Thematic Project
Origins and Significance of Technoscience:
On relations among science, technology and society
ABSTRACT
The central objective
of the project, to be carried out during the period 2008–2111,
is to investigate critically the roles played by ethical and social
values, whether held by individuals or embodied in institutions, in
current scientific and technological practices. This will encompass
two sets of investigations. The first concerns the contemporary significance
of technoscience, including the impact of its research and development
on the processes and institutionalization of scientific research;
the second, central aspects of the historical development of technoscience.
Among the issues investigated in the first set will be: (a) the changes
that have occurred in recent decades in the modes of social production
of technoscientific knowledge with the shift towards greater private
(and less public) financing of research, (b) the way in which these
changes have affected the status of the values of objectivity, neutrality
and autonomy that have traditionally been adhered to by the scientific
community, (c) the function of intellectual property rights in this
process; (d) some problems of contemporary technoscience: theoretical
ones (e.g., the distinction between artificial and natural, biological
identity) and practical (e.g., ethical criticisms, alternative proposals);
and (e) the relevance of alternatives to technoscientific practices
(e.g., agroecology) – and the roles of bioethics and approaches
influenced by the ‘precautionary principle’ – to
the appraisal of the significance of these changes.
Investigations of the second set will include: (a) the idea of ‘the
control of nature’ and the values of technological progress
and its impact on shaping modern scientific research, (b) relations
between science and technology in modernity, especially the role played
by machines and mechanistic ideas. Both groups of investigations will
be strengthened by utilizing a model of scientific activity, that
has been widely discussed and endorsed among the members of the research
team, that identifies mutually reinforcing relations that exist between
adopting particular methodological approaches in research and holding
particular ethical and social values.
The second objective of the project, no less important, is practical:
to plan a series of events and publications, bringing together for
constructive and rational discussion Brazilian (and other) scientists,
philosophers and social scientists of divergent methodological approaches
and ethical outlooks, in order to ensure that a wide range of viewpoints
are considered in the investigations, and to explore how the results
obtained may impact positively on scientific research, the teaching
of science, and higher education.
Researchers
