OUTLINE FOR STS 4.
have the power to better the lives of
Review Well!!
In the past, science is learned as an
independent study from other fields. It
focuses on the scientific methods,
natural processes and understanding
nature. But in the current global
scenario, science is studied holistically,
often in an interdisciplinary method,
emphasizing systems rather than
processes, synthesis more than analysis
and predicting nature’s behavior in order
to have useful application in solving
contemporary problems.
To solve our contemporary problems,
science needs to become more
multidisciplinary and its practitioners
should continue to promote cooperation
and integration between the social and
natural sciences. A holistic approach
also demands that science draw on the
contributions of the humanities (such as
history and philosophy), local
knowledge systems, aboriginal wisdom,
and the wide variety of cultural values.
The Role of Science and Technology
1. alter the way people live, connect,
communicate and transact, with
profound effects on economic
development;
2. key drivers to development, because
technological and scientific revolutions
underpin economic advances,
improvements in health systems,
education and infrastructure;
3. The technological revolutions of the
21st century are emerging from entirely
new sectors, based on micro-processors,
tele-communications, bio-technology
and nano-technology. Products are
transforming business practices across
the economy, as well as the lives of all
who have access to their effects. The
most remarkable breakthroughs will
come from the interaction of insights
and applications arising when these
technologies converge.
poor people in developing countries
5. differentiators between countries that
are able to tackle poverty effectively by
growing and developing their
economies, and those that are not.
6. engine of growth
7. interventions for cognitive
enhancement, proton cancer therapy and
genetic engineering
The Egyptian medicine was considered
advanced as compared with other
ancient nations because of one of the
early inventions of Egyptian civilization
– the papyrus. The papyrus is an ancient
form of paper, made from the papyrus
plant, a reed which grows in the marshy
areas around the Nile river. As early as
3,000 years before Christ, Egyptians
took thin slices of the stem of the
papyrus plant, laid them crosswise on
top of each other, moistened them, and
then pressed and dried them. The result
was a form of paper that was reasonably
easy to write on and store.
The ancient Greeks were the early
thinkers and as far as historians can tell,
they were the first true scientists. They
collected facts and observations and then
used those observations to explain the
natural world. Although many cultures
like the ancient Egyptians,
Mesopotamians, and Chinese had
collected observations and facts, they
had not tried to use those facts to
develop explanations of the world
around them.
Ancient China gave the world the Four
Great Inventions that include the
compass, gunpowder, papermaking and
printing. These were considered as
among the most important technological
advances and were only known to
Europe 1000 years later or during the
end of the Middle ages. These four
inventions had a profound impact on the
development of civilization throughout
the world. However, some modern
Chinese scholars have opined that other
Chinese inventions were perhaps more
sophisticated and had a greater impact
on Chinese civilization – the Four Great
Inventions serve merely to highlight the
technological interaction between East
and West.
The 14th century was the beginning of
the cultural movement of the
Renaissance, which was considered by
many as the Golden Age of Science.
During the Renaissance period, great
advances occurred in geography,
astronomy, chemistry, physics,
mathematics, anatomy, manufacturing,
and engineering. The rediscovery of
ancient scientific texts was accelerated
after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453,
and the invention of printing
democratized learning and allowed a
faster propagation of new ideas.
But this initial period is usually seen as
one of scientific backwardness. There
were no new developments in physics or
astronomy, and the reverence for
classical sources further enshrined the
Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the
universe. Renaissance philosophy lost
much of its rigour as the rules of logic
and deduction were seen as secondary to
intuition and emotion. At the same time,
Renaissance humanism stressed that
nature came to be viewed as an animate
spiritual creation that was not governed
by laws or mathematics. Science would
only be revived later, with such figures
as Copernicus, Gerolamo Cardano,
Francis Bacon, and Descartes.
The most important technological
advance of all in this period was the
development of printing, with movable
metal type, about the mid-15th century
in Germany. Johannes Gutenberg is
usually called its inventor, but in fact
many people and many steps were
involved.
The Enlightenment Period or the Age of
Reason was characterized by radical
reorientation in science, which
emphasized reason over superstition and
science over blind faith. This period
produced numerous books, essays,
inventions, scientific discoveries, laws,
wars and revolutions. The American and
French Revolutions were directly
inspired by Enlightenment ideals and
respectively marked the peak of its
influence and the beginning of its
decline. The Enlightenment ultimately
gave way to 19th-century Romanticism.
