aka earth science ], geography W r i t i n g

  Discussion.   

As COVID-19 seems to have taken control over the political and media rhetoric at the national level, there appears also to be a background discourse over ‘science’. Numerous science history books such as The Power of Knowledge, The Meaning of Science, The Invention of Science, A History of Science and Society, Science in the 20th Century and Beyond, suggest that physical science impacted European and North American social development, and this is continuing today. Often historical evidence is provided of these social impacts, or consequences. Books like The Intelligibility of Nature inform how early science, largely based in physics, then chemistry and biology, advanced from investigating nature, expanding scientific knowledge in disciplines such as geology [aka earth science], geography, ecology and environmental science. Apparently, desired was a belief that through the acquisition of natural/environmental knowledge, human control of nature might be possible. Though, perhaps, a noble undertaking, trying to control nature, often through the invention of technology, by the end of the 19th and early 20th century is believed to have given birth to an alternative applied science, the roots of which lay within engineering. It is not that engineering was, previously, non-existent, for there had been people engineering for centuries and frequently utilizing scientific discoveries and knowledge. Rather astonishingly was the additional belief that through the acquisition and use of scientific understanding of nature, there could be produced technological knowledge for modifying nature; and, in turn, altering society. The hidden belief was that humanity would progress, not merely controlling nature but also making-nature over; changing nature for the better. To this end not only academic but non-academic institutions and organizations, respectively, engaged in research that was ‘designed’ to solve problems and modify nature. 

QUESTION: As you have been exploring the question of the impact of science on society, then do you agree, or disagree, with the following claim that the authority to modify nature [aka physical and/or human environments] originates from the bio-physical and human sciences?