Science, Technology & Values

Question 1

What is “science”?

Answer 1

Today, we’re often taught that science is the objective collection of data through observation and experimentation.“The idea of a single scientific method, shared across specialties and teachable to ten-year-olds, is just over a hundred years old. For centuries prior, science had meant a kind of knowledge, made from facts gathered through direct observation or deduced from first principles. But during the nineteenth century, science came to mean something else: a way of thinking.”

Question 2

Who are “scientists”?

Answer 2

The term “scientist” didn’t exist until 1833! Can we apply the term retroactively to people from before 1833, like Newton or Galileo? Why or why not? (The term “natural philosopher” was used before “scientist.”)The 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper argued that for a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable, or able to be tested and refuted. Scientists hypotheses can be wrong. Scientists operate in there own time and context. Until the twentieth century, higher education was restricted mostly to wealthy white men. Not good communicators. Cherry picks data they want true.

Question 3

Paradigm

Answer 3

a set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles.

Question 4

Incommensurable

Answer 4

not able to be judged by the same standard as something; having no common standard of measurement.

Question 5

Kuhn Believed

Answer 5

Kuhn argued that different scientific paradigms were not “right” or “wrong” but simply different. Kuhn saw science not as a steady, forward march toward Truth and progress but instead as a cycle of anomalous results, crises, revolutions, and paradigm shifts.

Question 6

Paradigm Shifts

Answer 6

a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.

Question 7

Structure of Scientific Revolution

Answer 7

Pre Science > Normal Science/Central Paradigm > Result fails to conform to the paradigm? Fault of researchers > More anomalous results? > crisis > New Paradigm

Question 8

Who gets to “do science”

Answer 8

determines what questions are asked (or ignored), what knowledge is pursued (or neglected), and to what end this knowledge is applied (or withheld).
Thus, the claim that science is truly objective is questionable.

Question 9

“scientific knowledge”

Answer 9

Religion has shaped and limited

scientific discourse

Question 10

“retrograde menstruation”

Answer 10

Men at NASA worried that women couldn’t be astronauts because of menstrual blood floating upwards inside the body without gravity. Sex and gender discrimination has (and continues) to shape and limit science.

Question 11

Credentials

Answer 11

a qualification, achievement, personal quality, or aspect of a person’s background, typically when used to indicate that they are suitable for something.

Question 12

Consensus

Answer 12

a general agreement.

Question 13

Communication

Answer 13

the imparting or exchanging of information or news.

Question 14

Imaginary Symbols

Answer 14

Two quick examples:

South Park uses ManBearPig–an imaginary monster that threatens humans–as a symbol for climate change.

Back in 2006, the show poked fun at former Vice President Al Gore, whose film An Inconvenient Truth documents the dangerous effects of climate change.

In a much more recent episode from 2018, a
ManBearPig denier is confronted with the reality
of the monster.

Question 15

Native Science

Answer 15

Astronomy through native eyes. The product of a different journey than western science for an example.Works with rational and metaphoric mind.

Question 16

Axiology

Answer 16

Value lies in balance of relations

Question 17

Epistemology

Answer 17

Observing, doling, making, symbolizing, rhythm,ritual and ceremony.

Question 18

Logic

Answer 18

All elements and beings of multiverse are linked together.

Question 19

Process

Answer 19

Working with the understanding that all things are dependently interrelated in the harmony and the balance of the multiverse.

Question 20

Multiverse

Answer 20

Multiverse, a hypothetical collection of potentially diverse observable universes, each of which would comprise everything that is experimentally accessible by a connected community of observers. The observable known universe, which is accessible to telescopes, is about 90 billion light-years across.

Question 21

Indigenous “Physicist”

Answer 21

Observes the world and participates in it with all of his or her sensual being. Everything in nature is alive with energy.

Question 22

Metamorphic mind (nature mind)

Answer 22

Has been evolving in human beings for over 3 million years with its greatest evolution occurring 70,000 years ago in the paleolithic era.

Question 23

Dr. Carolyn Roberts

Answer 23

Studied the African medical and botanical knowledge that helped African people survive slavery and beyon

Question 24

Magic

Answer 24

Is honest lying to your audience.

Question 25

Atom

Answer 25

All matter is made up of atoms. At the center of each atom is the nucleus, which contains positively-charged protons as well as neutrons, which have a neutral charge. Outside the nucleus are negatively-charged electrons. An immense amount of energy binds the nucleus together. By shooting neutrons at some atoms, like uranium and plutonium, this energy is released when those bonds are broken.

Question 26

Fission

Answer 26

The splitting of a heavier atom into two smaller atoms

Question 27

Nuclear fusion

Answer 27

Fusion joins two or more hydrogen atoms together to create one helium atom, and the resulting reaction releases neutrons and an immense amount of energy—several times that produced by fission. Fusion is what powers the sun and the stars and so does occur naturally---but not on earth.

Question 28

Atomic or A-bombs

Answer 28

fission bombs. Though widely destructive, A-bombs are less powerful than Hydrogen. Dropped on Japan in 1945 in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. “Little Boy”. “Fat Man”.

Question 29

H-bombs

Answer 29

fusion bombs

Question 30

Manhattan Project

Answer 30

n December 1942--one year after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor-- President Roosevelt called for the collaboration of scientists and military officials on nuclear research. This group was led by theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Question 31

Trinity Test

Answer 31

And after several years of top-secret work, it was in a remote desert in New Mexico that the world’s first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. created an enormous mushroom cloud some 40,000 feet high and equaled the force of about 20,000 tons of TNT.

Question 32

Szilard Petition

Answer 32

signed by 70 Manhattan Project scientists concerned by the use of nuclear weapons

Question 33

Trumen

Answer 33

After dropping the first bomb, Truman released a press statement calling it “the greatest achievement of organized science in history.” Because the Japanese Emperor Hirohito refused to surrender, the war continued to drag on. Truman claimed that if war lasted another few years, the casualties would outnumber those killed by the bombs, which would bring a swift end to the war.

Question 34

Langston Hughes

Answer 34

a civil rights activist and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, argued that racism explained why Truman did not bomb predominantly-white Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy but demolished Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

Question 35

Waste Isolation Plant

Answer 35

Designed for permanent disposal of Transuranic (TRU) radioactive waste and is 2150 feet deep. Also known as the department of energy.

Question 36

“Internet of Things” (IoT)

Answer 36

a system of devices that connect with the internet and collect and share data. It’s usually said to have been “born” around 2008 or 2009 because this his is when we finally had more DEVICES connected to the internet than PEOPLE.

Question 37

lifesaving IoT devices

Answer 37

“smart” inhalers for asthma suffers, cancer-treatment symptom trackers, wearable heart monitors that can instantly alert doctors of issues, and more. Some IoT devices are perhaps less necessary, but they’re fun anyway.

Question 38

panopticon

Answer 38

A term frequently applied to IoT devices and the privacy concerns of constant digital surveillance. A panoptical structure is designed so that people under surveillance never know when/whether they’re being watched at any given moment.

Question 39

utilitarianism

Answer 39

the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.