Technonauka a przyszłość gatunku Homo sapiens

Abstract

This chapter is on technoscience and the potential risks for the humanity it implies. The term technoscience refers to the result of integrating science and technology – the global system which includes academic and industrial research institutions, manufacturing companies and service providers, local and international agencies administering tests, as well as local and international organizations dealing with various aspects of global development. After general considerations concerning the origin and development of technoscience, several technoscience-induced problems, identified and analyzed by philosophers in the 20th century, are selected and put under scrutiny; these are in particular: the axiological repercussions of technoscience, its influence on the evolution of democracy and pandemic consumerism, the overgrowth of business approach in technoscience and social life, the probable waning of humaneness. Although no remedies are explicitly proposed, preferred solutions may be inferred from the presented critical analysis of the technoscience-induced problems.