Module 1

STS
COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the module, you should
be able to:
1. demonstrate content knowledge in
Science, Technology, and Society
(STS) and its application across
curriculum teaching areas in the
field of education;
2. explain how science and
technology affect society and the
environment and its role in nation-
building;
3. examine shared concerns that
make up the good life in order to
come up with innovative and
creative solutions to contemporary
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, issues guided by ethical standards;
AND SOCIETY and
4. design a lesson plan using the STS
Approach as a feedback in
teaching and learning practices in
your field of specialization.
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means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise of any part of this document, without the prior written permission of SLU, is strictly prohibited.
COURSE INTRODUCTION
This course in an integration course that captures the holistic view of how science,
technology, and society interact and affect each other. This interdisciplinary course
engages the students to confront the realities brought about by science and technology in
society. Such realities pervade the personal, the public, and the global aspects of our living
and are integral to human development. The main objective of science education in all
levels is to develop scientifically literate individuals who are capable to make decisions
affecting not only themselves but also others. Scientific knowledge and technological
development happen in the context of society with all its socio-political, cultural, economic,
and philosophical underpinnings at play. This course seeks to instill reflective knowledge in
the students that they are able to live the good life and display ethical decision making in
the face of scientific and technological advancement.
Dorothy D. Silva, PhD
Dear Future Educators,
You are witnessing the challenges the academic world is experiencing because of
the pandemic. The difficulty of delivering the teaching and learning process, it should not
prevent you to give the needed quality education to your students. Accepting this
challenge with an open heart and mind is the value of a true Louisian.
This course will help you enhance your content and pedagogical knowledge in
teaching using the STS Approach. Integrating the topics in the everyday undertaking of your
students will prove important in helping them understand the topics.
Let us explore the exciting world of STS.
DISCLAIMER
This module is attributed to the references listed after each topic. All the illustrations
and pictures are taken from the references cited so as to be in consonance with the
discussions. Only portions of the materials are taken for educational purposes. This learning
packet is to be used only in the short term of the academic year 2020-2021. No part of the
module will be distributed outside the class and for its intention of use.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MODULE 1 GENERAL CONCEPTS AND STS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Engage 5
Explore 7
Explain 17
Elaborate 35
Evaluate 36
References 37
MODULE 2 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPMENT
Engage 38
Explore 44
Explain 69
Elaborate 80
Evaluate 80
References 81
MODULE 3 SPECIFIC ISSUES IN STS
Engage 82
Explore 107
Explain 116
Elaborate 132
Evaluate 155
References 156
MODULE 4 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Engage 160
Explore 162
Explain 170
Elaborate 180
Evaluate 188
References 188
MODULE 4* THE STS APPROACH IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
Engage 189
Explore 190
Explain 198
Elaborate 199
Evaluate 200
References 201
Property of and for the exclusive use of SLU. Reproduction, storing in a retrieval system, distributing, uploading or posting online, or transmitting in any form or by any4
MODULE 1: GENERAL CONCEPTS AND STS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
Learning Outcomes
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• discuss the interactions between science, technology, and society
throughout history; and
• identify the paradigm shifts in history.
Introduction
Science and technology have been instrumental in a nation’s development. The
inventions and discoveries of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
professionals are making our lives better and more comfortable; but we should also consider
their impact on our environment. Are the advantages of these discoveries and inventions
outweigh the disadvantages they bring?
This module begins with an overview of the general concepts of STS. It also includes
the presentation of the STS historical developments to better understand how scientific and
technological advancement continuously play an important role in our lives.
The following awesome facts about particle accelerators are taken from the article
of McFadden (2020):
1. Your old CRT TV had a kind of particle accelerator.

If you are old enough to remember the days before flat screen LCD and Plasma TVs, you
will have, at one point, been the proud owner of your own small particle accelerator.
CRT, standing for Cathode Ray Tube, used magnets to accelerate electrons in a vacuum
into a screen of phosphor to produce light.
Each little collision produced a lighted spot, or pixel, that when combined, would
produce an image.
2. Particle accelerators have many important uses.

Particle accelerators are not just used for home entertainment. They have many
important applications around the world.
For example, particle accelerators are used in
medicine. They are used to help speed up
diagnoses for myriad diseases around the word. In
industry, they are used for making things like
computer chips and shrink wrap.
They are also used for inspecting cargo at border

checks as well as stockpile stewardship and https://inteng-
material characterization. storage.s3.amazonaws.com/img/iea/Ql
O7XvkeG7/sizes/particle-
accelerator_resize_md.jpg
3. Particle accelerators are helping us understand
the universe around us.
One of the most important uses for particle accelerators is in the field of particle
physics, aka high-energy physics. Using them, particle physicists are learning about the
nature of many fundamental particles and physical laws that govern everything from
matter to energy to time and space
4. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator.

The enormous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest and most powerful particle
accelerator. It was first opened for business, well research, in September 2008, and
consists of a 27-km long ring of superconducting magnets with acceleration points
around its course.
This massive structure is used to fire subatomic particles beams at close to the speed of
light into one another to see what happens. The LHC has helped make many amazing
breakthroughs in particle physics, including the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
5. Particle accelerators come into two main types.

Particle accelerators come in a variety of shapes and sizes. But they tend to fall into one
of two main categories; linear accelerators and circular ones.
The former move particles in a straight line, hence the name. The latter, like the LHC at
CERN or the Tevatron in the U.S., move them around a circular course.
6. Particle accelerators have been used to discover various basic elements.

Particle accelerators have been used to make some major discoveries in other fields of
science beyond particle physics. For example, early machines, like Lawrence's 60-inch
Cyclotron, were used to discover plutonium, neptunium, and many other transuranic
elements and isophotes.
For this work, Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan were awarded the prestigious Nobel
Prize in chemistry in 1951.
7. One of the world’s longets buildings was purpose-built for a particle accelerator.
The Linear Accelerator building at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in San Francisco
is one of the longest buildings in the world. The building is around 2 miles (3.2 km) long,
and it houses a very powerful linear particle accelerator.
8. The highest ever man-made temperature was recorded inside a particle accelerator.
A blistering temperature of around 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius was recorded in 2012 at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavey Ion Collider. This not only won them
a Guinness World Record but also enabled them to produce a small amount of quark-
gluon plasma (a state of matter thought to have dominated the early universe).
9. Ferrets were once used to clean accelerator parts.

