HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS THAT

CHANGED THE COURSE OF

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The phrase “Philosophy of science” can be use most broadly to

describe, though related, sort inquiry, on the one hand it can be
used to describe the philosophy of particular science such as the
philosophy of, physics, biology or economics, on the other hand, it
can be used to describe the study of “Epistemological” issues in
science more generally.
SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY

Karl hempel (1905-1997) argues that the specific methods begins not
with observation but with hypothesis. According to this
HYPOTHETICO-DEDUCTIVE METHOD, One deduces certain
observational predictions from the hypothesis and then rigorously
tests them through further observation and experimentation.
A theory that has survived repeated attempts of falsification-
specially in those cases where it has made risky predictions has
been corroborated though noy confirmed. On this view, a theory is
DEMARCATED as scientific if there are observational conditions
under which one would be willing to reject the theory as falsified.
SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY AND THEORY
CHANGE

Beginning in the early 1960s there was a shift away from concerns
about scientific methodology towards concern about the scientific
change, this shift was in large part due to the publication in 1962 of
thomas kuhn’s (1922-1996) The structure of scientific revolutions.
This involves recognizing the integrity of the science within its own
time and not simply viewing it in relation to one’s contemporary
perspective.

In the 1969 postscript to The structure of Scientific Revolutions and

in the article “Objectivity, Value judgment, and theory choice”
(1977) kuhn responds to charge that his account of science makes
science irrational and leads to relativism.
SCIENTIFIC REALISM VERSUS
ANTIREALISM

A realist is one who would have us understand the

meanings of sentences in terms of their truth-conditions
(the situations that must obtain if they are to be true); an
antirealist holds that those meanings are to be understood
by reference to assertability-conditions (the circumstances
under which we would be justified in asserting them).
FEMINIST PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE

Feminist philosophies of science can be roughly divided into three

traditions;

1, Feminist empiricism
2, Feminist standpoint theory
3, Feminist postmodernism
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF LAWS

The PREMISES of the argument must contain at least one universal

or statistical used law essential in the derivation, and empirically
verifiable statements describing particular facts or initial
conditions.
 REDUCTIONISM TO THEORETICAL
PLURALISM

Reductionism can be CONSTRUED as a thesis about ontologies,

Law, theories, linguistic expressions, or some combination of these.
Considered as a between scientific theories, it can be taken as a
SYNCHRONIC relation between two CONCURRENT theories
belonging to different levels of description or a DIACHRONIC
relation between a historical predecessor theory and its successor.
Structure of Scientific
Revolution
A ROLE OF HISTORY

History, if viewed as a reposity for more than anecdotate or

chronology, could produce a desisive transfortation in yhe image of
science by which we are now posssesed. Inevitably, however, the aim
of such books is persuasive and pedagogic: a concept f science
drawn from them a tourist brochure or a language text.
However, that new concept will not be fourthcoming if historical
data continue to be sought and scrutimized mainly to answer
questions posed by the unhistorical stereotype drawn from science
text. If science is the constellationof facts, theories and methods
collected in current text, then scientist are the men who successfully
or not, have striven to contribute one or another element to that
particular constellation.
Scientist development becomes the piecemeal process by
which these items have been added, singly and in
combination to the over growing stuckfile that contitutes
scientific technique and knowledge.
As an chroniclers of an incremental process, they dicscover that
additional research makes it harder, not easier, answer to questions
like:

• WHEN OXYGEN DISCOVER?

• WHO FIRST CONCEIVED OF ENERGY CONSERVATION ?
Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply
the wrong sort question to ask. Simultaneously, these same
historians confront growing difficities in distinguishing the
“scientific” component of past observation and beliefs from
what their predecessors had readily labeled “error” and
“superstition”
 HYPERHISTORY

The three-age system is the periodization of human pre-

history (with some overlap into the historical periods in a
few regions) into three time-periods: the Stone Age, the
Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; although the concept may
also refer to other tripartite divisions of historic time-
periods.
Sometimes, we may forget how much we owe to flints and wheels, to sparks and
ploughs, to engines and computers. We are reminded of our deep technological
debt when we divide human life into prehistory and history. Such a significant
threshold is there to acknowledge that it was the invention and development of
information and communication technologies (ICTs) that made all the
difference between who we were, who record events and hence accumulate and
transmit information for future consumption became available than in a hard
or Darwinian one, and so humanity entered into history.
Age in human development that precedes the availability of ICTs. Such a
line of reasoning may suggest that humanity has been living in various
kinds of information societies at least since the Bronze Age, the era that
perspective, human societies currently stretch across three ages, as ways of
living. Millennium there were still some societies that may be living
prehistorically, without recorded documents. The greatest majority of
people today still live historically, in societies that rely on ICTs to record
and transmit are already living hyperhistorically, in societies and
environments where ICTs and their data processing.
PRE-HISTORY

Also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human

history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins
c. 3.3 million years ago and the invention of writing
systems.
HISTORY

Is the study of change over time, and it covers all aspects of

human society. Political, social, economic, scientific,
technological, medical, cultural, intellectual, religious and
military developments are all part of history .
HYPERHISTORY

