Science & Tech

a. Science and Ethics

Define:
Science: systematic and organized pursuit of knowledge
Purpose of science: explain and manipulate the physical world
Einstein has 3 motives: enjoyment of intellectual power and
accomplishment, satisfaction of practical purposes, and a sort of
religious following
Science provided mankind with a language which transcends
cultural boundaries and connects us in a highly satisfying way
Ethics: study of what is right and what is wrong (morality)
Melamine scandal in China which killed several young children
rekindled the debate on whether or not ethics has a part to play in
Science
Science without ethics
Science is very much a career-driven discipline. Thus, scientists rely
very much on their reputation for ongoing funding and support and
such reputations only come when they publish high-profile scientific
papers. This publish or perish concept has caused many scientists
to fabricate data.
If scientists are given free reign, they are as likely as anyone else to
cross lines
E.g. South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk faked stem cell
research. In an interview later, he claimed that he was blinded by
work and his drive for achievement.
E.g. In 1980s, two chemists claimed they had performed controlled
nuclear fusion in a test tube. (energy woes solved?) But they had
not performed the tests properly.
E.g. Simon Shorvon (National Neuroscience Institute Chief) putting
Parkinsons disease patients through tests without informing them
E.g. Tuskegee experiment (1932-1972) African American men given
syphilis intentionally and monitored. Penicillin discovered then but
not administered
VS. Science with ethics! Genetically-modified food (very tightly
regulated) antifreeze gene in tomatoes. ETHICS: blasphemy
against life of divine origin and potential emergence of strange and
new varieties of harmful organisms
Science potent!
Means to acquiring knowledge should be subject to common ethical
codes
Due to its potency, like the analogy of a child with a gun, science
must be balanced with social responsibility
Study of science must be balanced with social responsibility
Science cannot shrink away from the moral implications that are
implicit in all forms of learning
Esp. because science now increasingly corporate-led, no more
obligation to humanity, scientists self-serving
Research funding skewed towards those which can bring about
financial benefit (armies sponsor)

Science is hindered by ethics

Science itself has no conscience
Inquisitive, creative mind hindered if need to keep thinking about
moral issues
President Bush veto of legislation to fund stem cell research saying
that crossing the line would needlessly encourage a conflict
between science and ethics that can do damage to both
Science cannot be undiscovered irreversible
Scientific improvements are pandoras boxes
E.g. Albert Einstein said that if he knew his work in nuclear physics
would lead to the invention of the nuclear bomb, he would never
have studied physics
E.g. Leader of the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer, who had earlier
chastised scientists in his team for opposing the use of the bomb for
ethical reasons, was later overwhelmed by guilt and championed
the stopping of development of nuclear weapons later on
E.g. In an attempt to develop a stronger pesticide, scientists
developed sarin gas. It was later used by Germans during WWII and
even by terrorists in the 1995 Tokyo Subway attacks
Declaration reiterates the notion that science is irreversible
Environmental problems nowadays due to scientific inventions in
the past (industrial revolution)
Thomas Watson I think theres a world market for about five
computers
Nature of ethics subjective vs. Nature of science objective
Animals: rights or soul?
No unified system of ethics
Diversified views and varying moral stands
E.g. embryonic stem cell research: varying models of ensoulment
rights of foetus (US embryo older than 14 days)
Debate alone could put scientific research and all the benefits
coming from it, on hold
Denying patients therapeutic stem cell treatment because of
dissent in the religious and moral arenas is undoubtedly more
unethical than the act of embryonic stem cell research itself.
E.g. Louis Pasteur shot to fame after testing his vaccine in a boy
who had small pox
E.g. Penicillin, the sacrifice of the rights of a few laboratory guinea
pigs has led countless lives to be saved by the invention of this
medicine
Conclusion: Albert Einstein: Science is the study of what is and not what
should be. Outside the domains of science, all forms of value judgement
are still required.
Late Pope John Paul II Science purifies religion of error and superstition.
Religion purifies science of evil and false absolutes. This is what we must
strive towards. Science must be guided by ethics, and ethics, similarly,
must also be guided by science.

Risk-conscious scientific research is the best option available

E.g. GM food may one day help Third World countries produce highly
nutritious, hardy and cheap crops. Nanotechnology may one day help us
create our wants from rubbish. Genetic engineering may one day help us
cure genetic diseases such as Parkinsons disease.
E.g. Human enhancement technology can help cure illnesses like cancer
but can be abused in sports as well
E.g. Clonaid claimed that they had cloned the first human baby, Eve, even
though they could not prove it. They received large amounts of funding
from people who were desperate to have clones despite the suspicions
surrounding the validity of this claim.

b. Government and scientist role in science

E.g. In Soviet Union, Lysenko, an agricultural scientist, claimed that he had
found a cultivation technique that could quadruple agricultural yield. The
media and propaganda machine showered praise on him. With Lysenkos
advice and Stalins blessings, many geneticists, whom Lysenko
denounced, were executed or sent to labour camps. Lysenkoism caused
long-term harm to Soviet biology. Lysenkoism continued in China for
several more years even after it was denounced by the Soviets in 1960s
E.g. From 1997 to 2002, California had a 5 year cloning moratorium to
allow lawyers, ethicists and religious leaders to debate and catch up on
the issue of cloning

c. Rely too much on technology?