Between 1971 and 1999, ferrets were actually used to clean certain parts of the particle
accelerator at Fermilab's Meson Laboratory. Since ferrets love to burrow and clamber
through tunnels, they were deemed the perfect solution for keeping the hundreds of
meters of vacuum piping clear of debris prior to firing particles down them.
Each ferret, like Felicia the Ferret, would pull a rag dipped in solution through the long
sections of pipe. Ferrets have since been replaced with specially designed robots.
STS Across History

A. Prehistoric Time
1. Paleolithic Age (3000 – 1000 BC)
• The Stone Age (known to scholars as the Paleolithic era) in human prehistory is the
name given to the period between about 2.5 million and 20,000 years ago. It
begins with the earliest human-like behaviors of crude stone tool manufacture and
ends with fully modern human hunting and gathering societies.
• The Paleolithic is the earliest archaeology; anything older is paleontology.
Lower Paleolithic (sometimes called the Early Stone Age)

• The Lower Paleolithic lasted between 2.5 million-200,000 years ago (or at least
according to one permutation), and it was when the Hominin ancestors of human
beings, including Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus and Homo
ergaster, roamed most of the earth and began making the first stone tools.
Middle Paleolithic (Middle Stone Age)

• The Middle Paleolithic (ca 200,000 to 45,000 years ago) witnessed the evolution of
Neanderthals and the first anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens, and some
of the first glimmers of modern behaviors: sophisticated stone tools, caring for the
elderly, hunting and gathering and some amount of symbolic or ritual behavior.
Upper Paleolithic (Late Stone Age)
• By the Upper Paleolithic (45,000-10,000 years ago), the Neanderthals were in
decline, and by 30,000 BP, they were gone. Modern humans spread all over the
planet. The LSA is characterized by fully modern behaviors such as cave art,
hunting, and making a wide range of tools in stone, bone, ivory and antler.
2. Neolithic Age (9000 – 5000 BC)

• There is an archaeological system that divides the span of mankind into three eras,
the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. The Neolithic Period is part of the late
Stone Age. It preceded the Bronze Age and followed the Paleolithic period, which
was also in the Stone Age.
• During the Neolithic Period people used stone tools, domesticated plants, and
animals, and lived in villages.
• There are 2 elements that made the start of science and technology integration.
o Discovery and invention
Discovery
• Recognition and careful observation of new natural objects and phenomena
• A subjective event until it leads to some practical application shared by others directly
or indirectly (Forbes)
Invention
• A mental process wherein man’s various discoveries and observation, combined and
guided by experience, lead man to make some other new ways (operations) or
means (tools) of obtaining things useful or profitable.
Tools
• Stones
• Fire
o Percussion method (pyrites and lumps of flint rubbed against each other,
producing sparks that ignited flammable materials like dried leaves and twigs)
• Prehistoric cooking
o Metallurgy, pottery, brewing, and steaming
3. Bronze Age (3500 – 2500 BC)

• People in the Middle East started smelting copper and making bronze tools and
weapons.
B. Ancient Times
1. Sumerian Civilization
• The cradle of the world’s earliest known civilization, Sumer, is found in the Southern
Mesopotamia (now, Southern Iraq).
• The following are the contributions of the Sumerians:
o Nuclear families became communities/tribes which occupied certain
territories. These territories became cities. In turn, these cities developed
into independent city-states. Each city-state was surrounded by a wall,
with villages settled just outside and distinguished by the worship of local
deities.
o Invented the Cuneiform, which is used in pictographic tablets, is considered
as the first writing system. These Sumerian clay tablets contain meticulous
record of rulers down to farmers, and ranchers.
o Their homes were made from mud bricks or bundled marsh reeds. The
buildings are noted for their arched doorways and flat roofs.
o Sculpture was popular during this time.
o They built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
o They had a system of medicine based in magic and herbalism; had
advanced knowledge of anatomy. They used surgical instruments (as
found in archeological sites).
o Potter’s wheel (used to shape clay)
o One of their great advances was in the area of hydraulic engineering.
▪ Created a system of ditches to control flooding
▪ Inventors of irrigation
▪ Canals were maintained for farming and home use
o Standardized measurement
▪ Time keeping (sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour)
2. Babylonian Civilization
• Babylonia (present day Iraq) was the region bordering the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers. It was surrounded by Assyria in the North, the Arabian desert in the South
and West, and the Persian Gulf in the Southern part.
• Hammurabi, the Amorite King
o Babylonia became a major military power
o Turned Babylon into a rich, powerful, and influential city
o Code of Hammurabi – earliest and most complete written legal codes
• Arts and architecture flourished
o Hanging Gardens of Babylon
o Ishtar Gate
• Contributions:
o Elaborate irrigation system
o System of bookkeeping using the double entry accounting (debit and
credit)
o Sexagesimal system of counting (1 minute = 60 seconds, 1 hour=60 minutes)
o Mathematics – fractions, squares, and square roots
o Astronomy – accurate predictions of solar and lunar eclipses
3. Egyptian Civilization
• Egypt is found in the North-eastern part of the African continent
• Nile River – provides Egypt with a fertile delta
a. Predynastic period
• Skilled craftsmen
• Used tools, weapons, and utensils made of metal (copper and bronze)
• Pottery and weaving
• System of writing
o Hieroglyphics – papyrus reeds
o Rosetta Stone – hieroglyphics, demotic, and ancient Greek
• Astronomy
o Calendar
▪ appearance and disappearance of Sirius (rise and fall of the
Nile River)
▪ phases of the moon = 29 and ½ days
▪ 24 hours = 12 days and 12 nights
b. Archaic period
• Farms were divided into small rectangular plots by ditches and irrigation
canals (can be opened or close)
• Made boundary lines using geometry (surveyors)
• Wheat and barley were made into bread and beer
• Earthenware – pots, stoves, cups, bowls, and storage jars
• Drinking cups made of bronze, silver, or gold
• Food was broiled, baked, stewed, fried, grilled, or roasted
• Used traps, hook-and-line, nets, and spears to catch fish
• Extracted oil from linseed, saffron, and sesame
• Domesticated ducks, geese, pigeons, pigs, goats, cattle, and sheep
• Used wigs (straight, plaited, or curled)
• Used henna (vegetable dye), razors and tweezers
• Used soap, cleansing creams, perfume, and deodorants
• Used make-up, mirrors (copper or silver), jewelry, and sandals
• Used gaming boards made of gold, ivory, or eboy
c. Old kingdom
• Golden age of history and culture, time of prosperity and innovation
• Made the great pyramids at Gizah
• Considered as the age of pyramids
• Perfected the mummification process
d. Middle kingdom
• Established trade links
• Military technology and system
o Horse-driven chariots
e. New kingdom
• Established international trade relations
o Earthenware, pottery, colored glasses, fine linens, carved ivory, pearl
inlays, perfumed oils, ointments, cosmetics, and jewely
o Used boats for transportation
f. Late period
4. Cretan Civilization
• Also called Minoan civilization
• Became famous because of the Greek legend King Minos
• Bronze Age Culture – grandest site of Bronze age palaces
• Carved statues, ceramics, frescoes, jewels, and inscriptions
• Built intricate chapels, storerooms, workshops, courtyard, public halls, and religious
shrines
• Developed a drainage system
• System of writing – Linear A
5. Greek Civilization
• Iron Age prospered
• Became the foundation of western civilization
• Gave the greatest scientific heritage
• Philosophy
o Thales of Miletus – father of philosophy
▪ Nature was composed of or convertible into water
o Anaxagoras
▪ Matter is composed of countless tiny particles
o Empedocles
▪ Nature was a mixture of four elements: earth, fire, air, and water
o Hippocrates
▪ Regarded medicine as science apart from religion
▪ Diseases have natural causes
▪ Made the Hippocratic oath
o Galen
▪ Made the first medical theories based on scientific experiments
▪ Dissected animal corpses – advancement of the science of
anatomy
o Aristotle
▪ Developed the taxonomy of organisms
o Mathematics
▪ Thales, Pythagoras, Euclid
▪ Geometry was perfected
o Archimedes
▪ Application of math and science
▪ Formulated the laws of the lever and the pulley
▪ Studies geometry and calculus
▪Developed the science of hydrostatics
▪Developed the pulleys and drilling systems which pumped out ships
and drain the Nile
▪ Invented the screw pump, claw, and planetarium powered by
water
o Ptolemy
▪ Geocentric theory of the universe
6. Persian Civilization
• Established when the peasant tribes migrated from Central Asia
• Cyrus the Great united the tribes and conquered the whole of Asia Minor,
Babylonia, Syria, and Palestine
• Darius I the Great
o Make uniform system of gold and silver coins
o Postal service
o Code of law
o Use of common calendar
o Production of system of roads
7. Roman Civilization
• Famous people include Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, and Cleopatra
• Octavius – first and greatest emperor
• Contributions
o Proliferation of portraits
o Architecture – columns, domes, arches
o Pantheon – world’s greatest domed buildings
o Colosseum – gladiatorial fights
o Circus Maximus – chariot races, gladiatorial fights
o Public works
▪ Public fountains and baths
▪ Public toilets
▪ Public urinals
▪ System of roads
• Justinian I
o Built the magnificent Hagia Sophia (church of Wisdom)
o Commercial centers, residential villages, resorts
o Public square
o Bazaars and shops
8. Arabic/Islamic Civilization
• Mecca
o Became the trade center
o Birthplace of Muhammad, founder of Islam
• Astronomy
o Written in Hindu Sanskrit
o Calculations based on Greek mathematics and Indian notations
o Adapted the Indian system of number and decimal numeral system
• Ibn Sina or Avicenna
Canon of Medicine
o
▪ Basis for Arab medical research
▪ Main source of information about science in European universities
• Used alchemy, glass lens for magnification
• Manufactured the gun powder and produced the first gun
• Propagated magnetic compass, paper making, printing press
9. Chinese Civilization
• Rice cultivation
• Domestication of farm animals
• Ploughing and transport
• Silk production
• Shang Dynasty
o Bronze works
o Discovery of lacquer
o Horse-drawn war chariots
o Oracle bones – first Chinese writing
• Chou Dynasty
o Established a distinctive political and cultural features
o Built observation towers, two-storey and nine-storey buildings
o Introduced iron, ox-drawn plows, crossbows and horseback riding
o Cultivate and irrigate farms
o Use of chopsticks
o Built roads and canals
o Made large scale irrigation and water control projects
o Coinage system
o Astronomy is linked to religion
▪ Solar eclipses
▪ Catalogues of stars and novae
▪ Map Halley’s comet
• Ch’in Dynasty
o Chao Cheng
▪ Burned all books except medicine
▪ Standardized Chines writing, measurements
▪ Built the Great Wall of China
• Han Dynasty
o Water-powered mills
o Horseshoe and horse collar
o Medical practices
▪ Apothecaries and acupuncture
▪ Healing drugs and herbs
▪ Advance system of pharmacology
▪ Used plants, specific minerals, and animal parts
▪ Diet therapy
o Paper making and invention of the printing press
• T’ang Dynasty
o Gunpowder
o Use of lodestone (magnet)
Used coal as fuel, water wheel, wheelbarrow, copper coins, wallpaper and
o
porcelain
• Dung Dynasty
o Iron and steel production
o Magnetic compass
o Explosive cannonballs
10. Hindu Civilization

