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 Science, Technology, and Society

Lesson 5
Human Flourishing in Terms
of Science and Technology

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 Science, Technology, and Society

Introduction
The ancient idea that happiness or flourishing should be the end of human
action, and that the nature of this end can be objectively derived from claims about
human nature or function, stands opposed to some commonly held views in
contemporary moral theory. Many contemporary theorists believe, for example, that
happiness is a subjective matter, varying from individual to individual, that morality is
chiefly other-regarding, and that the pursuit of one's own good, far from being the
purpose of moral action, is often in conflict with morality. Yet in recent years a number
of theorists have sought to revive or adapt classical notions of human flourishing in
order to give a more satisfactory account of the ends of human action and the
relationship between virtue and self-interest.

Lesson Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. identify different conceptions of human flourishing;
2. determine the development of the scientific method and validity of science; and
3. critic human flourishing vis-à-vis progress of science and technology to be able
to define for themselves the meaning of good life.

Duration : 3 hours

Lesson Proper
Eudaimonia also spelled eudaemonia, in Aristotelian ethics, the condition of
human flourishing or of living well. The conventional English translation of the ancient
Greek term, “happiness,” is unfortunate because eudaimonia, as Aristotle and most
other ancient philosophers understood it, does not consist of a state of mind or a feeling
of pleasure or contentment, as “happiness” (as it is commonly used) implies.
For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the highest human good, the only human good that is
desirable for its own sake (as an end in itself) rather than for the sake of something else
(as a means toward some other end).
According to Aristotle, every living or human-made thing, including its parts,
has a unique or characteristic function or activity that distinguishes it from all other
things. The highest good of a thing consists of the good performance of its characteristic
function, and the virtue or excellence of a thing consists of whatever traits or qualities
enable it to perform that function well. (Thus, the virtue or excellence of a knife is
whatever enables the good performance of cutting, that of an eye whatever enables the
good performance of seeing, and so on.) It follows that eudaimonia consists of the good
performance of the characteristic function of human beings, whatever that may be, and
human virtue or excellence is that combination of traits or qualities that enables humans
to perform that function well. Aristotle believes that the characteristic function of
human beings, that which distinguishes them from all other things, is their ability
to reason. Accordingly, “if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or
implies a rational principle,” and if the human good is the good performance of that
function, then the “human good turns out to be [rational] activity of soul in accordance

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with virtue,” or rational activity performed virtuously or excellently (Nichomachean

Ethics, Book I, chapter 7).
In each of his two ethical treatises, the Nichomachean Ethics and the
(presumably earlier) Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle proposed a more specific answer to the
question “What is eudaimonia?,” or “What is the highest good for humans?” The two
answers, however, appear to differ significantly from each other, and it remains a matter
of debate whether they really are different and, in any case, how they are related. In
the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle held that eudaimonia consists of philosophical or
scientific contemplation in accordance with the intellectual virtues of (theoretical)
wisdom and understanding, but he also allowed that action in the political sphere, in
accordance with (practical) wisdom and the moral virtues, such as justice and
temperance, is eudaimon (“happy”) in a “secondary degree” (Book X, chapter 8). In
the Eudemian Ethics, he maintained that eudaimonia consists of activity of the soul in
accordance with “perfect” or “complete” virtue, by which he meant (according to some
interpretations) all the virtues, both intellectual and moral (Eudemian Ethics, Book II,
chapter 1). According to both answers, it should be noted, eudaimonia is an activity (or
a range of activities) rather than a state, and it necessarily involves the exercise of
reason. Moreover, the intellectual and moral virtues or excellences of which it
is constituted are not innate talents or quickly acquired forms of knowledge but rather
are abiding traits that arise only through long habituation, reflection, and the benefits
of appropriate social experiences and circumstances (including material
circumstances). For that reason, eudaimonia must be the achievement of a “complete
life,” or at least much of a life: “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does
one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy”
(Nichomachean Ethics, Book I, chapter 7).
In the mid-20th century, eudaemonism, or the philosophical theory of human
well-being, and virtue ethics were revived as sophisticated and psychologically more
realistic alternatives to action-based ethical theories such
as deontology and consequentialism (see also utilitarianism), each of which seemed to
entail counterintuitive conclusions despite complicated theoretical modifications over
the course of two centuries.

