Distrust in Science and Technology's Penetration of Life

• In Event: Democracy, Freedom, and Pluralism in the Digital Age

Abstract

We live in a time in which technology is penetrating our daily lives like never before. Mostly due to smartphones, we rely on automated processes for a number of daily activities and tasks. At the same time, distrust in scientific facts is growing dramatically around the world. This is perplexing, because it is evident that the technology we rely on depends on scientific discoveries. This article attempts to overcome this perplexity by examining the relationship between science and technology from a theoretical perspective. While most theories of science and technology see them as essentially interrelated, I identify a "continuity" and a "discontinuity" perspective on this interrelation. The continuity perspective, present in Horkheimer and Adorno, Foucault, and Latour, claims that science and technology are two aspects of a common enterprise concerned with the control of nature. From this perspective, scientific descriptions and classifications are by themselves devises that enable this control. The discontinuity perspective, present in Arendt, Lyotard, and Habermas, claims that science is concerned above all with understanding the world, while technology is concerned with transforming it. While scientific discoveries and facts may be functional to technology, they are not primarily oriented to producing transformations. Following the discontinuity perspective, I argue that despite their interconnection, there is indeed a tension between science and technology, which explains why the expansion of one may endanger the other. Science is a specific activity whose aim is to improve understanding, independently of what we use this understanding for. Understanding it important for the public realm because it improves our capacity to build a common world in which and about which we can speak to one another. When scientific research is subordinated to technological applicability, understanding is devalued, and the common world is impoverished.

Author

• Javier Burdman, Universidad Nacional de San Martin