• Perfected pottery and artwork
• Made clay and wooden children’s toys
• Had advanced city plan
• Cities had water well
• Houses had bathrooms and drains
• Made dikes to prevent flooding
• Made tools of stone, bronze, and wood
• Vedic Age
o High level of culture
o Orderliness of society
o Science and technology, philosophy and the arts
o Medicine and mathematics
o Herbal remedies and drugs
• Indian surgeons
o Repair broken limbs
o Complicated bone setting
o Amputation
o Plastic surgery
o Caesarian section
• Mathematic concepts
o Negative and positive quantities
o Square and cube roots
o Quadratic equation
o Mathematics implications of zero and infinity
o Value of pi
o Trigonometry, sine functions, spherical geometry, and calculus
C. Pre-Columbian Times
1. Olmec Civilization
• First major center of civilization in the New World
• Stone images
o Jaguar-like rigid faces with drooping thick lips and flat noses
• Had their own calendar, counting system, long count (system of calculating
dates), stylized pictograph Olmec writing
• Clay pyramids
2. Mayan Civilization
• Mayans were believed to be the ancient American Indians
• Observatories
• Religious and civil calendars
oSacred almanac of 260 days
▪ Each day named after a god or goddess
o 365-day calendar
▪ 18 months of 20 days each
▪ Unlucky days – last 5 days of the year meant for prayers, fasting, and
making sacrifices
• Mathematics system
o Based on the number 20
o Used dots and dashes to represent numbers and a special symbol that
signifies zero
• Architecture and engineering
o Tall pyramids of limestone with small temples
o Stele – monumental sculptures
• Other contributions
o Slash-and-burn farming
o Corn, beans, avocados, chili peppers, squash, tomatoes
o Chocolates from cacao beans
o Pottery and weaving
o Jewels from jade and colorful shells
o Headdress made from colored feathers of jungle birds
o Tortilla – baked flat corn flakes
o Alcoholic drink out of corn sweetened with honey and spiced with bark
o Used herbs and magic in treating the sick
3. Aztec Civilization
• Made chinampas – artificial lands which were cultivated extensively
• Had tower temples used for human sacrifices
• Used spears, bows, and arrows
• Had padded cotton armors and shields
• Calendar stone
o 260-day calendar
▪ Determine lucky days for planting crops, building houses, and going
to war
o Solar calendar
▪ 18 months of 20 days each plus 5 extra days
• Pictograph form of writing
• Other contributions
o Slash and burn farming
o Used fertilizers
o Made terraces, irrigation system
o Pottery, stone sculptures, metal works, wood carvings, and weaving of
cloth
o Tacos and tortillas
o Alcoholic drink made of maguey plants
o Had sweat house (sauna)
4. Inca Civilization
• Contributions
o Terraced fields
o Irrigation canals
o Discovered 40 varieties of plants
o Used stone grinder for corn grains
o Made bread from corn flour
o Used weapons like slings, clubs, and nets
o Ate meat of guinea pigs, ducks, and dogs
o Used clothes from domesticated llamas and alpacas
D. Middle Ages
• Marked by the fall of the Roman Empire
• Catholic Church became influential, wealthy, and powerful
• Disparity between science and religion (philosophy)
• Arab’s contributions
o Al-Khwarazmi – organized and expanded algebra
o Alhazen – discovered how vision is caused by reflection of light
o Spread of Hindu-Arabic number system
E. Renaissance
• Time of rebirth
• Technology for printing books
o Johann Gutenberg – invented the movable metal type printing press
• Leonardo da Vinci – Italian genius, painter, made scientific theories
• Claudius Ptolemy – geocentric universe
• Nicolaus Copernicus – heliocentric universe
• Andreas Vesalius – founder of modern medicine
F. Scientific Revolution
• Scientific Method
o Francis Bacon – promoted the scientific method
o Galileo Galilei – heliocentric universe through scientific evidence
o Rene Descartes – strengthened the power of reasoning
o Archimedes – contributed to the study of buoyancy and density
o Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe – discovered the elliptical orbit of planets
• Discoveries and Inventions