The Enlightenment’s important 17th-
century precursors included the key
natural philosophers of the Scientific
Revolution, including Galileo Galilei,
Johannes Kepler and Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. Its roots are usually traced to
1680s England, where in the span of
three years Isaac Newton published his
“Principia Mathematica” (1686) and
John Locke his “Essay Concerning
Human Understanding” (1689)—two
works that provided the scientific,
mathematical and philosophical toolkit
for the Enlightenment’s major advances.
What science offered in the 18th century
was the hope that careful observation
and experimentation might improve
industrial production significantly. The
science of metallurgy permitted the
tailoring of alloy steels to industrial
specifications, the science of chemistry
permitted the creation of new
substances, like the aniline dyes, of
fundamental industrial importance, and
that electricity and magnetism were
harnessed in the electric dynamo and
motor. Until that period science
probably profited more from industry
than the other way around. It was the
steam engine that posed the problems
that led, by way of a search for a theory
of steam power, to the creation of
thermodynamics. Most importantly, as
industry required ever more complicated
and intricate machinery,
the machine tool industry developed to
provide it and, in the process, made
possible the construction of ever more
delicate and refined instruments for
science. As science turned from the
everyday world to the worlds of atoms
and molecules, electric currents and
magnetic fields, microbes and viruses,
and nebulae and galaxies, instruments
increasingly provided the sole contact
with phenomena. A large refracting
telescope driven by intricate clockwork
to observe nebulae was as much a
product of 19th-century heavy industry
as were the steam locomotive and the
steamship.
There is not much written about the
Philippines during pre-colonial time but
analysis from archeological artifacts
revealed that the first inhabitants in the
archipelago who settled in Palawan and
Batangas around 40 000 years ago have
made simple tools or weapons of stone
which eventually developed techniques
for sawing, drilling and polishing hard
stones. This very primitive technology
was brought by primal needs of survival
by hunting wild animals and gathering
fruits and vegetables in the forest. They
learned that by polishing hard stones,
they can develop sharp objects that are
useful in their day to day activities.
From this early, we can see that
technology was developed because of a
great necessity.
As claimed by Caoili (1983), the
beginnings of modern science and
technology in the country can be traced
back to the Spanish regime because they
established schools, hospitals and started
scientific research that had important
consequences in the development of the
country. These schools, which are
mostly run by Spanish friars, formed the
first Filipino professionals. The The 3
highest institution of learning during this
time was the Royal and Pontifical
University of Santo Tomas.
But the very strict hold of the church
among citizens and its intervention and
meddling to the government propelled
by fear of intellectual awakening among
Filipinos have greatly hindered the
progress of these professionals to further
enhance their knowledge, conduct
scientific investigations and contribute
to the advancement of society. But a few
of persistent Filipino scientists
succeeded by educating themselves
abroad. One notable example of course
is our national hero, the great Dr. Jose P.
Rizal. Dr. Jose Rizal is the epitome of
the Renaissance man in the Philippine
context. He is a scientist, a doctor, an
engineer (he designed and built a water
system in Dapitan), a journalist, a
novelist, an urban planner and a hero.
Being a doctor and scientist, he had
extensive knowledge on medicine and
was able to operate his mother’s
blinding eye. When he was deported in
Dapitan, his knowledge on science and
engineering was translated into
technology by creating a water system
that improved the sanitation of
households in the area.
If the development in science and
technology was very slow during the
Spanish regime, the Philippines saw a
rapid growth during the American
occupation and was made possible by
the government’s extensive public
education system from elementary to
tertiary schools. The establishment of
various public tertiary schools like the
Philippine Normal School and
University of the Philippines provided
the needs for professionally trained
Filipinos in building the government’s
organization and programs. The growth
and application of science were still
concentrated on the health sector in the
form of biochemical analyses in
hospitals. The government supported
basic and applied research in the
medical, agricultural and related
sciences. The University of the
Philippines Los Baños opened the
College of Agriculture in 1909 while the
University of the Philippines –Diliman
opened the Colleges of Arts,
Engineering and Veterinary Medicine in
1910. The College of Medicine was
opened four years later. During this
time, there were already quite a number
of qualified Filipino physicians who
held teaching positions in the College of
Medicine, whereas most of the early
instructors and professors in other
colleges such as in the sciences and
engineering were Americans and
foreigners. Capacity building programs
that include sending qualified Filipinos
abroad for advanced training were
conducted to eventually fill up the
teaching positions in Philippine
universities. Moreover, the American
colonial government sent Filipino
youths to be educated as teachers,
engineers, physicians and lawyers in
American colleges to further capacitate
the Filipinos in various fields. However,
there was difficulty in recruiting
students for science and technology
courses like veterinary medicine,
engineering, agriculture, applied
sciences and industrial-vocational
courses. The enrollment in these courses
were dismal that the government had to
offer scholarships to attract students.
