World Views & Human Values

Chapter 8

Introduction

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

First great influence of S&T 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 a clock, 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.

-to be continued

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 Darwin’s and Freud’s theory.5

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.

Technology and Science in the 19th Century

-> turning point Science based industries

Coal tar dye manufactureElectrical power generation

Birth of industrial research laboratoryTechnological application in

Germany

Technology and Science in the 20th Century

-> modernization of products Growth of industrial research

laboratoryGerman coal tar dyeBell telephone laboratory

Technology partially dependent on scienceGenetics, physics and chemistry

20th Century Dev’ts in Science

19th and 20th Century physics adversities

Maxwell’s eletromagnetic theory –interaction between particles

E.g. billiard ball or ball bearing Einstein’s theory of special

relativity – relation between time and space continuum

E.g. interconvertibility of matter & energy as represented at E=mc2

Werner Heisenberg

– indeterminacy of position and momentum of single subatomic particle.

Abstract Science – Rapid Technological Change and Contemporary World Views 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 consumptional 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

A new profusion of material goods by devaluing acetic denial and celebrating a fluent consumption.

Beliefs and Expectations, Attitudes 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.

S&T have engendered disturbing new feelings in modern Western culture.

Juncel Reyes

Human Values

Purely matters of individual choice.

Modern Western valuesKnowledgeTechnologyScienceProgressEfficiency

Four Cornerstone Mutually Reinforcing Values in Modern Western CultureEmpirical KnowledgeMaterial TechnologySystematic ScienceSocietal 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, Env’t, Justice & Authority The important post-World War II

values of env’tal integrity and peace became more fervently and widely held in 20th 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 dev’t 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 dev’ts 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.

Idea and Ideals

What is idea?

What is ideal?

Idea of Progress

• Continued improvement in knowledge of the environment of man in the natural sciences, and more recently in technology derived from them.

• Technological improvement will lead in the future to improvement in the material conditions of life.

• Progress in both of these senses.

Example:

Western ideas of progress for Sydney Pollard

Societal Progress

16th century

Growing awareness of a number of impressive recent inventions and advances in technology and science

>wedding of gunpowder and improved cannon

>the invention of printing with movable type

>improved sails

18th century

General improvement in social and political life.

20th century

Wedding of science and technology in the field of weaponry

The stage was set for the emergence of s new kind of technical professional:the indusrial or

efficiency engineer.

The aim of such engineers was to determine how to train workers and organize and orchestrate the

operations of peolple,technics,materials and capital as to maximize industrial output in relation

to the resources employed in producing it.

The modern Sociotechnical Stage

Modern Institutional Stage

Efficiency enhancement was on the verge of spreading beyond the confines of the factory and

embarking on a long march through the full spectrum of

large scale institutions of 20th century industrial society.

Contemporary Stage of everyday life

Everyday life begin more complex,atleast for individyal in urban and metropolitan areas.

Activities that consume considerable amounts of time or labor where natural targets for efficiency

enhancement.

Efficiency began its career as in implicit “natural”human goal,became an expilicit,sytematically

pursued value of modern engineering.

Novelty as as a cultural value is a also a unique to industrial society.

Cosmopolitanness(in experience,taste and outlook)

Novelty,Self Realization,Cosmopolitanness