o John Napier – discovered logarithms
o Rene Descartes – brought together geometry and algebra
o Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz – invented calculus
o Isaac Newton – laws of motion, law of universal gravitation, study on optics
o Hans Lippershey – invented the lens
o Jan Swammerdam – invented the microscope
o William Harvey – published his work on blood circulation
o Mercello Malpighi – discovered the capillary connections between the arteries,
veins, and capillaries
o Robert Hooke – discovered the law of elasticity and the cell
o Evangelista Torricelli – invented the barometer and contributed to the
development of integral calculus
o Blaise Pascal – Pascal’s principle (pressure and altitude)
G. Age of Industrialization
• Marked the period of development
• From rural, agrarian societies to industrialized, urban ones
• Mass production of goods because of machines in factories and industries
• Weaving cloth
o Use of flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the power loom
• Smelting of iron ore with coke
• Thomas Newcomen – designed the first prototype for the first modern steam engine
• Matthew Boulton and James Watt – invented a steam engine with a rotary motion
• Richard Trevithick – invented the steam-powered locomotive
• William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone – patented the first commercial telegraphy
system
• Samuel Morse – telegraphy (United States)
• New York Stock Exchange was established
• Adam Smith – founder of modern economics
Philosophical Underpinnings of STS

Philosophy of Science: connection, disconnection, and consequences
by Prof. Helena Sheehan
In the beginning, they were one. Science and philosophy were the same process.
Scientia means knowledge. Philosophia is love of wisdom. In our western tradition, we trace
the history of science and the history of philosophy to the same sources. Philosophy was once
all knowledge.
Anachronisms
Even today we still have some chairs of physics are called chairs of natural philosophy.
With my own eyes I have seen biotechnologists, computational linguists and mechanical
engineers being awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. But these are anachronisms.
The inherited words do not fit the reality of the structure of knowledge anymore.
We have evolved – in fits and starts, in coherence and contradictions, in lucidity and
darkness - we have advanced in complexity. From the earliest times our species strove to
understand, stumbling in the dark, naming stones, seasons, gods, projecting the known into
the unknown. Perhaps the thunder was the voice of an angry god.
Philosophers – Scientists and Scientists – Philosophers
The first fragments, the first names known to us in making a great breakthrough in
knowledge – Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Zeno –
no longer projected the properties of the natural world into a supernatural world but sought
to explain the natural world in terms of forces within the natural world. They were scientists.
They were philosophers.
Development of Science
In the classical period of ancient Greece, the great questions of the history of
philosophy, still relevant, but rarely articulated today – were pondered: materialism v
idealism, monism v pluralism, universality v relativity. The answers to these framed the
development of science.
As we evolved, a division of labour – in knowledge as in much else – was necessary

to advance. Aristotle, distinguished ancient scientist and philosopher – did distinguish
between physics and metaphysics, but they were in continuity with one another. They were
interdependent. They were mutually constituting.
In the medieval world, all knowledge was subordinated to theology. There was a
prolonged struggle to liberate both science and philosophy from its rule. Even within the
constraints, there was some contestation, often with severe consequences. This made it very
difficult for knowledge to advance.
Secularism and Authority

Peter Abelard, for one, defended secular knowledge, argued passionately for
argument to be based on evidence, on reasoning and not on authority.
During the period of the rise of universities, there was much dispute on faith v reason,
on revelation v experimentation, preparing the way for the scientific revolution of the
modern era. To make the transition from the medieval to the modern world, it was necessary
to break through at the level of epistemology, to establish the hegemony of experiment and
reasoning over faith and authority.
The trial of Galileo was a point of high drama in what was a prolonged struggle, a
struggle that is not over, even today. Philosophy was essential to the liberation of science
from the forces constraining it.
The epistemologies of the modern era, rationalism and empiricism, contrasting as they
were, was nevertheless both grounded in individual consciousness and its capacity for
discovery.
Role of Philosophy
Philosophy was a central part of the struggle to make the world safe for science and
for commerce. There were a number of forces in motion: from the struggle of the rising
bourgeoisie v feudal power in all its forms to the invention of new technologies of discovery,
but philosophy was essential in making the case at the level of world view, at the level of
epistemological criteria, at the level of alternative ethos.
The enlightenment continued in this trajectory, making the arguments all the more
explicit. However, there was a counter-action in the romanticist reaction against the
enlightenment. This tension is with us still in many new age fads and in a rash of pseudo-
science, occupying the shelves of bookshops where philosophy used to be.
For the past few centuries there has been greater complexity of competing forces in
motion, particularly at the level of world view. The advance of science has been a powerful
force in shaping contemporary consciousness. The impact of evolutionary ideas has been
revolutionary, most so in identifying natural origins of natural species, in seeing all that exists
as in process. Again, philosophy was crucial to the articulation of implications of these
advances. More naturalistic, processive philosophies entered the arena.
Marxism
Marxism most dramatically emerged into this milieu. I have written a big book on what
marxism represents in terms of the interaction between philosophy, science and politics.*
Marxism as a philosophy of science is materialist in the sense of explaining the natural world
in terms of natural forces and not supernatural powers.
It is dialectical in the sense of being evolutionary, processive, developmental. It is

radically contextual and relational in the sense of seeing everything that exists within the
web of forces in which it is embedded. It is empiricist without being positivist or reductionist.
It is rationalist without being idealist. It is coherent and comprehensive while being empirically
grounded.
Positivism
Other philosophies too were concerned with securing the place of science in the
world: positivism in particular. It was motivated by the desire to purify knowledge, to clear
out the slag of superstition accumulated over centuries and to set out uncontestable
demarcation criteria for deciding what was a legitimate claim to knowledge and what was
not.
Post-positivism
After this came many modifications in various forms of neo-positivism until the total
reversal that was post-positivism. Along this trajectory is where most philosophy of science is
today. Also, along this spectrum we find the default philosophy of science of many scientists.
However, philosophy of science has become ever more specialized and esoteric and
more remote from actual science. Philosophers on the whole have retreated into the
subdivisions of their own discipline, sometimes becoming more technical, sometimes
becoming more fuzzy, but always becoming more insular, publishing in journals that no one
else ever reads.
Meanwhile, scientists proceed to do science, mostly with very little in the way of
philosophical reflection on its methods, implications or consequences. Experiments proceed
and the empirical data accumulates, but who knows how it all adds up, what it all means,
what the overall shape of it is?
The separate sciences are in the grip of an escalating specialization that makes it
almost impossible for scientists to understand what is being said by other scientists within the
subdivisions of their own discipline, let alone by scientists in other disciplines. Gone are the
days of the scientist who knew all of science or even of the physicist who knew all of physics.
The education of scientists has become ever narrower. Suggestions about including
history, philosophy, sociology, political economy of science are met with the response that
the curriculum is too full already and that there is no time for it.
The Need for Philosophy

