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1.5

SCIENCE AND SOCIO-CULTURAL SPHERE IN THE INFORMATION WORLD: TENDENCIES, CONSEQUENCES AND WARNINGS

О.А. МЕKH1
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8550-8641
N.O. MEKH2
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5846-505X
1 Dobrov Institute for Scientific and Technological Potential and Science History Studies of the NAS of Ukraine
2 Rylsky Institute for Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine

Nauka naukozn. 2022, 1(115): 62—87
https://doi.org/10.15407/sofs2022.01.062

Section: Vital problems of modern science
Language: Ukrainian
Abstract: The article is devoted to vital problems originating in the scientific research of our time, especially in “breakthrough” discoveries and new types of technologies and devices made on their basis, and to analysis of the relationship between research and socio-cultural sphere in the era of post-industrial transformations.

The article contains an analysis of socio-technological effects from scientific “breakthroughs” for the socio-cultural sphere in the context of the expanding transhumanistic concept, the increasing imbalance between the functions of sciences, problems of perceptions and understanding of the science role by individuals, their dependence on science & technology progress, and the socio-humanitarian assessment of prospects and consequences of these trends. The information sources for the analysis are studies on the role of science in the human life, the relationship of scientific and socio-cultural factors, encyclopedic and scientific articles devoted to scientific “breakthroughs”, results of research projects performed by NASA, ESA, Darpa. The analysis shows that the current wave of scientific discoveries, apart from creating the next chain of technological transformations, complicates, to an increasing extent, the glocal mutual impact of science & technology and socio-cultural processes. Its main consequences are total misunderstanding of the meaning of current research results by the majority of people, and the increasing biological and social dependence of humans and society on the technical and technological component.

The conclusions are made that the global humanity is entering a hardly predictable phase of science & technology and socio-cultural transformations changing the essential conditions for the coexistence of humans and technology on the basis of transhumanistic concept. Apart from the socioeconomic and socio-cultural impact, the link of the science & technology progress with a human is being intensified at the physical level. The beginning of radical transformations of the human nature through artificial improvements of its qualities expectedly causes difficult ethical problems and conclusions about civilizational risks associated with the actual division of humans by the new human nature. There established an imbalance between the functions of science per se, with the ideological, social and cultural functions giving way to the technological one. The harmonic existence of a human in the new postindustrial and digital world requires the awareness of risks enrooted in the new transhumanistic reality, with supporting the concept of integrated development of the human potential — its physical, cognitive and especially moral components.

Keywords: science, scientific breakthroughs, socio-cultural sphere, research works, relationship of science and socio-cultural sphere, science & technology progress, transformations, human genome, transhumanistic concept.

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