Ethics of Technology and Science
La tecnología no se define por el conocimiento que aplica, sino por los fines que persigue y las consecuencias que produce.
What precedes may draw attention to the fact that the philosophy of Technology takes a position on the very object of its concern, rather than merely displaying it and showing its relations with other aspects of nature or with the ontological structure of the human being. This should not surprise us. The philosophy of technology cannot be, as the philosophy of science can, a more or less autonomous branch of Philosophy. The aim of the philosophy of science is to understand the world, to know it, and to describe it in rational terms (leaving aside for the moment the somewhat contested meaning of that word). Technology, by contrast, is far more closely linked to doing than to knowing, and therefore philosophical reflection on it is more closely related to ethics than to epistemology.
Regarding methods of analysis, science is above all causal: it is concerned with efficient causes, in the Aristotelian sense of the term. What is most decisive in a Technological Object, however, is its purpose. For this reason, the basic interest of technological analysis is teleological, and its approach— which will be the main object of study of this book— is systemic. There are also other arguments against the thesis that Technology is merely applied science. The Chinese were the originators of a large number of major inventions and first-rate technological innovations, a fact that is repeatedly acknowledged. However, in traditional China there was nothing comparable to modern science; and that absence is sometimes seen as the cause of the stagnation of Chinese technology. In the West, by contrast, the autopoietic interaction between science and technology is one of the secrets of its extraordinary success.
This argument, however, contains an ethnocentric cultural trap that must be made explicit. In the previous paragraph the term “stagnation” was used, which carries an implicit value judgment: within our “modern” framework, progress is a value, and “stagnation” has a negative connotation. One could instead speak of “stability” when referring to Chinese society, using a term with positive connotations, or better still, adopt the neutral term “persistence.” Moreover, the claim also rests on a monocausal interpretation of that persistence. In fact, from the fifteenth century onward, the West witnessed the temporal convergence of at least three distinct cultural elements, not just two, interacting autopoietically: science, technology, and capitalism. A little further on, the relationship between modern technological development and the economic structure of the world in which it arose—and continues to develop—will be briefly explained: first the Industrial Revolution, and today the technological revolution.
By emphasizing the differences between the purposes and methods of science and technology, the intention is to counter the strong social tendency to confuse them. This should not, however, lead to underestimating the powerful symbiosis that exists between them, especially in the most advanced and complex areas of Technology.
The relationships between technology and science are multiple. It is evident that Technology does not advance simply as the application of previously acquired scientific knowledge. Science is closer to creating a kind of “cultural matrix” within which contemporary technology develops, drawing at every step on whatever is useful, whether a recent scientific discovery or an ancient technical practice. Nor can science be understood merely as the formalization of technological or pragmatic knowledge, detached from the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself. There is a Technology that predates science and exists independently of it, although today the relationship between the two is closer than in other periods. The development of technologies and new technological objects makes use of the results of recent scientific research with ever shorter delays. Scientific research itself would soon stagnate if it did not have access to increasingly powerful tools made available by the development of new technologies.
Space exploration illustrates the close interaction between science and technology, both in their development and in their outcomes. It is often presented as a major scientific endeavor, especially because it lacks immediately visible technological objectives. Strictly speaking, the construction and launch of a space probe is a major technological achievement rather than a scientific one. By contrast, the results of a mission—such as detailed knowledge of the planets, research into the possible existence of life on Mars, or the study of solar radiation—are, for now, fundamentally scientific, although many speculate about their future exploitation.
For the society that undertakes it, space exploration yields secondary benefits in the medium term and thus has the characteristics of an investment with deferred returns. The benefits accruing to society at large as byproducts of major space projects are innumerable. The best-known example is that of integrated circuits, developed thanks to the Apollo program that put the first human being on the Moon in 1969, and later adapted into forms usable by ordinary industry.