Why should scientists need philosophy? First of all, they need philosophy for the same
reason as anyone needs philosophy. For a person to mature intellectually, they need to
question their received world view, to look around at the alternative world views offered by
others, to come to their own conclusions about their basic beliefs.
Do they believe that a supreme being, a god, created the world or do they believe
that matter evolved into higher and higher forms? Can history be reconstructed as a
coherent story or it is an irreducibly plural play of fortuitous circumstance? Within the
framework we construct by arriving at our own answers, we live our lives, organize our work
and scientists pursue science.
Because many scientists do not do this very deliberately and rigorously, they tend to
be somewhat schizoid. They are rigorous in the laboratory but all over the place, even
credulous, in the rest of their lives. They may be positivist in conducting experiments and
reporting results, but conventional Catholics who believe that bread is transformed into the
body of a dead but living god and dress their daughters as little brides when they consume
this bread-body for this first time.
Is there anything wrong with that picture? It is common enough to seem normal. What
is such a person’s world view? What are their criteria for deciding what to believe? It is one
basis for science and another for life. To me, it makes no sense.
There is a need for epistemological criteria to live a consistent and meaningful life and
to pursue science. Scientists may or may not be doing useful science in a very specific way,
but they are undermining science in another way.
Distrusting Science
There is widespread distrust of science. There is confusion about its cognitive status.
There is suspicion of its veracity and morality with the increasing commercialization of
science.
We live at a time of epistemological crisis. The air is full of contending claims – and not
only contending claims – but conflicting criteria about how to sort out these contending
claims. How to sort it all out? How to decide what to believe? This requires philosophical
thinking.
Look at the intellectual landscape of our time. It is full of all sorts of sense and nonsense.
Look at the many manifestations of nonsense where sense should be. Look at the
20
Property of and for the exclusive use of SLU. Reproduction, storing in a retrieval system, distributing, uploading or posting online, or transmitting in any form or by any
articulations of science in our culture: from the minutiae of molecules to the tao of physics.
Did you see the film “What the bleep do we know?” Science itself is invoked to justify
mysticism and obscurantism.
Quantum physics – in hopelessly garbled interpretations - is used to justify just about

everything that anyone wants justified. Ludicrous misinterpretations of Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle abound. Where are the scientists – in this case especially the physicists
– entering into polemic about this? In the 1930s, eminent scientists, mostly Marxists such as
Bernal, Haldane, Needham, took on the ideas of Jeans and Eddington and others who were
importing irrationality into science itself and undermining the role of science in interpreting
the world within the wider culture.
What is Science?
There is a particular need in our time to address the questions of what science is, what
is pseudo-science and what is anti-science – what are our criteria for drawing a line between
what is a legitimate claim to knowledge and what is not?
Moving from the epistemological to the ontological dimension, what picture of the
world, of ourselves, is emerging from the advance of science along so many empirical
fronts? Who sees the whole? There is a fracturing of consciousness that is intensifying all the
time. There may have been some need to for an intellectual division of labor and for resulting
specialization for us to advance, but the escalating separatism of the sciences and other
disciplines needs to be transcended for us to advance further.
Nature does not respect our academic division of labor. There are problems that
simply cannot be solved within the boundaries of one science. The progress even of the
separate sciences is constricted by their separation from other sciences.
How can this state of affairs be overcome and by whom? The way forward, I believe,
must be forged empirically, by scientists as scientists. However, to do so, they must have an
adequate and appropriate philosophy. Here the philosophers have a part to play, but only
as part of a common enterprise in which scientists must become far more philosophical and
philosophers must come to know far more about science.
Not any philosophy will do. Certain philosophical assumptions will block the view and
obstruct the path. Others will illuminate the way and move the journey onwards. There is an
optimal philosophy for science, I believe. It is an evolutionary, integrative, emergentist form
of materialism.
The Necessities
It is a philosophy which is oriented to explaining the world in terms of the world itself,
without unwarranted appeals to forces outside the world to explain the world. It considers
empirical evidence and logical reasoning to be necessary to justify any belief.
It takes account of the role of time and developmental process in constituting the
world and ourselves as what we are and what we may yet be. It does not succumb to the
temptation to think there can be any adequate explanation of a thing without a full
realization of its historicity.
It looks to the interrelatedness of things as essential to comprehending what they are
and therefore seeks to put an end to the impoverishment of every discipline through its
disconnectedness with other disciplines. It recognizes the ascending levels of complexity in
the organization of matter and the emergence of novelty in the evolutionary process, such
that each level is rooted in the preceding level without being reducible to it.
It is not a retreat to an undifferentiated unity, recognizing always that specialization

has been necessary to the development of the sciences, but that overspecialization must
be transcended in a higher synthesis that gives full scope to both the relatedness and
distinctness of the specific areas.
Psychology
What this means, to take the example of psychology, is that psychology is distorted in
so far as it is disconnected from the social sciences on the one hand and from the biological
sciences on the other.
There are certain crucial things about the human personality that cannot be
understood without due reference to the social-cultural-economic context which decisively
shapes its character or without adequate realization of the neuro-physiological basis of
behavior. However, whereas psychologism will not do, neither will sociologism or economism
on the one hand nor biologism or physicalism on the other.
Each of the sciences needs to open out to the others and be revitalized and
reconstructed in the interaction with the goal of integration of knowledge in view. One thing
that is essential to the process is an integrative philosophy capable of encompassing all the
sciences, all realms of knowledge, while giving each its due.
Will this happen? Unfortunately, I think not. There are and might be more enclaves of
it, but it will not happen on the scale it should. It runs counter to the most powerful forces in
the field – the imperatives of the global system itself with its agenda of intensifying
commodification of knowledge and commercialization of science, requiring ever greater
specificity of outcomes without criticism, reflection or intellectual integration.
What is Philosophy?
• Systematic reflection on the meaning of life
• Reflection beyond the bounds of any of the special disciplines, but still in a rational
discipline way (Ferre)
o Evidential; non-contradictory or consistent; and coherent
• A form of inquiry – a process of analysis, criticism, interpretation, and speculation
• Search for the ultimate, conducted by reason, in order to satisfy man’s curiosity about
himself and the universe of which he is part
• Philosophy makes a man think – think about the basic foundations of his beliefs, his
outlook in life, his knowledge
22
Philosophy of life
o Some set of primary beliefs according to which a man guides his conduct
Philosophy of history
o Proceeds from those basic assumptions upon which a particular historian’s
interpretation of history depends
Philosophy of science
o Principles more basic and comprehensive than the conclusions of individual
sciences
Approaches to Philosophy
a. Analytical Approach
• How to do you know?
• What do you mean?
b. Metaphysical Approach
• Cosmic vision
• A world perspective on the universal scale
c. Valuation Approach
• Types of values: moral and aesthetic
• Moral values
o Good in human conduct; what a person does in his life
• Aesthetic values
o Good in aesthetic experience to beauty whether found in nature or in art
23
Branches of Philosophy
a. Metaphysics
• Studies the fundamental nature of reality and the exercise and/or the essence of
things
b. Epistemology
• Seeks the nature, basis, and extent of knowledge
c. Logic
• Deals with the principles and methods of reasoning
d. Ethics
• Delves on the nature of right and wrong, the distinction between good and evil,
human values, and conduct
e. Aesthetics
• Concentrates on the creation and principles of art and beauty, including our
thoughts, feelings, and attitudes about any expression of art and beauty
History of Philosophy
A. Ancient Greek Philosophers
1. Thales of Miletus
o renowned as one of the legendary Seven Wise Men, or Sophoi, of antiquity.
He is remembered primarily for his cosmology based on water as the
essence of all matter, with Earth a flat disk floating on a vast sea.
2. Heraclitus
o remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material
principle of an orderly universe. Though he was primarily concerned with
explanations of the world around him, Heraclitus also stressed the need for
people to live together in social harmony.
3. Parmenides
o Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms
and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality (“Being”),
thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that “all is one.” From this
concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-
Being are illogical. Because he introduced the method of basing claims
about appearances on a logical concept of Being, he is considered one
of the founders of metaphysics.
4. Pythagoras of Samos
o generally credited with the theory of the functional significance of numbers
in the objective world and in music
o No man, but only God, is wise
o Pythagorean doctrine
▪ Number, and the relations between them, are the ultimate reality
▪ The whole reality could be interpreted in terms of some fundamental
mathematical relationships
5. Sophists
o Group of wise men
o Master teachers of the wealthy and influential people
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o Protagoras
▪ Greatest sophist
▪ Man is the measure of all things
o Gorgias
▪ Nothing exists, if it did, no one could know it
▪ If anyone knew it, he could not communicate that knowledge to
others
o In perspective:
▪ Knowledge, in its strict sense, was unattainable, and therefore, man
should not bother to seek what he can never find
▪ Truth and evil cannot be discovered
▪ No justice and injustice
▪ No right and wrong
▪ No truth and falsity
B. Classical Greek Philosophers

