SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTIONS THAT DEFINED SOCIETY

It is the goal of this lesson to express ways by society is transformed by science and technology. It will
shed light to the development of science and scientific ideas in the heart of the society.

Science is a broad field of study focused on discovering how nature works and using that knowledge to
describe what likely to happened in nature. While the immediate goal of science is to build knowledge of the
natural world, that knowledge can be applied in a number of ways.

Science as an idea It is an assumption that events in the physical world follow orderly cause-and effect
patterns that can understand through careful observation, measurements, and experimentations.
Science as an intellectual activity. It is a possible and testable answer to a scientific question or explanation of
what scientists observe in nature.
Science as body of knowledge. Science is a subject of discipline a field of study; describe the scientific
methods and the importance of observation, experimentation, and models.
Science as a personal and social activity. Important and certain results of science done by human beings to
develop better understanding of the world around us is based on the large body of means to improve life and to
survive in life.

The idea of scientific revolution is claimed to have started in the early 16th century up to the 18th century
in Europe. Why in Europe? The probable answer is the invention of the printing machine and blooming intellectual
activities done in various fields of human interests. This does not mean, however, the science is a foreign idea
transported from other areas of the globe. Anyone who can examine the history of science, technology, medicine,
and mathematics is aware that all great civilizations of the ancient world had their own sophisticated traditions
and activities related to this discipline. (Serafica, et al. STS, 2018)

Scientific revolution was a period of enlightenment when the developments in the fields of mathematics,
physics, astronomy, biology, and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. It explained the
mergence or birth of modern science as a result of these developments from the discipline mention. The ideas
generated during this period enabled the people to reflect, rethink, and reexamine their beliefs and their way of
life. There is no doubt that it ignited vast human interests to rethink how they do science and view scientific
processes.

1. COPERNICAN

Polished Scientist Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the planets instead revolved around the sun.
Although his model wasn’t completely correct, it formed a strong foundation for future scientists to build on and
improved mankind understands of the motion of the heavenly bodies. He believe in his life time that the Earth
held its place at the center of the universe.

2. DARWINIAN

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from
common ancestor; the birds and the bananas, the fishes and the flowers all related. His general theory presumes
the development of his life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) “descent with
modification”. That is, complex creatures evolved from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time.

3. FREUDIAN

Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychoanalytic state that personality develops through a series of stages,
each stages characterized by a certain internal psychological conflict.

4. INFORMATION

The Information revolution is the Technological changes brought dramatic new options to Americans living
in the 1990s. From the beginning of the decade until the end, new forms of entertainment, commerce, research,
work and communication became common place in the United States. The driving force behind much of this
change was an innovation popularly known as the internet. This is the stage where gadgets were available in
each kind. That could personally have the ability to connect all over the world which is known as cyberspace.
5. MESOAMERICA

Mesoamerica civilization, the complex of indigenous cultures developed in parts of Mexico and Central
America prior to Spanish exploration and conquest in the 16th century. In the organization of the kingdoms and
empires, the sophistication of the monuments and cities and the extent and refinement of its intellectual
 SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
accomplishments, the Mesoamerican civilization along with the comparable Andean civilization farther South
constitute a New World counterpart to those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China.
6. Asian

East Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries is known as the time of rapid change. Whereas change was a
daily and concrete in a globalizing environment, it was also the object of psychological fear and ideological
desire. During that period, Asian countries and their intellectual and political elites confronted the technical and
military superiority of the Western powers, as well as local inner tensions and crisis by elaborating patterns of
selective imitation, reconsidering their traditional knowledge, and recreating their own cultural background.

7. Middle East

The central of dynamics of the protest movement engulfed the Arab world since late 2010, with particular
focus on the Syrian uprising. This movement by launching popular revolutions for wholesale change, the Arab
people has overturned the claim of the “helpless Arab” and the logic of the inevitability of defeat. The creativity
of this revolution in their content, slogans, and dynamism has led to their influence even on the social protest
movement recently witnessed in Israel.

8. African

For centuries the people of Africa were subjected to exploitation and robbery by the capitalist maritime
nations of Western Europe and other marauders. Millions of sons and daughters of Africa were transported as
slaves to far away countries. In the words of Karl Mars, African was “a warren for the commercial l hunting of
black skins”. The invaders destroyed African’s ancient civilizations. They seized and lay waste the natural wealth.
By the end of the 19th century, almost the whole of Africa had been conquered by trickery or the force of superior
arm and brought beneath the alien yoke of a handful of European powers, Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium,
Germany and Spain. African people were deprived of self-government, alienated from their ancestral lands and
driven to work as forced laborers on white owned plantations, mines and other enterprises.

The common struggle of the people of Africa against Imperialism and colonialism in all forms has brought
them closer together than ever before.