Intro:
A glimpse into human civilization a century ago will reveal stark
differences in the way we lived then and now
Less reliant on tech automated
Governed by technology in so many aspects and spheres of our
lives
Fear the loss of a personal, human touch and human independence
Spawned copious science fiction movies and books that imagine a
world dominated by machines and robots, relegating Man to the
backseat
Evidence 1: Immense faith on technology is the main driving force that
keeps R&D industry thriving
E.g. Food shortage: increase crop yield through better irrigation
methods, fertilizers and GM crops
Alleviates the problem but brings with a new host of problems
Perhaps if technology were not perceived to be the best way out for
any problem, political bodies could have worked on improving the
food distribution in the world
Starvation and hunger in Nigeria and Somalia: not dearth of food
but problem of wealth: gargantuan amounts of food wastage
Many ways of addressing a problem but modern world is
presumptuous in pursuing the best technology to mitigate their
woes, overlook better solutions
Evidence 2: Characteristic laziness of modern Man
Communication extremely easy
Overlook other more personal communication channels
Handwritten letters are uncommon and few are willing to travel a
long distance to have a face-to-face conversation
Youth in Singapore overly reliant on short message service (SMS)
find it particularly crippling and difficult to connect with friends and
family
Lost a sense of independence from technology
Evidence 3: Impossible to cut down on our energy consumption
Kyoto protocol: carbon emissions and energy quota was
unfulfillable, unreasonable, unfair
Industrializing and industrialized countries need energy to fuel their
machines
Cannot perform manual jobs on our own, uphill task to reverse
peoples way of living
Reluctant to break out of their familiar lifestyles
Energy conservation is an unfeasible solution to our problem of
depleting fossil fuels
Tech used to find alternative sources of energy
Blackouts in the USA, electricity completely cut off for merely a few
hours: numerous complaints, activity seemingly ceased, normal
activity cam to a halt

Yet to infiltrate certain aspects of our lives

Human touch: developing love and emotions is only within the
power of humans
Essence of Man that technology cannot aid, intervene or replace
Retain a certain sense of independence and autonomy
Human emotion and interpersonal relationships still highly valued

d. Nuclear technology
Intro
Pilot of Enola Gay My God, what have we done?
Advent and pursuit of nuclear technology key defining feature of
the 20th century
Possession of nuclear energy facilities and nuclear weapons
aspired to dominance
Concerns over nuclear research and its applications have multiplied
in recent decades
For 1: applications to the energy industry
As oil and gas prices soar due to depleting stocks, war scares and a
falling US dollar
Pursuit of alternative sources of cheap energy
Renewable energy sources remain largely unproven and unviable
due to prohibitive costs nuclear power immensely effective in
alleviating the energy woes of the developed world
More efficient and expedient methods of producing enriched
uranium desirable
Medical applications: treatment of cancers
Against 1 / For 2: Waste disposal
Although in much less danger of running out than oil
Uranium not a renewable resource
More nuclear waste piles up from spent uranium fuel rods: harmful
and lethal consequences of nuclear waste disposal (remains
radioactive and dangerous for long periods of time)
de-enriching uranium fuel rods?
Against 2: Highly dangerous
Potentially devastating impacts on human populations and the
surrounding areas
Increasing population figures have compounded the challenges to
the pursuit of nuclear technology
Disastrous reactor failures at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island:
physical and environmental damage (pictures of deformed Russian
children and cracking Geiger counters in Scandinavia and central
Europe: necessary evil?)
For 3: Dangers largely unfounded nuclear technology remains one of
the most highly regulated fields of research
E.g. Stats from US Department of Energy and Nuclear Physics (1 in
15 proposals for nuclear research approved VS. 1 in 10 for genetic
engineering, another field widely known to have strict regulations)
Even in mega-institutes such as CERN, where nuclear research are
highly funded and encouraged, close watch on experiments,
ensuring proper protocol followed
Number of safety nets imposed: minimal concerns over safety
Against 3:

Eclipsed by recent breakthroughs in the energy industry: utilization

of new renewable energy sources (safe, clean, limitless sources of
wind, water, solar power) OR improvements to existing technology
(Germanys decision to take all nuclear reactors offline by 2025 and
replace them with a new type of highly-efficient, reduced-pollution
coal-fired plant shows that ultimately the safety of population
centres must take precedence even in the pursuit of reducing
pollution)