1. Socrates
o What do we know and how do we come to know what we know?
o What is the highest excellence, or virtue of man?
o Founded the theory of knowledge and moral philosophy
o Critic of sophist philosophy
o Good and evil can be known and taught and he sought the ways and
means to do so
o Socratic Irony
▪ Socrates was recognized as the wisest man in Athens because he
was the only one who knew that he did not know anything
▪ First step on the road to knowledge was the recognition of our
ignorance
2. Plato
o Philosophy is a discovery of an unchanging system of reality beyond the
shifting appearances of our senses, a reality ordered with mathematical
precision and culminating in the form of the good
o Use of mathematics to state natural laws
o Inquiry method
o Founded the ACADEMY (the first university)
▪ Named after Academus
o Learning could be acquired through discussion and shared inquiry
o Loved Socrates as the wisest and most excellent of men
o Doctrines
▪ There is a fundamental distinction between appearance and reality:
the world of particular things perceived by the senses constitutes
appearance only, not reality; reality consists of unchanging ideas or
forms which are not perceived by the senses, but can only be
apprehended by pure intellect
▪ About particular things we can have opinion only, and not certain
knowledge; for the objects of knowledge must be unchanging
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Mathematics provides the model of the true knowledge, since it is
▪
concerned with the unchanging properties of supersensible entities,
apprehended by pure intellect
o The most important idea is the idea of good
o Knowledge of good is the object of all inquiry
▪ Idealism
o Doctrine of the Two Worlds
▪ World of unchanging things
• A world that is perfect, eternal, the source of whatever traces
of perfection and goodness we find around us.
• With reason
• Eye of our soul
▪ World of changing things
• Imperfect world of the senses; the world of changes, of
movement, of imperfection
• Eye of our body
3. Aristotle
o Idea of science and of separate sciences, each having distinct principles
and focusing on different fields of study
o There is only one world – apparent thru the senses
o Founder of formal logic
▪ Organon – tool or instrument of knowledge
▪ Syllogism – pattern of deductive argument
C. Medieval Christian Philosophers

1. St. Agustine
o Confessions – considered as containing his most enduring writings, are filled
with philosophical paradoxes and psychological insights.
2. St. Thomas Aquinas
o Christian Aristotelianism
▪ Summa Theologica
▪ Summa Contra Gentiles
o Universe according to Aristotle
▪ Earth (corrupt and changeable)
▪ Heavens (perfect and immutable)
o Aristotle and Ptolemy
▪ Geocentric universe (accepted by the Catholic Chruch as part of
its dogma)
o Thomistic knowledge
▪ Product of both intellect and the senses
o Defended the autonomy of science
o Knowledge – enrichment of the mind
o Realism
3. Dawn of Christianity
o Relation between faith and reason was naturally the first problem of
philosophy
o Reason itself was essentially the first problem of philosophy
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Reason itself was essentially identified with the distinctions of Greek
o
philosophy
4. Christian Theology
o Substance vs. attribute
o Intuition vs. deduction
o Form vs. matter
5. Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes
o Separation of reason from faith
o Birth of modern philosophy
D. Renaissance
o Transition between medieval and modern philosophy
o Time of intellectual re-awakening sparked by the re-discovery of ancient Greek
and Roman culture
Theories of Knowledge
• Philosophic discipline which has as its object the explanation of all the different phases
and aspects of knowledge; and which tries to answer particular questions as to the
origin, essence, and validity of the act of cognition
• Epistemology is one of the most important branches of philosophy
• Questions to be answered:
o Whether there can be any such thing as valid knowledge
o Whether such knowledge as men can justly claim extends to things as they are
in themselves or is confined to phenomena as they appear to us within the
limits of the human senses and human understanding.
Theorists according to Lewis (1978)

1. Realists
• Who believe that what we know are things as they actually are, independent
of our minds
2. Phenomenalists
• Who are convinced that we can have no knowledge of absolute realities but
only of their sensible manifestations
3. Idealists
• Who contend that there is no reality out of relation to minds
Division of Theories of Knowledge

