two instances of right application to science
Answers
Explanation:
An application of science is any use of scientific knowledge for a specific purpose, whether to do more science; to design a product, process, or medical treatment; to develop a new technology; or to predict the impacts of human actions. classroom and engaging in engineering practices.
Answer:
Science is valued by society because the application of scientific knowledge helps to satisfy many basic human needs and improve living standards. Finding a cure for cancer and a clean form of energy are just two topical examples. Similarly, science is often justified to the public as driving economic growth, which is seen as a return-on-investment for public funding. During the past few decades, however, another goal of science has emerged: to find a way to rationally use natural resources to guarantee their continuity and the continuity of humanity itself; an endeavour that is currently referred to as “sustainability”.
Scientists often justify their work using these and similar arguments—currently linked to personal health and longer life expectancies, technological advancement, economic profits, and/or sustainability—in order to secure funding and gain social acceptance. They point out that most of the tools, technologies and medicines we use today are products or by-products of research, from pens to rockets and from aspirin to organ transplantation. This progressive application of scientific knowledge is captured in Isaac Asimov’s book, Chronology of science and discovery, which beautifully describes how science has shaped the world, from the discovery of fire until the 20th century.
However, there is another application of science that has been largely ignored, but that has enormous potential to address the challenges facing humanity in the present day education. It is time to seriously consider how science and research can contribute to education at all levels of society; not just to engage more people in research and teach them about scientific knowledge, but crucially to provide them with a basic understanding of how science has shaped the world and human civilisation. Education could become the most important application of science in the next decades.
“It is time to seriously consider how science and research can contribute to education at all levels of society…”
More and better education of citizens would also enable informed debate and decision-making about the fair and sustainable application of new technologies, which would help to address problems such as social inequality and the misuse of scientific discoveries. For example, an individual might perceive an increase in welfare and life expectancy as a positive goal and would not consider the current problems of inequality relating to food supply and health resources.
However, taking the view that science education should address how we apply scientific knowledge to improve the human condition raises the question of whether science research should be entirely at the service of human needs, or whether scientists should retain the freedom to pursue knowledge for its own sake—albeit with a view to eventual application. This question has been hotly debated since the publication of British physicist John D. Bernal’s book, The Social Function of Science, in 1939. Bernal argued that science should contribute to satisfy the material needs of ordinary human life and that it should be centrally controlled by the state to maximise its utility—he was heavily influenced by Marxist thought. The zoologist John R. Baker criticised this “Bernalistic” view, defending a “liberal” conception of science according to which “the advancement of knowledge by scientific research has a value as an end in itself”. This approach has been called the “free-science” approach.