 Hello everyone. Today I'll be talking about the interaction of science, technology and society through time. The interaction of the three, science, technology and society is actually very complex because it depends on a lot of factors. Of course there are elements of science, technology and also more complicated and extreme elements as far as society is concerned. In this context, we will be using science as, for instance, a way of knowing in addition to traditional ways of seeking knowledge. Science as a structured approach in our search for answers and explanations of nature, physical phenomena. With, of course, the utmost objective of arriving at an understanding. On the other hand, for technology, we will be referring to our ability to control, alter, modify or tamper with nature in order to suit a certain practical applications that is hopefully beneficial to society. And for society, of course, we are referring to the human society composed of people with certain values, morals, prejudices, problems and priorities. And at the end of the presentation, you shall see that the society, in addition to being the creator of science and technology, the society is also the end user and the society also poses the greatest constraint as far as science and technology interaction with society is concerned. Science interaction varies with several factors. It varies with geography and ethnology, characteristic of the society, for instance, the interaction of the three, the interaction of STS would be different in a society that is, for instance, highly religious. It would be different also for societies that are highly industrialized. It would be different for societies, for instance, in an Amish society, the interaction of science, technology and society is also glaringly different. It also varies with time because throughout our history things change, factors change, forces change. So I will be giving three case studies in this presentation to sample different time domains starting from the early days of science and then followed by the early days of technology and on to the modern times. And also the interaction of the three varies with the state of global affairs because the state of global affairs sometimes dictates the priorities of society and the priorities of society have a very huge impact as far as the appropriation of science and technology is concerned. So for the first case, let's talk about what I call the birth pains. The birth pains refer to the early days of science which we refer to as Aristotelian philosophy. Admittedly, there was no technology during this time yet and characteristic of Aristotelian philosophy if you notice from your readings is that it's a very simple science. One virtue of a scientific theory is simplicity as you know and Aristotelian science is so simple. Aristotelian chemistry enumerates only four elements that of earth, water, air and fire. And that's so simple. Maybe that's the reason why or part of the reasons why it stood for many centuries. And of course when I am talking about society during this time the major forces of society in this era is of course the church and of course another personality named Thalmas Aquinas. So we'll talk about the outcomes of the interaction of the three. As you know and up to this time there is a constant conflict between science and religion or science and the church. Well historically this conflict goes as early as when Thalmas Aquinas made the synthesis regarding Aristotelian philosophy and the teachings of the church as being in consonance with each other. So Aquinas actually laid the foundation of thinking that when you attack Aristotelian philosophy you also attack the teachings of the church. So for a very long time nobody dared question Aristotelian philosophy. Of course there was no technology yet that can be used to verify or falsify his theories during these times. And so what are the outcomes of this interaction of science and society during this time? The glaring outcome would be actually the stagnated growth of science. It took almost 2,000 years before science can develop at least in initial baby steps up to the state that it is now today. So this interaction during these times of Aristotelian philosophy and the great power that is the church would of course echo up to the modern times and it also laid the foundation of a lot of conflicts throughout the history of science and society. As a second case let's take the case of the industrial revolution or we refer to it as the first industrial revolution according to science historians. The one that happened in England or in Great Britain. So the science that is at play here includes power generation, the knowledge of generating new sources of power as a revolution or as a change or as a departure from the use of beasts or burden like the horses as the main or the primary source of power. It is also during this time that we are learning we were learning how to use new materials how to understand the properties of these new materials like steel. Also the English science as you know during these times we already have a knowledge of mechanics brought to us by Isaac Newton and the science of economics mainly by Adam Smith in his Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations. The technology involved during the first industrial revolution are machines. Machines that we used in mining in manufacturing. Manufacturing refers to a replacement of the putting out method the manual labor based manufacturing to a machine based manufacturing. We also use machines for construction transportation particularly in the development of the railway systems and modern communication. Of course the society that we are referring to in this particular era would be the English society its economy, its status as a superpower in the world and its art and culture. So what are the outcomes of this? Of this interaction but before we talk about the outcomes of interaction maybe it would be beneficial also for us to understand why the first industrial revolution happened in England. The short story is it happened in England and not anywhere else because of enabling environment it is a collaboration of fortunate circumstances as far as power generation is concerned England is blessed with abundance of coal because coal would soon replace the animals or the horse as the main source of power. Coal would usher in the technology of the steam engines. So resources and also