More people are alive today than ever before in the

evolution of humanity. And more of us live longer and
better today than ever before. To a large measure, we owe
this to our technologies, at least insofar as we develop and
use them intelligently, peacefully, and sustainably .
In hyperhistory, there are ICTs, they record, transmit and process information, and human
societies become vitally dependent on them. Around the beginning of the third millennium,
innovation, welfare and added value moved from being ICTrelated to ICT-dependent. But not
yet hyperhistorical: it depended more on agricultural technologies, for example, than on clay
tablets. The length of time that the evolution of ICTs has taken to bring about hyperhistorical
information societies millennium BC), until the Bronze Age, and then another six millennia for
the information revolution to bear its record and transmit information, but human societies
depend mainly on other kinds of technologies concerning primary resources and energy; and in
hyperhistory, there are ICTs, they record, transmit and, above all, process information,
increasingly autonomously, and human societies become vitally dependent.
Consider the two following diagrams. Figure 5 is famous,
almost iconic. It is known as Moore’s Law and suggests
that, over the development of digital computers, the
number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles
approximately every two years.
Computational power. In 2010, an iPad2 had enough computing power to
process 1600 millions of instructions per second (MIPS). By making the price of
such a processing power equal to $100, the graph shows what it would have cost
to buy the computing power of an iPad2 in the past decades. Vertical scale is
logarithmic, so it descends by powers of ten as the price of computing power
decreases All this means that, in the fifties, the 1600 MIPS you hold in your
hands—or rather did, in 2010, because three years later the iPad4 already run
at 17056 MIPS—would have cost you $100 trillion.
Power seem to be mainly thermodynamical: they concern how well our ICTs
can dissipate heat and recover disruptive technologies that have not
sedimented: new generations keep teaching the old ones how to use You might
have heard that there is more computational power in an average, new car are
more than fifty ICT systems in an ordinary car, controlling anything from
satellite navigation to hi-fi display, connected car is already the third fastest
growing technological device after phones and tablets. Matter of (short) time
before all new cars will be connected to the Internet and, for example, find
aconvenient.
Humanity had accumulated approximately 12 exabytes4 of data in the
course of its entire history until the passing the zettabyte (1,000 exabytes)
barrier. This figure is now expected to grow fourfold approximatelyevery
three years, so that we shall have 8 zettabytes of data by 2015. generated
to fill all US libraries eight times over. Of course, trillions of ICT systems
are constantly working to greatest sources of further data, which in turn
require, or simply make possible, more ICTs. It is a self- Thanks to ICTs,
we have entered the age of the zettabyte. Our generation is the first to
experience.
Despite the importance of the phenomenon, it is unclear what exactly the term
‘big data’ means and hence For example, in the United States, the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have
identified big data as a program One of the main NSF- NIH interagency
initiatives addresses the need for core techniques and technologies for
advancing big data science and engineering. The phrase ‘big data’ in this
solicitation refers to large, diverse, complex, longitudinal, and/or NSF-12-499,
available a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult
to process using on-hand Wikipedia, ‘Big Data’, version dated 17 February
2013.
Data is small patterns, ultimately, the game will be won by those who ‘know
how to ask and answer questions’ (Plato, Cratylus, 390c), and therefore know
which data may be useful and relevant, and hence worth technologies to see the
small data patterns, but we need more and better epistemology to sift the
valuable Big data is here to grow. The only way of tackling it is to know what
you are or may be looking for. Do science by mere accumulation of data, we
should not do business and politics in that way either.
DIGITAL AMNESIA

Digital amnesia is a phenomenon in which technological knowledge

becomes lost to humanity through constant technological
advancement. When a digital source can no longer be read due to the
unavailability of the reader required to read the media, hardware,
software or physical media, or even if the media itself is damaged
beyond repair, digital amnesia is said to have occurred.
This is also known as digital obsolescence.
Hyperhistory depends on big data, but there are two myths about
the dependability of digital memory that is The first myth concerns
the quality of digital memory. Old digital documents may no longer
be usable Our digital memory seems as volatile as our oral culture
was but perhaps without memory of its own past, and the same
dynamic system that allows one to rewrite a document a thousand
times also makes it unlikely that any memory of past versions will
survive for future inspection.
Hyperhistory ran out of memory space in which to dump its data many years
ago. ‘law’ about the increasing shortage of memory, but it looks like the gap is
doubling every year. Which data are worth preserving. Slightly reassuring
virtuous circle: we should soon be able to ask big data what data is worth
saving of an app in your smart phone not only suggesting which of the ten
pictures is worth keeping, but also learning make sure machines re-learn new
preferences (later in life you may actually like brighter pictures). To understand
the other, we now need to look at some features on networks.
HYPERCONNECTIVITY

