Today science and technology are developed almost at all times of our lives and at UTEC we know the importance of this. The presence science and technology has been part of human development in such a way that sometimes we no longer realize the magnitude of participation they have.
The importance of science and technology increases as the world enters what has been called "the knowledge society", that is, societies in which the importance of knowledge grows constantly due to its incorporation to the production and service processes, due to their relevance in the exercise of popular participation in government processes and also for the proper conduct of personal and family life.
The enormous cognitive capacity of humanity must exert an increasing influence on the lives of societies and individuals. That is why reflection on science is a subject to which modern thought, especially that of the second half of this century, has paid special attention.
This essay is addressed to people who study science (natural, social, technical or other) or are interested in them in order to present them with a certain image of science as it emerges from contemporary debate. Teaching and learning science requires a certain "epistemological vigilance" that prevents our epistemic acts from being driven by approaches that simplify and distort the real nature of scientific praxis.
The thesis that animates my presentation is this: we not only need to know about science but also about science.In my opinion, the relevance of this approach extends to people who are mainly engaged in technological activity. Science and modern technology are inseparable; consequently they have become almost indistinguishable activities, it is difficult to know what the people who work in a research-development laboratory of a large industry do: do they do science or do they do technology? Maybe they just do "technoscience", an activity where old limits are blurred.
The Domain of Science and Technology
With the help of technological advances, modern technology has had an extraordinary impact on social life in all its fields: economic, political, military and cultural. The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, and the Industrial Revolution that began in the 18th century were relatively independent processes. The transition we are living from the 20th century to the 21st century is a period deeply marked by scientific and technological development.
The first thing a student who enters studies in the fields of science and technology must know is that he or she is immersed in one of the territories that largely define world power.
The image of science as an activity of isolated individuals who eagerly seek the truth with no other than cognitive interests, sometimes conveyed by textbooks, does not coincide at all with the social reality of contemporary science. To a large extent, the scientific and technological development of this century has been driven by interests linked to the desire for world hegemony of the great powers and to the demands of industrial development and the consumption patterns that are produced and spread from the societies that have marked the advanced in modernization processes.
For this reason, States and large transnational companies are among the major players in contemporary science and technology.
During the 19th century, the so-called academic science emerged, linked to the professionalization of scientific work and the consolidation of scientific research as a relevant function of the university (the paradigm is the German University of the early 19th century). In this process, the image of science as a disinterested search for truth to which I alluded earlier also crystallized.
But the science - society relationship has undergone abrupt changes in this century. However, until just two decades ago, an approach that today is considered unsatisfactory prevailed. The idea was that it was necessary to invest heavily in basic research, which in the long run would generate technological innovation and this would favor social development. Following this idea, in the period between World War II and the 1970s, a lot of money was invested for this purpose. The economic crisis experienced by world capitalism forced us to reconsider this approach and move to a much more directist model of technical scientific development. This is what is typical of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution characterized by the leadership of microelectronics and the leading role of Biotechnology,
Today there is little scientific practice away from application interests for economic or other purposes, which has implications for scientific activity, the lives of scientists, the institutions that host them and their relationships with society.
But that extraordinary power is very poorly distributed worldwide and the vast majority of scientific and technological capacity is concentrated in a small group of industrialized countries. The scientific and industrial revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries unfolded in Europe associated with the economic, political and cultural change experienced by those societies from the Renaissance. During the next two centuries, some countries were able to actively join these processes, including the United States, Russia, and Japan.
Most of the world, however, barely participates in the definition and execution of technical scientific courses. Latin America, for example, has very little participation in science and technology: just over 2% of the scientists and engineers who carry out research and development tasks on the planet and just over 1% of the resources invested for that purpose.
Especially since the 1960s, it has been insisted that the exit from underdevelopment forces the creation of capacities in science and technology. But the speeches have overwhelmed the practical realizations.
Within this panorama, Cuba's position is very unique: in relation to its economic resources, the country has made an extraordinary effort in science and technology, which expresses a very defined political will. The ambition to satisfy basic human needs (in health, food, etc.) and the need to articulate the Cuban economy to the international economy in a beneficial way, are the motives for Cuban scientific and technological development that rests on an educational effort sustained by almost 40 years.
While most of the Third World countries have renounced their leadership in the scientific field, Cuba insists on developing an endogenous scientific and technological base. The problem of the science-technology-development relationship is a fundamental issue for our country. Within this ambitious purpose, the social responsibility of the scientific and technical intelligentsia is essential.
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