The unpopularity of these courses
stemmed from the Filipinos’ disdain
toward manual work that developed
from the 400 years under Spanish
colonization. The Filipinos then prefer
prestigious professions at that time like
priesthood, law and medicine. The
government provided more support for
the development of science and created
the Bureau of Government Laboratories
in and was later changed to Bureau of
Science. It was composed of a biological
laboratory, chemical laboratory, serum
laboratory for the production of virus
vaccine, serums and prophylactics, and a
library. The bureau was initially
managed by American senior scientists
but as more Filipinos were trained and
acquire the necessary knowledge and
skills, they eventually took over their
positions. The Bureau of Science served
as the primary training ground for
Filipino scientists and paved the way for
pioneering scientific research, most
especially on the study of various
tropical diseases that were prevalent
during those times like leprosy,
tuberculosis, cholera, dengue fever,
malaria and beri-beri. Another great
contribution of the Bureau of Science to
the development of science and
technology in the country was the
publication of the Philippine Journal of
Science. This scientific journal
published researches done in local
laboratories and reported global
scientific developments that had
relevance to the Philippine society. The
Bureau of Science became the primary
research center of the Philippines until
World War II. Lastly, on December 8,
1933, the National Research Council of
the Philippines was established.
On April 6, 1968, Pres. Ferdinand
Marcos proclaimed the 35-hectare land
in Bicutan, Taguig as the site of the
Philippine Science Community. Then in
1969, the government provided funds to
private universities to encourage them to
conduct research and create courses in
science and technology. The government
also conducted seminars for public and
private high school and college science
teachers, training programs and
scholarships for graduate and
undergraduate science scholars, and
workshops on fisheries and
Oceanography In the 1970s, focus on
science and technology was given to
applied research and the main objective
was to generate products and processes
that were supposed to have a greater
beneficial impact to the society. Relative
to this, several research institutes were
established under the National Science
Development Board (NSDB) which
includes the Philippine Coconut
Research Institute and Philippine Textile
Research Institute. Moreover, the
Philippine Atomic Energy Commission,
another agency under NSDB, explored
the uses of atomic energy for economic
development. To prepare the pool of
scientists who will work on Philippine
Atomic Commission, Pres. Marcos
assisted 107 institutions in undertaking
nuclear energy work by sending
scientists abroad to study nuclear
science and technology, and providing
basic training to 482 scientists, doctors,
engineers and technicians. Then in 1972,
by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 4,
the National Grains Authority was
created and it was tasked to improve the
rice and corn industry and thereby help
in the economic development of the
country. This was followed by the
creation of Philippine Council for
Agricultural Research to support the
progressive development of agriculture,
forestry, and fisheries in the country.
The Marcos administration also
established the Philippine Atmospheric
Geophysical and Astronomical Service
Administration (PAGASA) under the
Department of National Defense to
provide environmental protection and to
utilize scientific knowledge to ensure the
safety of the people through Presidential
Decree No. 78, s. 1972. On the
following year, the Philippine National
Oil Company was created by virtue of
Presidential Decree No. 334, s. 1973, to
promote industrial and economic
development through effective and
efficient use of energy sources. To
strengthen the scientific culture in the
country, the National Academy of
Science and Technology was established
under Presidential Decree No. 1003-A,
s. 1976. The National Academy of
Science and Technology was composed
of scientists with “innovative
achievement in the basic and applied
sciences” who will serve as the reservoir
of scientific and technological expertise
for the country.
In the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
administration, numerous laws and
projects were implemented which
concerns both the environment and
science to push technology as a tool to
increase the country’s economic level.