Science, Technology, and Human Flourishing

Human flourishing involves the rational use of one’s individual human
potentialities, including talents, abilities, and virtues in the pursuit of his freely and
rationally chosen values and goals. Science and Technology must be treated as part of
human life that needs reflective and meditative thinking.
Human flourishing is defined as an effort to achieve self-actualization and
fulfillment within the context of a larger community of individuals, each with the right
to pursue his or her own such efforts. The nurse helps the individual to reclaim or
develop new pathways toward human flourishing.

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Science As Method and Results

When conducting research, scientists use the scientific method to collect
measurable, empirical evidence in an experiment related to a hypothesis (often in the
form of an if/then statement), the results aiming to support or contradict a theory.
The steps of the scientific method go something like this:
1. Make an observation or observations.
2. Ask questions about the observations and gather information.
3. Form a hypothesis — a tentative description of what's been observed, and make
predictions based on that hypothesis.
4. Test the hypothesis and predictions in an experiment that can be reproduced.
5. Analyze the data and draw conclusions; accept or reject the hypothesis or
modify the hypothesis if necessary.
6. Reproduce the experiment until there are no discrepancies between observations
and theory.

Verification Theory
The verification theory of meaning aims to characterize what it is for a sentence
to be meaningful and also what kind of abstract object the meaning of a sentence is. A
brief outline is given by Rudolph Carnap, one of the theory's most prominent defenders:
If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true, then we would
know what its meaning is. [...] thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense
identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has
meaning only if such a determination is possible. [4: 420]
In short, the verification theory of meaning claims that the meaning of a
sentence is the method of its verification.
Verificationism can only be fully appreciated in the larger context of the
philosophical credo it emerged from, namely 20th century logical empiricism (also
known as logical positivism). An empiricist subscribes at least to the following
doctrine: no oracle, intuition, pure reasoning, etc., can reveal what the world is like. All
factual knowledge has its sole source in sense experience. For example, if you want to
understand how the human brain works there is no other way to knowledge than via
observation, especially via empirical experiments. This epistemic doctrine (see
epistemology) about the nature and source of factual knowledge had already been put
forward by the classical empiricists in the 17th and 18th century. The novelty of 20th
century logical empiricism is a shift in focus from this doctrine about knowledge to a
doctrine about (scientific) language. More exactly, the logical empiricists tried to
underpin the validity of the doctrine about factual knowledge with a doctrine about
sentence meaning. This is where the verification theory of meaning has its place.
Suppose we stipulate that the meaning of a statement (a sentence, a proposition)
is given by the actions performed to find out if it is true. Or stronger, that a sentence
has to be discarded as meaningless unless one can offer a description of what fact or
state of affairs has to be observable so that this sentence can be said to be true or false.
That is precisely what the verification theory of meaning demands: "The
meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification." [10: 148] Suppose

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furthermore that all factual knowledge is expressed in meaningful sentences. Then,

together with the verification theory of meaning, we arrive back at the epistemic
doctrine from above: factual knowledge has its justification in observation. Thus,
verificationism is a linguistic counterpart of the empiricists' doctrine about knowledge.
Both logical empiricism and the verification theory of meaning are, however,
outdated theories. This is not because the general idea behind them—that empirical
knowledge depends on sense experience—has been given up by philosophers. Rather,
verificationism faced a few unsolvable technical difficulties. A closer look at the
verification theory of meaning as well as applications of the theory will unveil some of
these problems

