SCIENCE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS

There are two major challenges where teachers and educators today have a preponderant role: the challenge of Demography and the challenge of Technology.

As for the former it is not enough to live long, it is necessary to live with quality. Therefore, we need policies of active aging, because those born today will have a life expectancy of 90 years.

As for the technology challenge, three examples:

1 - In Synthetic Biology there are new species created by science and within a few years we will have nonhuman people;

2 - Cryogenic suspension: there are many people cryo-preserved indefinitely, at a cost of 150 thousand dollars;

3 - We are one step away from being able to transplant a head from one body to another for the first time.

These challenges raise very complex ethical and bioethical problems. Science has no limit, but we have to do it first with Ethical Thinking and then with legal norms to create some order.
 

Freedom is not debauchery - neither in school nor in science. Scientific integrity is decisive because we realize that in this world of commerce, in this wild globalization, there are no rules other than capital and financing.

There are at present no serious rules in the Ethics of World Science. But we need a Science with consciousness - which is not happening. It is very serious that some countries and regions in Europe and in the world are now appealing to their memory and to reviving racial myths.

Science is not an end in itself. For a Plural Ethics and Security we need the efforts of all societies, with a very special emphasis on the role of teachers and educators in this changing world.

 

Joaquim Santos

FNE – UGT-P

Portugal