capital. The English capital is enormous as you know you have lots of nobilities in there also the English colonies all over the world from Africa to Asia to South America and so in addition to their own natural resources they can also simply source resources from their colonies from as far as Canada and Australia. And finally of course all these science and technology are born out of necessity. The English society had realized that the manual form of production cannot cope up with the demands. So it started with the clothing industry actually they have lots of cotton coming from India but they cannot cope up as far as converting this cotton into usable pieces of clothing. So the outcome of this case study the first industrial revolution will also echo until our times today. It put England as the major power militarily, economically and so on during this time. Interaction also affected not only England's economy but its art and culture. This is the rise of romanticism and of course this is also the starting point for a problem that would occupy us until today it's a global concern this is the problem of pollution. When we started burning fossil fuels during the first industrial revolution the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere also began to shoot up. And as a third case study I will take you to the modern times the science that is involved here is the science of genetics our understanding of the genes the code that dictates everything from seeds up to the adult stages of plants and animals. The technology I will be referring to specifically for genetically modified organisms as food source. And of course what are the societal concerns as far as GMOs are involved. Well the two major concerns would be food security and health concerns or health risks. As far as food security is concerned, some experts claim that GMOs is one of the possible answers towards addressing the stability or the security as far as food supply is concerned. Why? Because GMOs GMOs are genetically modified plants as food source I'm not talking about the animals yet which are pest resistant. Okay? In other words we can minimize wastage during the growth process and this results into an increased yield during harvest time. So aside from being resistant to pests also genetically modified plants like what they did in China to be able to grow certain species of rice in salt water or in brackish water. And that's a very important step because particularly in our country we have limited times as far as rice production is concerned or rice culture is concerned because we are heavily dependent on rains but we do have a lot of salt water we are surrounded by salt water so if we can adapt this technology or if we can replicate this technology this rice the breed of rice that survives in salt water then it would mean a lot as far as food security in our country is concerned. The second societal concern with GMOs would be health risks. Some people are claiming that GMOs are hazardous to your health that why would I eat a GMO corn for instance when even the insects would refuse to eat it something like that. Of course these concerns emanate from lack of science or lack of understanding of science or lack of studies that would point towards whether or not GMO food really pose health risks to people. So and the other concern as far as society is concerned also in these GMOs would be the proprietary ownership of the genetically modified plant because farmers are not allowed to plant their own seeds after a particular harvest they are required to buy a new batch from the owners of the technology. So there is also this concern and particularly this concern is among our farmers. So what are the outcomes? Depends on the society. For science-based society of course for example the American society allow the consumption of GMOs with certain requirements according to their law such as the full disclosure that a certain food product contains GMOs. Russia doesn't allow GMOs to be part of the food supply for its population. In the Philippines of course well we all know what happened to the BT-Talong. It has been discontinued. So as you can see the response of society to science and to the emerging technology varies not only according to the natural characteristic of that society its values its morals but also it varies with time. Today is the time where in scientific results can easily be accessed by people through social media of course mostly in laymanized form. So that is both a good news and a bad news because more and more people would be educated as far as scientific results are concerned because the case is we usually are aware only of the technology but we don't care about the science behind the technology. In other words we are consumers we are not producers we are not producers of technologies we simply appropriate this technology for our benefits. So as a summary I would like to compare the interaction of science technology and society to this image here. The image of a man driving and automobile depending on the society that you are in I would like science to be the brain of this driver so the brain is science the body of the driver is society and the automobile is the technology and this analogy I believe is fairly true for the industrialized society the science based society because in other regions of the world in other society the brain is the society it's the society that dictates which science and which technology to appropriate it's the society that dictates how we utilize good or for bad and these decisions of course are based on the priorities of the society as I said at the start of this lecture the natural characteristic of the society it's geography it's priorities, it's problems it's fears and everything about it will ultimately become the constraints to science and technology I don't remember the author who said this but he said that science is a differential equation and religion or society in general is the boundary condition in other words science can give us a lot of things an infinite number of things good or bad that's what a differential equation is it has infinite number of solutions but to arrive at a particular solution you need boundary conditions and these boundary conditions are supplied by society so in other words science has to satisfy the needs the priorities the fears and everything of the society in order to yield certain results that are useful also for the society