’ norms are shaped by their discipline (Basic scientific concepts
mean different things in different fields).
 Professional norms affect the value that techno scientists 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.

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And so, what do you think is the clear boundary between the social and the political aspects?

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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 (techno scientists), 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.

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 Exercise 1. Reflection Task 1 (Individual Task)

Name: __________________________________ Date Submitted: __________

Course/Section: __________________________ Score: _________________

Instructions: On the space below, paste 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?

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

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3. Why is it important for people to study and learn about STS in the academic field, especially in
addressing the issue or problem depicted in the photograph?
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4. What was the key crisis that helped drive the development of 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?

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 Exercise 2. Reflection Task 2 (Individual Task)

Name: __________________________________ Date Submitted: __________

Course/Section: __________________________ 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
relevant.

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