Thinking through Science and Technology

Advancements in science, technology, and engineering are ubiquitously embraced across the globe. Their promises—more material goods, longer and healthier lives, more convenience, and more pleasure and less suffering—and their overall track record of results have largely insulated them from critical evaluation. The problems they cause are often depicted as flaws with a particular technology in some context, and their resolutions are proposed as better technologies or different deployments. This diagnosis is accepted by most people, who, while bombarded with messages of the salvific power of STEM, know little about what its practitioners do or how most technologies work.

This edited volume transcends the mood of technological optimism and disciplinary captivity to develop a critical, broad, and diverse understanding of how science, technology, and engineering have transformed human experiences, practices, and values, with an emphasis on ethics, religion, and policy. The escalating intensity of these transformations on more aspects of human existence—a trend accelerated by responses to COVID-19—and growing recognition of the severity and extent of their accompanying psychological, social, cultural, and environmental consequences make this effort timely. The chapters, many written by prominent intellectuals, draw on a range of disciplinary and cultural resources and most will likely be intellectually important and well-received individually. Taken together, the book will provide an unsurpassed composite, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural view of science, technology, and engineering and the transformations they cause.

The book includes twenty-seven chapters by scholars from the United States, Latin America, China, and Europe. The contributions use resources from diverse disciplines and traditions to help readers to think through the always changing sociotechnical milieu in which we live and work.