Falsification Theory
In field known as science studies (comprising the history, philosophy and
sociology of science) has shown that falsification cannot work even in principle. This
is because an experimental result is not a simple fact obtained directly from nature.
Identifying and dating Haldane's bone involves using many other theories from
diverse fields, including physics, chemistry and geology. Similarly, a theoretical
prediction is never the product of a single theory but also requires using many other
theories. When a “theoretical” prediction disagrees with “experimental” data, what this
tells us is that that there is a disagreement between two sets of theories, so we cannot
say that any particular theory is falsified.
Fortunately, falsification—or any other philosophy of science—is not necessary
for the actual practice of science. The physicist Paul Dirac was right when he said,
"Philosophy will never lead to important discoveries. It is just a way of talking about
discoveries which have already been made.” Actual scientific history reveals that
scientists break all the rules all the time, including falsification. As philosopher of
science Thomas Kuhn noted, Newton's laws were retained despite the fact that they
were contradicted for decades by the motions of the perihelion of Mercury and the
perigee of the moon. It is the single-minded focus on finding what works that gives
science its strength, not any philosophy. Albert Einstein said that scientists are not, and
should not be, driven by any single perspective but should be willing to go wherever
experiment dictates and adopt whatever works.
Unfortunately, some scientists have disparaged the entire field of science
studies, claiming that it was undermining public confidence in science by denying that
scientific theories were objectively true. This is a mistake since science studies play
vital roles in two areas. The first is that it gives scientists a much richer understanding
of their discipline. As Einstein said: "So many people today—and even professional
scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never
seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind
of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are
suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the
mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth."
The actual story of how science evolves results in inspiring more confidence in
science, not less.

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The second is that this knowledge equips people to better argue against anti-
science forces that use the same strategy over and over again, whether it is about the
dangers of tobacco, climate change, vaccinations or evolution. Their goal is to exploit
the slivers of doubt and discrepant results that always exist in science in order to
challenge the consensus views of scientific experts. They fund and report their own
results that go counter to the scientific consensus in this or that narrow area and then
argue that they have falsified the consensus. In their book Merchants of
Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway say that for these groups “[t]he
goal was to fight science with science—or at least with the gaps and uncertainties in
existing science, and with scientific research that could be used to deflect attention from
the main event.”
Science studies provide supporters of science with better arguments to combat
these critics, by showing that the strength of scientific conclusions arises because
credible experts use comprehensive bodies of evidence to arrive at consensus judgments
about whether a theory should be retained or rejected in favor of a new one. These
consensus judgments are what have enabled the astounding levels of success that have
revolutionized our lives for the better. It is the preponderance of evidence that is
relevant in making such judgments, not one or even a few results.
So, when anti-vaxxers or anti-evolutionists or climate change deniers point to
this or that result to argue that they have falsified the scientific consensus, they are
making a meaningless statement. What they need to do is produce a preponderance of
evidence in support of their case, and they have not done so.
Falsification is appealing because it tells a simple and optimistic story of
scientific progress, that by steadily eliminating false theories we can eventually arrive
at true ones. As Sherlock Holmes put it, “When you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Such simple but incorrect
narratives abound in science folklore and textbooks. Richard Feynman in his
book QED, right after “explaining” how the theory of quantum electrodynamics came
about, said, "What I have just outlined is what I call a “physicist’s history of
physics,” which is never correct. What I am telling you is a sort of conventionalized
myth-story that the physicists tell their students, and those students tell their students,
and is not necessarily related to the actual historical development which I do not really
know!"
But if you propagate a “myth-story” enough times and it gets passed on from
generation to generation, it can congeal into a fact, and falsification is one such myth-
story.

Science As Social Endeavor

Science can't exist without interactions between people. There are some fields
of science where you can be successful with pure thought. Einstein was largely working
on his own, based on conversations with other people, obviously. But, in general,
science these days is intensely social, and particularly in the work that I do, I meet
hundreds of people per week and talk to an awful lot of people about scientific
endeavours.

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And one of the great things about science is that, to understand it, you have to
understand the kinds of personalities that are driving the science. I think, again, people
think that science is absolutely dispassionate, and that we only chase the thing that is
true. We know from a lot of philosophical studies that the definition of truth is
problematic, and in science, we recognise that many of the things that we say are
absolutely true today are not absolutely true tomorrow. In modern science, we don't
tend to talk about whether something is true, we talk about whether something fits a
model or gives us the capacity to move forward with a particular therapy.