For 4:
Effectiveness of energy sources: nuclear energy 80%, wind and
micro-algae production only provide energy at efficiency levels of
20% and 40% respectively
Marry the concepts of environmental conservation and continued
economic development
Against 4: Nuclear weaponisation is severely detrimental to global stability
and highly undesirable given ethical concerns and political risks involved
Cold War: tens of thousands of nuclear warheads instilled worldwide
fear for four decades
End of Cold War in 1989: sign of hope for humanity BUT also
brought about notion that any further pursuit of nuclear technology
was an attempt to ruin newly-founded state of global stability
E.g. Pyongyangs 2007 nuclear test & Tehrans insistence on
pursuing peaceful nuclear research embargoes, threats of war,
UN sanctions, political isolation
Nuclear weaponisation now seen as bordering on a belligerent
action against the rest of the world

Arts and technology

Intro:
As early as 1932, art critic Walter Benjamin voiced concerns that
technological advancement encroached upon the artistic endeavour
The impact of technological advancement has spared very few
aspects of modern life and the arts are no exception
Technological wonders like the printing press, the computer and its
attendant digital graphic software and musical equipment such as
synthesizers
Allows art to expand and stay relevant
Technology does not help
The ability of to strike our fancy lies more squarely in its
composition and the message(s) relayed, than simply its form.
Unsustainable without substance.
Synthesisers: electronica genre of music emerged but it is often
derided for its synthetic unemotional quality
Technology submits the arts to crude commercialism at the hands of
advertisers
Reduces the value of a piece to the lowest common denominator as
people purchase such reproductions to hang in their rooms purely
for aesthetic pleasure and disregard the value of the arts as a
means for expressing a mood or idea
Art needs to be unique
Walter Benjamin argued that what gave art its mystical aura, its
most sacred and revered quality, was its singularity desecration o
f art
Technology and art are not always complementary, two are
antagonistic to some degree
Mass reproduction of Edvard Munchs The Scream has
desensitized modern audiences to much of the raw, unbridled
power of the original
To see angry reds and oranges glaring at you every day as you take
the train to work may consign Munchs masterpiece to the blur of
the mundane and the routine
Desensitisation is harmful insofar as it encourages careless and
cursory treatment of artwork in general few of us can claim to
have looked upon a work of art and immersed ourselves completely
in a wholly beautiful and transcendental experience
Originality tends to be compromised as everyone uses similar
software. Without education, not innovative, simply learn from
manual
Copyright issues
Proliferation of file-sharing services such as Kazaa, Limewire and
Toreentsearcher
More avenues are open for copyright breach, and this removes
incentive for artists to continue the creative effort

If sales revenue from the sale of CDs plummet because the public
opts for the cheaper alternative of free downloads, then the artist is
deprived of both the will and the resources to make a new album
Malaysian artists, for example, frequently allege this as the reason
why domestic music industry cannot take off
BUT in response to growing concerns of copyright breach, a
matrix of intellectual property law has arisen to preserve artists
incentive to create, in tandem with the recording industry of
Americas crackdown of illegal file-sharing services

Preservation of classics
Restoration and reconstruction of damaged prints from the Italian
Renaissance, currently exhibited in Americas National Gallery of
Art. Impossible without the precise tools and substances that
technological advances have given us
Development of colour fixatives has been a godsend for colourpencil artists. Absence of such fixatives, pencil pigment flakes off
easily diminishing the vibrancy of even the most meticulously
coloured masterpieces within months
Birth of some new forms of art
Digital art: Adobe Photoshop
Provide fertile ground for artistic inspiration: the Bauhaus
movement and the doctrine of new internationalism in twentiethcentury architecture argued for a consideration of houses as
functional living machines and drew inspiration from the
construction of multi-storey flats, carparks and state buildings
Marcel Duchamps masterpiece the urinal, which embodied a
rejection of the aesthetic process would have been impossible
From a Marxist perspective, developments in the technological
base led to the artistic superstructure growing even richer and
more interesting
Communication revolution and accessibility of e-texts have benefited the
literary tradition
Allowed writers access to other writers works and ideas with a click
of the mouse
Allows meeting of many minds and the literary movement is surely
richer with such dense interaction
Post-structuralist Julie Kristeva maintains that all literary texts are
tissues of past citation, allowing authors access to other works is
absolutely essential
Technology has influenced Arts content
We already know that computer technology has enabled the
diversification of art forms, but in terms of actually permeating the
concerns of artists, technology has also played a key role
Exemplified in the proliferation of art dealing with the issue of
scientific progress and whether this bodes well or ill for the future of
mankind

Helped paralysed or otherwise physically disenfranchised artists who

regain the ability to express themselves creatively. Artists who survive
road accidents lose certain motor functions and are unable to produce art
in traditional forms of sculpture or painting