The ethics of science & technology studies
Mitcham, Carl
EThe tthicf of science fc technology itadioi ngiaeeriog ethics is only one aspect of a much larger educational agenda that includes a number of specialized ethical concerns. That agenda opens...
...Technology and Society magazine, published by the IEEE, is the engineers' contribution to the field...
...Ethics in Engineering, by Mike W. Martin and Roland Schinzinger, McGraw-Hill, 1983...
...204: Commonweal...
...Professional Responsibility for Harmful Actions (by Martin Curd and Larry May...
...In fact, Steven Goldman, director of the Lehigh University STS program, believes these "social processes...
...Thus, complementing engineering ethics are environmental ethics, biomedical ethics, nuclear ethics, computer ethics, etc...
...Technology...
...The development of modern technological powers has, however, promoted recognition of a need to expand ethics to relations between human beings and the non-human world — both natural and artificial...
...In fact, across the political spectrum many quite mainstream educators now recognize that science and technology must ultimately be appraised in ethical terms...
...Martin's Press, 1976) and Henry Petroski's To Engineer Is Human (St...
...The origins of the broader STS movement can be traced to 1960s reactions to certain excesses of modem science and technology and to the idea that both are somehow "value neutral...
...Technology, and Human Values from the STS program at MIT, and Technology in Society from Polytechnic University...
...For regular access to curriculum developments in the STS field, one should consult the Bulletin of Science...
...Mil lard) cm...
...The first book in English to relate engineering ethics to Christian principles...
...Fundamentalists who criticize "secular humanism" or advocate equal time for "creation science" are not as off the wall as the secular press makes out...
...Both depend on, embody, and influence human perceptions of the good...
...This analytically oriented textbook by a philosopher (Martin) and engineer (Schinzinger) grew out of EVIST-sponsored research...
...Educators are increasingly eager to teach science and technology as social processes, even in grades K-12, and as social processes which are properly influenced by and sometimes influence religion...
...10 April 1987: 203 Ethical Problems in Engineering, by Albert Flores and Robert J. Baum, eds...
...Reagan Republicans focus on the equally ethical issues of an adequate military defense and a science that can serve economic competitiveness...
...Samuel Florman's The Existential Pleasures of Engineering (St...
...Technologies, as Langdon Winner has argued in The Whale and the Reactor (University of Chicago Press, 1986), are not so much simple tools as'' forms of life "In Albert Borgmann's more comprehensive Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (University of Chicago Press, 1984), the kinds of tools we use — technical devices which conceal their functioning — are seen as giving rise to thoughtless consumption...
...as be aptly calls them, are fully understood only in their social context...
...Were there not other projects, even in science, that deserved higher priorities...
...Reidel, 1987) edited by Paul Durbin in the "Philosophy and Technology" series of the Society for Philosophy and Technology...
...1985) reflect this aspect of STS studies...
...in February — both bemoaned the lack of public debate about President Reagan's State of the Union proposal to spend $6 billion on the superconducting super collider...
...That agenda opens into die broader field of science-technology-society (STS) studies...
...Two more scholarly journals are Science...
...But if one side of the STS movement entails criticism, another aims to promote technology...
...Traditional ethics codes (such as the Ten Commandments) stress relationships between the human person and God and among human beings...
...1980...
...Responsible Technology: A Christian Perspective, by Stephen V. Monsma, et al., Eerdmans, 1986...
...Martin's Press...
...What was also important about the recent conference, however, was not just that it brought together the critical and promotional sides of the STS movement, but that it did so up and down the educational hierarchy and with explicit recognition of the importance of an STS-religion relationship...
...which, taken together, point toward.* general ethics of technology...
...Controlling Technology: Ethics and the Responsible Engineer by Stephen H. linger, Holt, Rinchart and Winston, 1982...
...A Critical Examination of Risk-Benefit Analysis in Decisions Concerning Public Safety and Health (by Mark Sagoff), Technology Assessment: A Historical Approach (by Rondo Comeron and A.J...
...CM...
...Made by the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada, it is available through the Information Center, National Society of Professional Engineers, Washington, D.C...
...The Center for Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago has also prepared a series of teaching modules on The Moral Status of Loyalty (by Marcia Baron...
...2. Cases, contains forty-nine case studies...
...Both implicitly accept science and technology as social processes that shape and are shaped by our personal and public ideals...
...Carter Democrats argue for morally fair and environmentally safe technologies...
...Neither science nor technology is neutral...
...Reprints seventy-one articles...
...Scientist Rustum Roy (director of the Materials Research Lab at Pennsylvania State 202: Commonweal University) and engineer George Bugliarello (president of Polytechnic University in New York) — Mht leaders of the recent second national STS conference on technological literacy held in Washington, D.C...
...With concern for a critical appraisal of modem technological ways of being in the world has come a desire to make sure everyone is truly knowledgeable about what he or she is criticizing...
...TheTruesteel Affair" is a video cassette dramatizing the conflict between professional standards and business pressures...
...Although recent concern about "technological literacy" has emphasized the second approach, it has not done so without some appreciation of the social choices inherent in different technologies...
...2nd edition...
...2 vols...
...Engineering Professionalism and Ethics, by James H. . Schaub and Karl Pavlovic, eds., John Wiley, 1983...
...A. Society Newsletter from Lehigh University...
...Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute...
...A resource text similar to Rotes and Baum...
...Technology, and Society published by the Penn State STS program and the Science...
...The single most important book in this field is Hans Jonas's The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (University of Chicago Press, 1984)/ A good companion volume will be the forthcoming collection Technology and Responsibility (D...
...The consumer and environmental movements, the energy crisis, ideas of alternative or intermediate technologies, the establishment of die Environmental Protection Agency in 1969 and Office of Technology Assessment in 1972, all contributed to an emerging awareness that science and technology are not wholly autonomous or self-contained disciplines...
...Some of these ideals are religious or spiritual in character and should be discussed as such...
...1, Readings, reprints sixty articles...
...Engineers particularly have been creating courses on how engineers think and defending technology as a liberating, humanistic enterprise...
Vol. 114 • April 1987 • No. 7