1. Theories which assign the major role in valid knowledge to intellect or reason, and so
are called rationalistic
• Aristotle, Plato and Rene Descartes
2. Theories which take sense perception to be the sole or the principal ground of
knowledge, and so are classified as empiricistic
• John Locke and David Hume
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Rationalism
• States that exercise of reason provides the only valid basis for action or belief
• Human intellect can discover the kind of knowledge that is beyond doubt and can
never be possibly false under any circumstances simply by following certain
procedures of reason alone
• Reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge and that the validity of
sense perception must be proven from more certain principles
Empiricism
• Theory of knowledge is consistent with ordinary human behavior
• Sense experience is the source and basis of what we know and establish an account
of knowledge in terms of sense experience
Scientific Knowledge
• Types of Knowledge
o Priori (knowable without reference to particular occasions of experience and
observation)
▪ Logic and mathematics
o Posteriori (requiring to be based on and corroborated by sense observation)
▪ Natural-scientific knowledge
• Theoretical certainty
o Possible in logic and mathematics
Contemporary Views
1. Francis Bacon
• Science is the key to progress
• Major prophet of the practical value of science and technology to the welfare
of society
• Restore and exalt the power and dominion of man himself, of the human race,
over the Universe
• Power
o Purpose of all knowledge including the natural sciences
o Power to improve life on earth by useful inventions
• Scientific knowledge must be tested by its utility
o Contribution to the welfare of humanity
• Bacon believed that to advance human welfare was to serve God
o Faith and science must be judged by their works
• By equating the value of scientific truth with its utility, Bacon saw the glory of
God in the betterment of mankind
• By linking the purpose of natural sciences firmly to their practical applications,
Bacon gave society a powerful motive for pursuing science
• Novum Organum (new method)
o The Scientific Method
o Scientific knowledge is cumulative
o In contrast with Aristotle’s Organum (grammatical form)
28
o A new way of knowledge that demanded a logic primarily occupied
with accurate observation and experiment designed to elicit axioms
from experience
• Scientific method
o Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• Experience as the only source of valid knowledge
• Perfection of natural science
• Outstanding apostle of renaissance empiricism or classical empiricism
(baconian scientific method)
o Philosophy should re-establish natural science upon a firm foundation
2. Rene Descartes
• Deductive Approach (Rationalism)
• No genuine knowledge is possible unless it is built upon a firm and
unquestionable foundation
• Theory of Knowledge
o We are capable of discovering absolutely true knowledge
o Based on his quest for certainty; all ordinary information are subject to
challenge and intellectual scrutiny
• Doubting
o Good ground for assurance for myself, and to reject the quicksand and
mud so that I might find the rock or clay
• Certainty of existence
o I think, therefore I am
• Philosopher, Mathematician, Inventor of analytical geometry, Mathematical
physics, Optics, Physiology
• Universal science
o Where problems susceptible to human reason could be solved
o Philosophical and scientific truth could be unified as a single system
• Works
o Discourse on Methods
o Meditations on the First Philosophy
• Rationalism
o Deductive method of reasoning based on mathematical procedures is
superior to experience or sense perception as a source of knowledge
3. Galileo
• Experimental Observations and Mathematical Measurements
o Answer to the inadequacy of the Aristotelian method of scientific
knowledge and logic based on syllogism failed to represent the actual
forms of scientific inference
• Initiated the scientific revolution of the 17th century in Italy
• Qualitative classifications must be replaced by natural laws in quantitative
terms
• Heliocentric model of the universe
• Made his own telescope (Dutch lens-maker Hans Lippershey)
o Three-power magnification
o 3x, 8x, 30x
29
• Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems
o Salviati (the most brilliant, who expressed the views of Galileo
o Sagredo (who saw the truth of Salviati’s arguments)
o Simplicio (Aristotelian philosopher who voiced all the usual objections to
the Copernican system)
• Preface of the book – mathematical fantasy
• Tried by the Roman Inquisition on the charge of believing and holding
doctrines false and contrary to Holy Scriptures
• Was sentence to life imprisonment (70 years old that time)
• Index of Prohibited Books
o Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems
o Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus
o Kepler’s Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy
4. Newton
• Hypothetic-Deductive
• Keystone of the scientific revolution in the 17th century
• One of the greatest scientists
• Optics (spectrum)
• Differential calculus
• Three laws of motion
• Law of universal gravitation
• So solve every problem:
o An immersion in observed fact
o Accurate definition of universal categories for the description of the
regular features of what is observed
o Inductive generalization of simple universal laws expressing such
regularities
o Entertainment of explanatory hypotheses
o Detailed comparison of the consequences of the hypotheses in favor of
the inductive generalization in cases of conflict
o Axiomatic organization of the hypotheses which survive this test
o Demonstration of the rest of the theory as following from them
5. Empiricism
• John Locke
o Formulated his theory of knowledge and its metaphysics
o More emphasis on experiment and less emphasis on a priori deduction
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
o Powers of the human mind
o Types and units of human knowledge were presented
• Inquire first into the origin of ideas
• Then to ask always when ideas were derived
• Begins not from priori speculations about reality, but from the contents of the
human mind
• Directly or indirectly, all our ideas must be derived from our experience
• Innate ideas can never be independent from experience
30
• Through sense perception, simple ideas enter the mind; by its own operations
of comparing and compounding, form the more general ideas which abstract
thoughts used as basic materials
• In perception, the mind is not directly aware of physical realities , but rather of
ideas
o Ideas correspond to and are produced by physical realities
• Ideas
o ideas which reflect the real qualities of the physical world
▪ Primary qualities
▪ Measurable properties of things
o Ideas that are merely the effect of physical reality on our bodies and
minds
▪ Secondary qualities like color and taste
▪ Subjective effects of primary qualities
• Matter is the ultimate substance of reality external to our minds
o Through its effects
6. Skepticism
• David Hume
o The whole content of our experience is nothing more than a succession
of impressions and ideas
o Every significant statement that we make must ultimately refer to these
impressions or ideas
o All the perceptions of the mind resolve themselves into impressions and
ideas
• Impressions
o Immediate objects of awareness being experienced when one
perceives or introspects
o Source of meaning, truth, and reality
• Ideas
o Objects one becomes aware of in all mental exercises other than
perception and introspection
o The mind forms habits of expectation as a result of recurrence in
experience, and our beliefs in the existence of an external world of
objects
o The interaction of these two in only the expression of these expectations
o Philosophy can be nothing more than a description of how our mind
actually works and how our beliefs are formed
o Outside mathematics
▪ There is no pure reasoning
o Reason is and ought to be the slave of those passions which Nature has
implanted in us
o All metaphysical theories were pointless
7. Kantianism
• Immanuel Kant
o Foremost thinker of the Enlightenment
o Priori reasoning about matters of fact and deductive metaphysics were
impossible
o The mind organizes both its experience and its knowledge
• The mind being equipped with basic forms of understanding which are
independent of experience and without which our experience would be
senseless, plays an active role in knowing and is, therefore, not a mere recorder
of act presented by the senses
• Critique of Pure Reason
o Objects conform to the mind
o In knowing, it is not the mind that conforms to things but instead things
that conform to the mind
o Categories and forms of experience are important
▪ They become meaningless when considered apart from their
application to actual experience
8. Positivism
• Auguste Comte
o Cour de Philosophie Positive
▪ The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte
o Positivism
▪ Philosophy of science that denied any validity whatsoever to
knowledge not derived through the accepted methods of
science
• Basic Ideas
o That the sciences emerged as sciences in strict order: beginning with
mathematics and astronomy, followed by physics, chemistry, and
biology in that order, and culminating in the new science of sociology
(which Comte was the first to ascribe the name)
o That the so-called “law of three stages” which views thought in every
field as passing progressively from superstition to science by
▪ Religious
▪ Abstract or metaphysical
▪ Positive or scientific
• Strict form of empiricism
• Only those knowledge claims which are founded directly on experience are
genuine
• Initiate an antireligious and an antimetaphysical bias in the philosophy of
science that has passed into the 20th century
• Objectivity is implied as an unbiased and impartial observer searching for
causal explanations of physical phenomena from which correct prediction
may arise by examination of facts out there in an external reality
• Confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical
speculations.
• Values or norms:
o Detachment
o Honesty
o Impartiality
32
9. Logical Positivism
• Important goals of scientific enterprise
o Explanation of what has been observed
o Prediction of what will be observed
• Austria and Germany to England and America
• Modern branch of Analytic Philosophy
• Inspired by
o Hume
o Bertrand Russell
o Alfred North Whitehead
• Strict form of empiricism
• Symbolic logic
o Bertrand Russell (Principles of Mathematics)
o Alfred North Whitehead (Principia Mathematica
• The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts
• Philosophy is not a theory but an activity
• Essentially of elucidations
• Make propositions clear
• Science should focus their attention on the nature of the goals and methods
of the empirical sciences
• Logic and mathematics must be studied together in the single and largely new
science of mathematical logic
10. Falsificationism
• Theories can be empirically falsified by negative manifestations
• Karl Popper
o Austrian philosopher of natural and social science
o Falsificability by observation is the criterion of the empirical and scientific
character of a theory
▪ No pure observation
o Even if hypotheses were arrived at via the inductive process, justifying
them is beyond its capabilities
• The growth of knowledge begins with the imaginative proposal of hypotheses
• To test a hypothesis, Popper used ordinary deductive logic in order to derive
singular observation statements whose falsehood would refute it.
• The more falsifiable hypotheses have a greater chance of being refuted that
those less falsifiable.
o The more falsifiable a hypothesis, the less probable it is
• To formulate the most falsifiable hypotheses is the proper method of science
• To make a proposition scientific
o It must first be falsified by experience
o A hypothesis, it must first be falsified by experiment
o A hypothesis can only be empirically tested after it has been advanced
• Falsification of an existing theory is the key to scientific progress
11. Logical Empiricism