Science And Results

When a scientist announces his study’s results, he’s telling the world the most
important findings in his study. When he mentions these results, he often glosses over
insignificant or unimportant results of his study in favor of data underlying the
conclusions that are most important. Generally, the important results of a study are
answers to the specific questions that study set out to find: the reply to the specific, but
not necessarily the overarching, question the study asked. For example, a scientist who
set out to research the relationship between waist size and diabetes might find that men
with waist sizes over 36 inches have a higher risk of diabetes. This is an important result
because it sheds light on the relationship between waist size and diabetes. So, a scientist
would call this “a result.” However, this does not address the larger question of whether
being overweight causes diabetes; that is an implication of the results and would
therefore be found in the Discussion section of a scientific report.
Many non-scientists -- and even inexperienced scientists -- confuse results with
implications. A scientific result must always be objective; it must be stated as a derived
fact, untainted by the personal opinion of the scientist reporting it. For example, in the
Results section of a scientific report, a study that finds men with waist sizes over 36
inches being at high risk for diabetes should state merely that. The implication that men
with big waists should lose weight to prevent diabetes is not a result but a suggestion
based on the result. Such suggestions can be discussed in the Discussion section of a
scientific report. Science is objective by nature, and the results of science hold true to
that objectivity.
If you’ve ever attended a science fair or heard the explanation of an amazing
experiment, you know that science can sometimes seem like a story. A scientific
experiment has a beginning and an end. The results are simply the end of the scientific
experiment: What you found in your study. For many people, the details of the
hypothesis creation, the theorizing of methods to prove the hypothesis and the technical
gobbledygook of performing the experiment are a grand adventure; for others, they’re
needless details that get in the way of the important question: “So how did the story
end?” The results give that answer in a succinct way, without forcing you to listen to
the process of the experiment.
In the hardcore world of science, results are often incomplete without statistics.
Statistics not only help show that the results are objectively -- as opposed to subjectively
-- important, but they also help scientists test their hypotheses. Some statisticians would
even say that the results are statistics. Even without understanding the statistics behind

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the science, a student of science can often know whether a result is important by asking
a scientist, “Was the result statistically significant?” This question asks the scientist
whether the result was more likely due to a true phenomenon than to randomness. For
instance, if a scientist found that bigger waist sizes being related to higher prevalence
rates of diabetes were a statistically significant result, she’s usually saying that the
probability that her study arrived at its results simply by chance is significantly low --
usually around 5 percent. Indeed, no science is perfect, but statistics allow a scientist to
show how close to perfect she can get.

Science as Education
Science is the study of phenomena and events around us through systematic
observation and experimentation. Science education cultivates students' curiosity about
the world and enhances scientific thinking. Through the inquiry process, students will
recognise the nature of science and develop scientific knowledge and science process
skills to help them evaluate the impacts of scientific and technological development.
This will prepare students to participate in public discourse in science-related
issues and enable them to become life-long learners in science and technology.
The emphasis of science education is to enhance students' scientific literacy
through investigative activities that involve planning, measuring, observing, analysing
data, designing and evaluating procedures, and examining evidence. Learning science
will enable our students to lead a fulfilling and responsible life by encouraging them to
learn independently, deal with new situations, reason critically, think creatively, make
informed decisions and solve problems.
Through science activities, students should develop an interest in science and
thus they will be motivated to become active learners in science. Students should also
develop an understanding of the interrelationship between science, technology, society
and environment (STSE), and strengthen the ability to integrate and apply knowledge
and skills across disciplines. They should be able to meet the changes and challenges
in the ever-developing society and contribute towards the scientific and technological
world.
Students with high ability or a strong interest in science need more challenging
learning programmes. These programmes should stretch the students' science
capabilities and offer opportunities for students to develop their potential to the full.

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Learner’s Feedback Form

Name of Student: ___________________________________________________

Program : ___________________________________________________
Year Level : ___________ Section : ___________
Faculty : ___________________________________________________
Schedule : ___________________________________________________

Learning Module :Number: _________ Title : _____________________

How do you feel about the topic or concept presented?

□I completely get it. □ I’m struggling.
□I’ve almost got it. □ I’m lost.

In what particular portion of this learning packet, you feel that you are struggling or
lost?
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Did you raise your concern to your instructor? □ Yes □ No

If Yes, what did he/she do to help you?

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If No, state your reason?

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