This is to help increase the productivity
from Science, Technology and
Innovations (STI) and help benefit the
poor people. Moreover, the term
“Filipinnovation” was the coined term
used in helping the Philippines to be an
innovation hub in Asia.The STI was
developed further by strengthening the
schools and education system such as
the Philippine Science High School
(PSHS), which focuses in science,
technology and mathematics in their
curriculum. This helps schools produce
get more involve in this sector. Private
sectors were also encouraged to
participate in developing the schools
through organizing events and
sponsorships. Future Filipino scientists
and innovators can be produced through
this system.
During President Fidel Ramos’s term,
there was a significant increase in
personnel specializing in the science and
technology field. In 1998, there was an
estimated 3,000 competent scientists and
engineers in the Philippines. Adding to
the increase of scientists would be the
result of the two newly built Philippine
Science High Schools in Visayas and
Mindanao which promotes further
development of young kids through
advance S&T curriculum. The
government provided 3,500 scholarships
for students who were taking up
professions related to S&T. Priority for
S&T personnel increased when Magna
Carta for Science and Technology
Personnel (Republic Act No. 8439) was
established. The award was published in
order to give incentives and rewards for
people who have been influential in the
field of S&T. Still under the Ramos
administration, DOST established the
“Science and Technology Agenda for
National Development (STAND)”, a
program that was significant to the field
of S&T. It identified seven export
products, 11 domestic needs, three other
supporting industries, and the coconut
industry as priority investment areas.
The seven identified export products
were computer software; fashion
accessories; gifts, toys, and houseware;
marine products; metal fabrications;
furniture; and dried fruits. The domestic
needs identified were food, housing,
health, clothing, transportation,
communication, disaster mitigation,
defense, environment, manpower
development, and energy. Three
additional support industries were
included in the list of priority sectors,
namely, packaging, chemicals, and
metals because of their linkages with the
above sectors.
Hopes in Philippine Science and
Technology
Despite the many inadequacies, from
funding to human capital, there are some
science and technology-intensive
research and capacity-building projects
which resulted in products which are
currently being used successfully and
benefits the society. One of these is the
micro-satellite. In April 2016, the
country launched into space its first
micro-satellite called Diwata-1. It was
designed, developed and assembled by
Filipino researchers and engineers under
the guidance of Japanese experts. The
Diwata (deity in English) satellite
provides real-time, high-resolution and
multi-color infrared images for various
applications, including meteorological
imaging, crop and ocean productivity
measurement and high-resolution
imaging of natural and man-made
features. It enables a more precise
estimate of the country’s agricultural
production, provides images of
watersheds and floodplains for a better
understanding of water available for
irrigation, power and domestic
consumption. The satellite also provides
accurate information on any disturbance
and degradation of forest and upland
areas. The country also has the
Nationwide Operational Assessment of
Hazards (NOAH), which uses the Lidar
(light detection and ranging) technology.
Project NOAH was initiated in June
2012 to help manage risks associated
with natural hazards and disasters. The
project developed hydromet sensors and
high-resolution geo-hazard maps, which
were generated by light detection and
ranging technology for flood modeling.
Noah helps the government in providing
timely warning with a lead time of at
least six hours in the wake of impending
floods. The country is now training the
Cambodians on this technology, as part
of the partnerships among ASEAN
countries, just like in the case of Japan
which assisted the country’s scientists
and engineers in building its first micro-
satellite.
Another hope lies in the so-called
Intelligent Operation Center
Platform.Established through a
collaboration between the local
government of Davao City and IBM
Philippines Inc., the center resulted in
the creation of a dashboard that allows
authorized government agencies, such as
police, fire and anti-terrorism task force,
to use analytics software for monitoring
events and operations in real time.
A scientific paradigm is a framework
containing all the commonly accepted
views about a subject, conventions about
what direction research should take and
how it should be performed. The
philosopher Thomas Kuhn suggested
that a paradigm includes “the practices
that define a scientific discipline at a
certain point in time." Paradigms contain
all the distinct, established patterns,
theories, common methods and
standards that allow us to recognize an
experimental result as belonging to a
field or not. Science proceeds by
accumulating support for hypotheses
which in time become models and
theories. But those models and theories
themselves exist within a larger
theoretical framework. The vocabulary
and concepts in Newton’s three laws or
the central dogma in biology are
examples of scientific “open resources"
that scientists have adopted and which
now form part of the scientific
paradigm.
