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The central objective of the project, to be carried out from  2012 to 2016 based on what was accomplished between 2007 and 2011, is a critical investigation of the roles played by ethical and social values, as held by individuals or embodied in institutions, in current scientific and technological practices. This will encompass three sets of inquiries. The first concerns the contemporary significance of technoscience, including the impact of technoscientific research and development on the processes and institutionalization of scientific research; the second deals with the historical development of technoscience; and the third develops a sociological strategy for a transversal approach to the relationships between science, technology and society in Brazil.

Among the issues examined in the first set are: (a) the changes that have occurred in recent decades in technoscience's modes of social production with a shift towards greater private financing of research; (b) the manners by which these changes affected the status of the traditional values of the scientific community: objectivity, neutrality and autonomy; (c) the function of intellectual property rights in this process; (d) theoretical and practical problems of biotechnology; (e) appraisal of the meaning of these changes in light of the alternatives to technoscientific practices and the role of bioethics and of the "precautionary principle". Investigations of the second set include: (a) the idea of "control over nature" and the values of technological progress and its impact on shaping modern scientific research; (b) relations between science and technology in the modern age, particularly the role of machines and mechanistic ideas, and of the advance of experimentation in science; and (c) the impact of ideas from the tradition of Skepticism on the development of modern science. The third set focuses on the study of Brazilian society, namely: (a) the public debate on education: the contemporary production of public opinion in Brazilian society; (b) digital culture and inequality: the social uses of the new information and communication technologies; and (c) the institutions that produce, disseminate and legitimize knowledge.

The three groups of inquiries will be reinforced by the use of a model of scientific activity, which has been widely discussed and endorsed by the members of the research team, and which identifies the interrelationships between the adoption of certain methodological strategies in research and the advocacy of specific ethical and social values. In addition, this model will be tested and complemented by contrasting it with the ideas from Otto Neurath and with other approaches to contemporary philosophy of science.

The project's second objective, no less important, is practical: to continue and expand the activities of organizing seminars, publishing important works, and participating regularly in events that bring together, for constructive and rational discussion, Brazilian (and foreign) scientists, philosophers and social scientists with divergent methodological approaches and ethical outlooks, in order to ensure that a wide range of viewpoints are considered in the investigations, and to explore how the results obtained may have a positive impact on scientific research, on the teaching of science, and on higher education.

Coordinator
Pablo Rubén Mariconda — mariconda@usp.br