Reaction to "The Science of Doing Good"
This week’s reading focuses on the use of technology in disaster relief. When talking about science doing good, we may have to clarify “to whom can science do good? ”. My opinion is that science itself aims at doing good. But the way human beings develop and use science have made it do bad in a lot of cases.
From its beginning, science has improved the life quality human beings. What about other life-forms on the planet and our environment? This paper covers the roles of science and technology in helping victims with disaster relief. Yes, they are very important and useful. They can also be used to predict the happening of disasters and save more lives.
But science has also been used by us against the nature. What if we think of the causes of those natural disasters? Why serious natural disasters are happening more and more frequently? Why is the environment on the planet getting worse? Science is not the criminal for our environmental problems. However, it is our development and usage of science that makes the environment worse. Scientific disciplines that aim at doing good to our environment were established way later, achieved less and draw fewer attentions than those that do bad to our environment.
Besides environmental issues, science is also involved in ethical issues. The article talked about the loss from natural disasters. However, wars are arguably considered more serious than a lot of natural disasters. Thanks to those who applied science and technology on weapons, we can kill more people with more advanced guns and missiles. We can even destroy our planet with nuclear weapons. The article “Science and War” from the TIME magazine also talked about the role of science in warfare and exonerated science as the war criminal.
Talking about wars, a digression came to the top of my head. The article also mentioned the use of science and technology for justices. But what is justice? It is really ambiguous and heavily influenced by ideology. Power and justice are always inter-related. Science and technology are usually better used by those have power against their rivals and may reverse justice. For example, those who killed one person are called murders. Those who conducted genocide in Serbia may end up dead in prison. At the same time, those who started a war without solid evidence of the other side’s wrong doing, killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and caused humanitarian crisis can still boldly call for human rights and liberty.
Just my two cents.
-by Kang Zhao
From its beginning, science has improved the life quality human beings. What about other life-forms on the planet and our environment? This paper covers the roles of science and technology in helping victims with disaster relief. Yes, they are very important and useful. They can also be used to predict the happening of disasters and save more lives.
But science has also been used by us against the nature. What if we think of the causes of those natural disasters? Why serious natural disasters are happening more and more frequently? Why is the environment on the planet getting worse? Science is not the criminal for our environmental problems. However, it is our development and usage of science that makes the environment worse. Scientific disciplines that aim at doing good to our environment were established way later, achieved less and draw fewer attentions than those that do bad to our environment.
Besides environmental issues, science is also involved in ethical issues. The article talked about the loss from natural disasters. However, wars are arguably considered more serious than a lot of natural disasters. Thanks to those who applied science and technology on weapons, we can kill more people with more advanced guns and missiles. We can even destroy our planet with nuclear weapons. The article “Science and War” from the TIME magazine also talked about the role of science in warfare and exonerated science as the war criminal.
Talking about wars, a digression came to the top of my head. The article also mentioned the use of science and technology for justices. But what is justice? It is really ambiguous and heavily influenced by ideology. Power and justice are always inter-related. Science and technology are usually better used by those have power against their rivals and may reverse justice. For example, those who killed one person are called murders. Those who conducted genocide in Serbia may end up dead in prison. At the same time, those who started a war without solid evidence of the other side’s wrong doing, killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and caused humanitarian crisis can still boldly call for human rights and liberty.
Just my two cents.
-by Kang Zhao
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My opinion is that science itself aims at doing good. But the way human beings develop and use science have made it do bad in a lot of cases. --> do you have any support for this?