Paradigms are historically and culturally
bound. For example, a modern Chinese
medical researcher with a background in
eastern medicine, will operate within a
different paradigm than a western doctor
from the 1800s
Nicolas Copernicus was a Polish scholar
working at the University of Padua in
northern Italy. The problem he wrestled
with was the paths of planetary orbits.
Through the centuries close observations
had shown that the heavens do not
always appear to move in perfect,
uninterrupted circles. Rather, they
sometimes seem to move backwards in
what are known as retrogradations. In
order to account for these irregularities,
astronomers did not do away with
Aristotle's theory of perfectly circular
orbits around the earth. Instead, they
expanded upon it, adding smaller
circular orbits (epicycles) that spun off
the main orbits. These more or less
accounted for the retrogradations seen in
orbits. Each time a new irregularity was
observed, a new epicycle was added. By
the 1500's, the model of the universe had
some 80 epicycles attached to ten
crystalline spheres (one for the moon,
sun, each of the five known planets, the
totality of the stars, a sphere to move the
other spheres, and heaven). The second
century Greek astronomer, Ptolemy was
the main authority who put order to and
passed this cumbersome system of
epicycles to posterity.
At this time, Tycho Brahe, using only
the naked eye, tracked the entire orbits
of various stars and planets. Previously,
astronomers would only track part of an
orbit at a time and assume that orbit was
in a perfect circle. Brahe kept extensive
records of his observations, but did not
really know what to do with them. That
task was left to his successor, Johannes
Kepler.
Kepler was a brilliant mathematician
who had a mystical vision of the
mathematical perfection of the universe
that owed a great deal to the ancient
Greek mathematician Pythagoras.
Despite these preoccupations, Kepler
was open minded enough to realize that
Brahe's data showed the planetary orbits
were not circular. Finally, his
calculations showed that those orbits
were elliptical.
Using his telescope, Galileo saw the
sun's perfection marred by sunspots and
the moon's perfection marred by craters.
He also saw four moons orbiting Jupiter.
In his book, The Starry Messenger
(1611), he reported these disturbing
findings and spread the news across
Europe. Most people could not
understand Kepler's math, but anyone
could look through a telescope and see
for himself the moon's craters and
Jupiter's moons.
The Church tried to preserve the
Aristotelian and Ptolemaic view of the
universe by clamping down on Galileo
and his book and made him promise not
to preach his views. However, in 1632,
Galileo published his next book,
Dialogue on the Great World Systems,
which technically did not preach the
Copernican theory (which Galileo
believed in), but was only a dialogue
presenting both views "equally". Galileo
got his point across by having the
advocate of the Church and Aristotelian
view named Simplicius (Simpleton). He
was quickly faced with the Inquisition
and the threat of torture. Being an old
man of 70, he recanted his views.
However, it was too late. Word was out,
and the heliocentric heresy was gaining
new followers daily.
The printing of Newton's book, Principia
Mathematica, in 1687 is often seen as
the start of the Enlightenment (1687-
1789). It was a significant turning point
in history, for, armed with the tools of
Newton's laws and calculus, scientists
had an unprecedented faith in their
ability to understand, predict, and
manipulate the laws of nature for their
own purposes. This sense of power
popularized science for other
intellectuals and rulers in Europe,
turning it into virtual religion for some
in the Enlightenment. Even the
geometrically trimmed shrubbery of
Versailles offers testimony to that faith
in our power over nature. Not until this
century has that faith been seriously
undermined or put into a more realistic
perspective.
The publication in 1859 of The Origin
of Species by Charles Darwin ushered in
a new era in the intellectual history of
humanity. Darwin is deservedly given
credit for the theory of biological
evolution: he accumulated evidence
demonstrating that organisms evolve
and discovered the process, natural
selection, by which they evolve. But the
importance of Darwin's achievement is
that it completed the Copernican
revolution initiated three centuries
earlier, and thereby radically changed
our conception of the universe and the
place of humanity in it. The discoveries
of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and
Newton in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, had gradually ushered in the
notion that the workings of
the universe could be explained by
human reason. It was shown that the
earth is not the center of the universe,
but a small planet rotating around an
average star; that the universe is
immense in space and in time; and that
the motions of the planets around the
sun can be explained by the same simple
laws that account for the motion of
physical objects on our planet. These
and other discoveries greatly expanded
human knowledge, but the intellectual
revolution these scientists brought about
was more fundamental: a commitment to
the postulate that the universe obeys
immanent laws that account for natural
phenomena. The workings of the
universe were brought into the realm of
science: explanation through natural
laws. Physical phenomena could be
accounted for whenever the causes were
adequately known.