Is also a trend in computer networking in which all things

that can or should communicate through the network will
communicate through the network.
Computers may be of limited value if they are not connected to
other computers. This was not always obvious, sometimes it is still
questionable—as when your computers need to be hacker- proof
because they control the launch of nuclear missiles, for example—
but, in general, the observation is rather trivial today. When it is,
the question becomes: what is the value of connectivity? Many
theories and laws have been proposed: Reed’s Law, Sarnoff’s Law,
Beckstrom’s Law… but the most famous remains Metcalfe’s.
Communication requires a link but it comes with a speed.
Think of a road, and the difference it makes whether it is a
small street or a motorway, with or without traffic. This is
the bottleneck our future historian identified. It is known as
Nielsen’s Law.
Some years ago, Jacob Nielsen noticed that, in general, the speed of
network connections for home users like you and me increases
approximately 50% per year, thus doubling every 21 months or so.
This is impressive, but not as impressive as the speed identified by
Moore’s Law. It is also already insufficient to cope with the faster
growing ‘weight’ (number of bits) of the files we wish to transfer. As
a result, for the foreseeable future our online experience will be
constrained by our bandwidth.
THE HISTORY OF
SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY IN THE
PHILIPPINES
SCIENCE

Is concerned with the systematic

understanding and explanation of the
laws of nature.
TECHNOLOGY

Has often been understood as the “systematic knowledge of

the industrial arts.”
As this knowledge was implemented by means of
techniques, technology has become commonly taken to
mean both the knowledge and the means of its utilization,
that is, “a body, of knowledge about techniques.”
PRECOLONIAL SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY

Early Filipinos learned to make metal tools and implements –

copper, gold, bronze and, later, iron.
Filipinos were weaving cotton, smelting iron, making pottery and
glass ornaments and were
Filipinos had also learned to build boats for the coastal trade. This
had become a highly developed technology.
DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY

During the Spanish Regime

The beginnings of modern science and technology in the Philippines can be
traced to the Spanish regime.
The Spaniards established schools, hospitals and started scientific research and
these had important consequences for the rise of the country’s professions.
On the whole, however, higher education was pursued for the priesthood or for
clerical positions in the colonial administration. It was only during the latter
part of the nineteenth century that technical/vocational schools were
established by the Spaniards.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DURING
THE FIRST REPUBLIC

There was very little development in science and technology during

the short-lived Philippine Republic (1898-1900). The government
took steps to establish a secular educational system by a decree of 19
October 1898. It offered courses in law, medicine, surgery,
pharmacy and notary public.
DURING THE AMERICAN REGIME

Science and technology in the Philippines advanced rapidly during the

American regime. The Philippine Commission provided as many
scholarships to regularly organized provinces. These were awarded to the
school departments after competitive examinations. One of the scholars of
the said organizations returned to the province to serve as a physician paid
by the government. This organization distributes physicians serving
various provinces also in the large urban areas. Selected graduates in the
school of medicine and nursing were also sent by the government to
Rockefeller Foundation.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DURING
THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD

In 1935, the Philippine Commonwealth was inaugurated and ushered in a

period of transition to political independence. The Commonwealth government
likewise adopted measures to encourage and provide assistance to private
Filipino businessmen in the establishment of industries and manufacturing
enterprises. For example, it created new agencies, such as the Bureau of Mines,
to provide assistance to businessmen undertaking mining exploration and
development. It also increased appropriations for the Bureaus of Science, Plant
and Animal Industry, and thereby encouraged more scientific research for
industrial purposes. The government had to contend with economic
reconstruction, normalization of operations as well as the task of planning the
direction of economic development.
 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SINCE
INDEPENDENCE

The number of state universities and colleges has been increasing since 1946.
However, their growth has not been based on a rational plan. The University of
the Philippines System remains the most developed with extensive graduate and
undergraduate degree programs in the sciences and engineering. Private
universities and colleges have similarly increased in numbers since 1946.
However, these vary in standards. Most non-sectarian universities and colleges
are organized and managed like business enterprises and are heavily dependent
on tuition fees. On the whole, there has been little innovation in the education
and training of scientists and engineers since independence in 1946. This is in
part due to the conservative nature of self-regulation by the professional
associations.
BROKEN SYMMETRY AND THE NATURE
OF THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF
SCIENCE

Looking at the development of science in the Twentieth Century one

can distinguish two
trends, which I will call “intensive” and “extensive” research,
intensive research- goes for the fundamental laws, extensive
research- goes for the Explanation of phenomena in terms of known
fundamental laws.
The second inference is that the internal structure of a
piece of matter need not be symmetrical even if the total
state of it is. This has observable consequences in the
reactions and excitation spectra that are studied in nuclear
physics, even though it is much more difficult to
demonstrate directly than the ammonia inversion.
The symmetry leaves behind as its expression only certain
characteristic behaviors, for instance, long-wavelength
vibrations, of which the familiar exam-ple is sound waves;
or the unusual macroscopic conduction phenomena of the
superconductor; or, in a very deep analogy, the very
rigidity of crystal lattices, and thus of most solid matter.
Synthesis is expected to be all but impossible; analysis, on
the other hand,
may be not only possible but fruitful in all kinds of ways.
In closing, I offer two examples from economics of what I
hope to have said. Marx said that quantitative differences
become qualitative ones, but a dialogue in Paris in the
1920’s sums it up even more clearly:
FITZGERALD: The rich are different
from us.

HEMINGWAY: Yes, they have more

money.