• Moderate version of logical positivism
• Common factors with logical positivism
33
o Commitment to the empirical science
o Use of symbolic logic as a tool for the analysis of the sciences
New Philosophy of Science

• Composition of different philosophical viewpoints
• Thomas Kuhn
• Basic Themes
o The knowledge, beliefs, and theories we already hold determine to a great
extent what we perceive; hence, observations are theory-laden
o Scientists operate within the accepted paradigms. Paradigms determine what
problems to solve, the instruments to use, and the inferring techniques and
models to employ.
o Formal logic is rejected as the primary tool for analysis of science and replaced
by a reliance on the detailed study of the history of science. The ultimate
decision on a scientific question rests with the scientific community.
o Continuing research coupled with continuing criticism rather than accepted
results are the core of science.
o Science has two phases: normal science and revolutionary science.
o Observational data do not remain the same from one scientific revolution to
another. This is again because scientific paradigms are incommensurable.
Scientific Community
• According to Kuhn
o A closed society
o Operating for the most part in the realm of normal science
o Involved in solving puzzles within the confines of the dominant paradigm
o An alteration between revolution and periods of stability during which scientists
tackle puzzles and problems generated by the theory of the day
o Science is essentially puzzle-solving
• Dominant paradigm
o Constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and theories shared by the
scientific community at that period of time
• For “New” philosophers of science, they use detailed study of the history of science,
citing the scientific community as the ultimate arbiter of scientific questions.
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of science has an educational responsibility in the preparation of future
engineers, physicians, lawyers, teachers, journalists, ministers, and government officials as
well as research workers in advancing science and technological applications
• Scientific knowledge is tentative and should never be equated with truth. It has only
temporary status.
• Observation alone cannot give rise to scientific knowledge in a simple inductivist
manner. There can be no sharp definition between observation and inference.
34
• New knowledge in science is produced by creative acts of the imagination allied with
the methods of scientific inquiry. As such, science is a personal and immensely human
activity.
• Acquisition of new scientific knowledge is problematic and never easy.
• Scientists study a world of which they are a part, not a world from which they are
apart. Science must be presented as an endeavour carried out by human beings
and not by depersonalized robots.
Importance of Philosophy
1. Insofar as it is the art of conceptual clarification, it provides a training in thinking clearly
about unclear matters – must be transferred to ethical, political, and religious thinking,
since all of these no doubt affect men in a practical way.
2. Insofar as some of the conceptual clarifications determined by the philosopher of
science help the scientist to formulate better theories, this philosophical thinking has
indirect practical value via the scientific theories in question.
To understand the theory behind the discussions on this module, let us perform the following
simple activities.
Activity 1.1 Watch Me

Filipino Scientists
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd7hpur-
G1Y&ab_channel=MonKordelMonKordel)
Activity 1.2 Watch Me and Read Me:

Science over time: Standing on the shoulders of giants
(https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2612-science-over-time-
standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants)
Activity 1.3 Watch Me

Stephen Colbert’s interview with Neil Tyson
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzi8_XWcTtg&ab_channel=EricFo
urnierEricFournier)
35
Now, it is your turn to check on your understanding of this module. Take note, this will
be graded and recorded.
Answer the following questions completely and concisely. Please make sure to use
the references you have cited as guides for answering the questions. DO NOT copy in toto.
I will be checking the originality of your work.
1. Explain the importance of science and technology in your field of specialization. Give
examples in which science and technology are used in your field.
2. Choose one (1) Filipino scientist and make a poster about his/her invention or
discovery that made an impact to society. Use a short bond paper.
3. From the interview of Stephen Colbert with Neil deGrasse Tyson, what is your stand on
the idea: (Choose one)
a. It is better to have knowledge management than just knowledge itself.
b. Science can be distrustful.
c. Discovery or its application should pass a moral test.
d. The Universe is in us.
36
References:
Borbon, V., Dela Cruz, M., Flores, R., Medina-Gerona, Z., & Lee, A. (2000). College science,
technology and society. Manila: Rex Book Store.
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Heraclitus. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Heraclitus
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Parmenides. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Parmenides-Greek-philosopher
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Thales of Miletus. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thales-of-Miletus
History.com Editors. (2019). History: Sumer. Retrieved from

https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/sumer
History.com Editors. (2019). History: Industrial revolution. Retrieved from

https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution/industrial-revolution
37

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STS

COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

Dorothy D. Silva, PhD

Let us explore the exciting world of STS.

MODULE 1 GENERAL CONCEPTS AND STS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

1. Your old CRT TV had a kind of particle accelerator.

2. Particle accelerators have many important uses.

They are also used for inspecting cargo at border

4. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest particle accelerator.

5. Particle accelerators come into two main types.

6. Particle accelerators have been used to discover various basic elements.

9. Ferrets were once used to clean accelerator parts.

STS Across History

Lower Paleolithic (sometimes called the Early Stone Age)

Middle Paleolithic (Middle Stone Age)

2. Neolithic Age (9000 – 5000 BC)

3. Bronze Age (3500 – 2500 BC)

10. Hindu Civilization

• Discoveries and Inventions

Philosophical Underpinnings of STS

As we evolved, a division of labour – in knowledge as in much else – was necessary

Secularism and Authority

It is dialectical in the sense of being evolutionary, processive, developmental. It is

The Need for Philosophy

Quantum physics – in hopelessly garbled interpretations - is used to justify just about

It is not a retreat to an undifferentiated unity, recognizing always that specialization

B. Classical Greek Philosophers

C. Medieval Christian Philosophers

Theorists according to Lewis (1978)

Division of Theories of Knowledge

11. Logical Empiricism

New Philosophy of Science

Activity 1.1 Watch Me

Activity 1.2 Watch Me and Read Me:

Activity 1.3 Watch Me

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Heraclitus. Retrieved from

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Parmenides. Retrieved from

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2021). Thales of Miletus. Retrieved from

History.com Editors. (2019). History: Sumer. Retrieved from

History.com Editors. (2019). History: Industrial revolution. Retrieved from

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