The conviction that physical diseases of
the brain caused mental illness meant
that psychological causes–the kinds that
Freud would insist on studying– were
ignored. It also meant that people drew a
sharp dividing line between the "insane"
and the "sane." Insane people were those
with physical diseases of the brain. Sane
people were those without diseased
brains. Freud changed all of this.
Despite his background in physicalism
(learned during his stay in Ernst
Brücke's laboratory), his theories
explicitly rejected the purely organic
explanations of his predecessors. One of
Freud's biggest influences during his
early days as a neurologist was Jean-
Martin Charcot, the famous French
psychiatrist. Charcot claimed that
hysteria had primarily organic causes,
and that it had a regular, comprehensible
pattern of symptoms. Freud agreed with
Charcot on the latter point, but he
disagreed entirely on the former. In
essence, Freud claimed that neurotic
people had working hardware, but faulty
software. Earlier psychiatrists like
Charcot, in contrast, had claimed that
the problems were entirely in the
hardware. As psychoanalysis became
increasingly popular, psychology and
psychiatry turned away from the search
for organic causes and toward the search
for inner psychic conflicts and early
childhood traumas. As a consequence,
the line between sane and insane was
blurred: everyone, according to Freud,
had an Oedipal crisis, and everyone
could potentially become mentally ill.
Of all the accomplishments of the
ancient Middle East, the invention of the
alphabet is probably the greatest. While
pre-alphabetic systems of writing in the
Old World became steadily more
phonetic, they were still exceedingly
cumbersome, and the syllabic systems
that gradually replaced them remained
complex and difficult. In the early
Hyksos period (17th century BC) the
Northwestern Semites living in Egypt
adapted hieroglyphic characters—in at
least two slightly differing forms of
letters—to their own purposes. Thus was
developed the earliest known purely
consonantal alphabet, imitated in
northern Syria, with the addition of two
letters to designate vowels used with the
glottal catch.
This alphabet spread rapidly and was in
quite common use among the
Northwestern Semites (Canaanites,
Hebrews, Aramaeans, and especially the
Phoenicians) soon after its invention. By
the 9th century BC the Phoenicians were
using it in the western Mediterranean,
and the Greeks and Phrygians adopted it
in the 8th. The alphabet contributed
vastly to the Greek cultural and literary
revolution in the immediately following
period. From the Greeks it was
transmitted to other Western peoples.
Since language must always remain the
chief mode of communication for
people, its union with hearing and vision
in a uniquely simple phonetic structure
has probably revolutionized civilization
more than any other invention in history.
Aside from China, there were other
Asian countries that contributed to the
development of science and technology
in the world, although it varied
depending on country and time,
specially in the present times. Currently,
Japan is probably the most notable
country in Asia in terms of scientific and
technological achievement, particularly
in terms of its electronics and
automobile products. Other countries are
also notable in other scientific fields
such as chemical and physical
achievements. The general conception is
that many of the cutting-edge
technological developments, and to a
lesser extent scientific advancements,
emanate from Asia. For instance, Japan,
Taiwan, South Korea, and China
together produce a staggering 90% of
the world’s digital gadgets. Aside from
the region’s hardware dominance,
nations across Asia are becoming
increasingly important to the global
supply of digital content and services,
something which will only increase as
the continent develops over the coming
decades.
