Worldviews and Human Values regarding Science and Technology

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 Rise
First great influence of science and technology 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 aclock; 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.
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
Darwins and Freuds theory.
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.
Science and Technology in the 19thCentury

Science based industries

Electrical power generation
Birth of industrial research laboratory
Technological application in Germany

Science and Technology in the20th Century - modernization of products

Growth of industrial research laboratory

German coal tar dye
Bell telephone laboratory
Technology partially dependent on science
Genetics, physics and chemistry

20th Century Developments in Science

19th and 20th Century physics adversities
Maxwells electromagnetic theory interaction between particles
E.g. billiard ball or ball bearing
Einsteins theory of special relativity relation between time and space
continuum
E.g. interconvertibility of matter & energy as represented at E=mc2

Abstract Science Rapid Technological Change and Contemporary World

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 consumption 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.
New profusion of material goods by devaluing acetic denial and celebrating a
fluent consumption.
Beliefs, Expectations 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.
Science and technology have engendered disturbing new feelings in modern
Western culture.

Human Values
Purely matters of individual choice.
Modern Western values

Knowledge
Technology
Science
Progress
Efficiency

Four Cornerstones Mutually Reinforcing Values in Modern Western Culture

Empirical Knowledge
Material Technology
Systematic Science
Societal 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, Environment, Justice and Authority

The important post-World War II values of environmental integrity and
peace became more fervently and widely held in 20 th 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
development 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 development 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.