Is Technoscience a Threat to Cultural Diversity?

Abstract

The very question ‘Is technoscience a threat to cultural diversity?’ raises first of all a terminology issue: what does ‘technoscience’ mean?

Notes

1. The UNESCO publications more than often retain this distinction which makes it easier for them to present contemporary science as offering one cultural representation of the world, a non‐privileged representation, a representation among others. But sometimes the difficulty to maintain this distinction comes up. So, for example, starting with 1974, the Recommandation on the status of scientific researchers gives the following definition: “The expression ‘scientific researchers’ designates persons in charge with exploring a particular field of science or technology.”

2. In Philosophies des sciences, philosophies des techniques [Science Philosophies and Technology Philosophies] (2004), I described and discussed at length both the history and the current reception of the notion of ‘technoscience’ in its relationship to philosophical reflexion on sciences and technologies.

3. According to Spanish philosophers Javier Echeverria. See our work (2005), La science: entre valeurs modernes et postmodernité (Science: between modern values and postmodernity), Vrin.

4. There is a short modern way and a large postmodern way to describe contemporary science as technoscience: the short version makes do with associating indissolubly the theoretical scientific approach and the material technological activity; the long version emphasizes the fact that all symbolical and social aspects can directly influence R&D.

5. The concern to preserve biodiversity has led to the distinction, for living species, between in situ conservation and ex situ conservation. This distinction is interesting but we must avoid transforming in situ conservation into a categorical imperative. Where this is possible without seriously encroaching upon the will to develop of a population, it might be preferable because a natural ecosystem is incomparably rich. But the ideal of the in situ at all costs is also the product of an utopian naturalist and traditionalist conservatism. My proposal is to encourage the means of ex situ conservation, the only type still possible in a lot of situations and the only one compatible with the development and evolution in many cases. To preserve ex situ cultural, symbolical, and material assets means most of all to preserve them as archives or recordings that can be revived, and not as they were originally: the undeterminate perpetuation of a human life form with its ancestral beliefs, customs, know‐how transmitted from one generation to the other. See the Convention on Biological Diversity (signed in June 1992, in Rio). This text gives questionable priority to ‘in situ’ conservation.

6. ‘Postmodern’ is not ‘anti‐modern’. In fact, postmodernity cannot truely flourish unless modern values were sufficiently preserved and fulfilled.

7. The number of principles and values set forth in the Declaration (dignity, freedom, equality, justice, benefit, non‐harm, non‐discrimination, consent, autonomy, responsability, private life, solidarity, diversity, vulnerability, etc.) is impressive (under the title ‘Principles’).