The history of the sciences in Africa is
rich and diverse. The applied sciences of
agronomy, metallurgy, engineering and
textile production, as well as medicine,
dominated the field of activity across
Africa. So advanced was the culture of
farming within West Africa, that ‘New
World‘ agricultural growth was spawned
by the use of captives from these
African societies that had already made
enormous strides in the field of
agronomy. In her work Black Rice,
Judith Carnoy demonstrates the legacy
of enslaved Africans to the Americas in
the sphere of rice cultivation. We know
also that a variety of African plants were
adopted in Asia, including coffee, the oil
palm, fonio or acha (digitaria exilis),
African rice (oryza glabberima), and
sorghum (sorghum bicolor). Plants,
whether in terms of legumes, grain,
vegetables, tubers, or, wild or cultivated
fruits, also had medicinal implications
for Africans and were used as
anesthetics or pain killers, analgesics for
the control of fever, antidotes to counter
poisons, and anthelmints aimed at
deworming. They were used also in
cardiovascular, gastro-intestinal, and
dermatological contexts. Some of these
such as hoodia gordonii and combrettum
caffrum are being integrated within
contemporary pharmaceutical systems
(Emeagwali, n.d.)
Information revolution is a period of
change that describes current economic,
social and technological trends beyond
the Industrial Revolution. The
information revolution was fueled by
advances in semiconductor technology,
particularly the metal-oxide-
semiconductor field-effect transistor
(MOSFET) and the integrated circuit
(IC) chip, leading to the Information
Age in the early 21stcentury (Lukasiak,
2010; Orton, 2009).
Information revolution might prove as
significant to the lives of people.
Computer technology is at the root of
this change, and continuing
advancements in that technology seem
to ensure that this revolution would
touch the lives of people. Computers are
unique machines; they help to extend the
brain power. Computerized robots have
been replacing blue-collar workers; they
might soon be replacing white collar
workers as well. Computers are merely
devices that follow sets of instructions
called computer programs, or software,
that have been written by people called
computer programmers. Computers
offer many benefits, but there are also
many dangers. They could help others
invade one's privacy or wage war. They
might turn one into button pusher and
cause massive unemployment.
Userfriendly systems can be easily used
by untrained people. The key
development that made personal
computers possible was the invention of
the microprocessor chip at Intel in 1971.
The truly revolutionary impact of the
Information Revolution is just beginning
to be felt. But it is not "information" that
fuels this impact. It is not "artificial
intelligence." It is not the effect of
computers and data processing on
decisionmaking, policymaking, or
strategy. It is something that practically
no one foresaw or, indeed, even talked
about ten or fifteen years ago: e-
commerce—that is, the explosive
emergence of the Internet as a major,
perhaps eventually the major, worldwide
distribution channel for goods, for
services, and, surprisingly, for
managerial and professional jobs. This is
profoundly changing economies,
markets, and industry structures;
products and services and their flow;
consumer segmentation, consumer
values, and consumer behavior; jobs and
labor markets. But the impact may be
even greater on societies and politics
and, above all, on the way we see the
world and ourselves in it.
In the Philippines, the Department of
Science and Technology (DOST) is
tasked to oversee and manage national
technology development and
acquisition, undertake technological and
scientific research and promote public
consciousness of science and
technology. DOST is responsible for
formulating and adopting a
comprehensive National Science and
Technology plan for the Philippines and
subsequently, to monitor and coordinate
its funding and implementation. It
undertakes policy research, technology
assessment, feasibility and technical
studies, and maintains a national
information system and databank on
science and technology.
In 2017, DOST launched the Science for
the People thru Administrative Order
No. 003 s. 2017. This is in response to
the government’s call to address
inequity in developments within and
among countries and is aligned with the
national goals and plans. It aims to make
science and technology more relevant to
the conditions, needs and opportunities
for contributing to regional development
while keeping abreast with the trends
and development in the country and in
the world. Likewise, the program
intends to maximize the use of science,
enhance innovation and the creative
capacity of the Filipinos towards the
achievement of inclusive and sustainable
growth.
The Science for Change Program
(S4CP) was created by the Department
of Science and Technology (DOST) to
accelerate STI in the country in order to
keep up with the developments in our
time wherein technology and innovation
are game changers. Through the Science
for Change Program (S4CP), the DOST
can significantly accelerate STI in the
country.
The NICER Program capacitates Higher
Education Institutions (HEIs) in the
regions to make significant
improvement in regional research by
integrating its development needs with
the existing R&D capabilities and
resources. It provides institutional grants
for HEIs in the regions for R&D
capacity building to improve their S&T
infrastructure. The NICER Program was
established in consultation with the
academe and industry; and endorsed by
the Regional Development Council
(RDC). Hence, a NICER is a unique
center for collaborative R&D to address
specific S&T needs of local
communities and industries, thereby
accelerating regional development. It
caters to the specific needs of the
Regions, which include upgrading,
development, and acquisition of R&D
equipment to undertake collaborative
R&D activities. Currently, there are 18
existing NICERs across 14 regions for a
total funding of P641M.
The R&D Leadership Program
complements the establishment of R&D
Centers thru the NICER Program.
RDLead provides the mechanism to
bring in experts and highly skilled
professionals with strong leadership,
management and innovative policy-
making proficiencies to be in charge of
strengthening the research capabilities of
the HEIs, National Government
Agencies (NGAs) and Research
Development Institutions (RDIs) in the
regions. Together, the RDLead and
NICER Programs will capacitate HEIs
to help improve and hasten the use of
research results that will contribute to
the socio-economic development of the
country and help address pressing
challenges. The NRCP is the
implementing agency for this program.
To light up the rest of the Philippines
sustainably was the vision of Filipina
scientist Aisa Mijeno when she made the
Sustainable Alternative Lighting (SALt)
lamp. The product concept was formed
after living with the Butbut tribe for
weeks relying only on kerosene lamps
and moonlight to do evening chores. Her
mission and advocacy is to address the
light inequality gap and end the use of
combustion based light sources
(kerosene lamps and candles) for the 16
Million Filipinos and 1.4 Billion people
across the world.
He is a Filipino scientist, inventor and
horticulturist who is known for his
successful experiment on the
inducement of flowering of mango trees
by spraying them with ethrel and
potassium nitrate. He developed a
process that caused the flowering and
fruiting of mango trees three times a
year, instead on once a year, so
dramatically improving yields. Since his
discovery, the mango industry in the
Philippines expanded. Apart from the
mango producers themselves, other
business sectors such as the producers of
the pest control chemicals, harvesters,
sellers, and all the other smaller groups
of workers related to mango industry
have benefitted from his invention. This
technology has also been successfully
applied on other fruit trees including
cashew.
She is known as the Mother of
Philippine Pediatrics, a very great
scientist and a symbol of female
empowerment in medicine, both in the
Philippines and abroad. The first Asian
woman admitted into Harvard, she
pursued graduate degrees in America
after receiving her medical degree from
the University of the Philippines. Del
Mundo pioneered numerous inventions
throughout her more than 70-year
medical career. She revolutionized
Philippine medicine, making major
breakthroughs in immunization and in
the treatment of jaundice, and providing
healthcare to thousands of poor families.
She is credited with studies that led to
the invention of the incubator and a
jaundice relieving device.
Advances in modern Filipino food
technology owe a great deal to the
creative researches and salutary
inventiveness of a woman chemist and
pharmacist from Batangas – Maria Y.
Orosa. The nowcommercially available
thirst quencher, the calamansi juice, is
just one of the popular native food
products in whose preparation and
preservation she had a hand. She
produced the “calamansi nip,” the
desiccated and powdered form of the
fruit which could be made into juice.
The most notable of her food inventions,
is “Soyalac,” a powdered preparation of
soya-beans, which helped save
the lives of thousands of Filipinos,
Americans, and other nationals who ever
held prisoners in different Japanese
concentration camps during World War
II.
The role and goal of science in
education should always be the same.
Since science is considered both
knowledge and method, operating
independent of time and place, the
benefits of science anywhere can only
be the same. The value of science lies
not only in the knowledge that it imparts
and bequeaths to the learner but also in
its methods and techniques that inculcate
in the learner’s scientific habits, skills,
and attitudes. Science, even as it is
considered a body of knowledge, it is
also taken as methodology. It has given
a tangible method and system to what
would otherwise be by chance and
accident. From the utilization of
scientific methods and techniques, one is
able to very possibly explain the past
and predict what the future holds.
The general benefits of science have
greatly challenged education of the
Philippines. While the country might
have been a beneficiary of the methods
of science even before the program of
formal education, it was during the
American period that brought about a
most significant and essential change in
the nature of education. There has been
a corresponding increase in knowledge
and understanding of natural and social
phenomena covered by all the
disciplines of science available now. It is
this education that has been largely
credited for the development of science
in the Philippines.