Editorial. The need to unite the study of technoscience and the humanities

Abstract

We are currently living through important transformations, both material and spiritual, which have taken place in the life processes of people and their relationship with themselves, others, and nature; these are considered profound changes in our attitude and aptitude towards knowledge and its relationship with human values and virtues, which change our way of thinking, knowing, proceeding, acting and writing. Do we take this into account when writing our articles?

This transfiguration of knowledge, regardless of the undeniable strengths and opportunities, which have made remarkable progress in the welfare and quality of life of most of humanity, has brought a series of threats and weaknesses among which stand out: concern for the future and the medium and long term consequences of human actions on nature and others; excessive consumerism of energy and raw materials that limits the possibilities of nature; the saturation of information knowledge, which is unable to convert everything into knowledge and threatens to subdue it; the lack of wisdom to define what is ethical and what is not, what is right and wrong, good and bad; the use of science for political, ideological and military purposes without questioning the moral relevance of some human activities and products; the existence of a complex world, full of uncertainty, with non-linear dynamics, with determination and causation impossible to predict.

This contemporary and often unnoticed revolution of knowledge has changed our way of inspiring and reasoning due to the fusion in time and form of advances in science, technology, and innovation in technoscience that floods our daily lives in the form of objects, instruments, information services, knowledge, and transformed lifestyles; This leads to a preference for change over the stability that has prevailed for centuries, and raises the social value of novelty and creativity, placing nature and ourselves in a totally new situation with gloomy prognoses for its future.  Therefore, in our scientific work, the need for a united thinking of the technoscience’s and the social and humanistic sciences that balance our daily work must prevail.

To face these emerging problems, we scientists must transmit, through our teachings, some paradigm shifts in valuing knowledge, among which should be considered:

-To take into account a second-order epistemology. Epistemology, when studying the nature, possibility, scope, and foundations of knowledge, must recognize that the researcher belongs to the same order of reality that he/she investigates, must consider the possibility of extending the field of observation to his/her own subjectivity, which is always incommensurable. Everyday life must be studied not as marginal, casual, or singular phenomena, but as forms of change and emergence that involve all sciences.

- Change the simplistic ideal for that of complexity. Complexity, which includes both dialectics and systemics, helps us to understand the world in terms of dynamic systems and to recognize that the different levels we inhabit (physical, biological, anthropological, socioeconomic, political, and spiritual) are interconnected with each other in a balance that cannot be broken. It has three main lines of work and understanding: complexity focused as a science, as a way of thinking, and as a worldview.

- Considering environmental problems holistically. This consideration must take into account the intrinsic value of nature and the place of human beings as part of a system. It is based on the criterion that the disciplinary and even scientific frameworks for the approach to problems are narrow and make the search for solutions impossible. It is necessary to consider, teach, and demonstrate the idea of accepting full responsibility for our biological and cultural survival and the preservation of the environment.

- To assume in all our decisions global bioethics.  This discipline aims to change knowledge and reflection in considering the ethical issues raised by the development of science and technology. Ethics that combines the humility of knowledge, responsibility, interdisciplinary and intercultural that gives meaning to life. Its main conditioning is the search for wisdom for human survival through the creation of bridges between specialties, disciplines, and people.

- Reformulate a new economy. The new economy cannot be only economic, it has to be integral, ecological, social, ethical, at the service of present and future man, and conserves nature and that starts from a human and humanizing science and conscience. In addition to traditional economics, we should speak of ecological economics, human resources economics, environmental economics, health economics, circular economics, social economics, economics of the common good, etc. To establishing a good dialogue between science and politics, the keywords should be eco-efficiency, eco-efficacy, and eco-effectiveness.

In summary, by uniting the objectives of the technoscience and the humanistic sciences, we aim to: achieve temporality and epistemic objectivity, the consideration of uncertainty, chaos, and emergence in decision-making, inter-discipline and intersectionality when analyzing environmental problems, the application of bioethics as a way to reach the maximum knowledge of wisdom, the introduction of another economy that leads to natural and social creativity as scientific horizons, and an essential return of scientific concerns to daily life, ethics, values, and virtues.

In 1797, the Spanish writer, jurist, scientist, priest, economist, and enlightened politician Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, wrote his masterly essay: ¨Prayer about the need to unite the study of literature with that of science¨; in this essay getting ahead of the times he wrote "But this subdivision, so profitable to progress, was very disastrous to the state of the sciences, and as it extended their, it made their acquisition more difficult, and transferred to elementary education, it made it longer and more painful, if no longer impossible and eternal. How is it that this inconvenience has not been felt until now? How has it not been felt that truncated the tree of wisdom, separated the root from its trunk, and the trunk its great branches, and dismembering and scattering all its offshoots, that link was destroyed, that intimate union which all human knowledge has among itself, whose intuition, whose comprehension must be the sole end of our study, and without the possession of which all knowledge is vain?"We exemplify these considerations in the first article of this issue entitled Climate Change Seen from the Perspective of the Contemporary Revolution of Knowledge, and as always, we await the considerations of our readers on the subject treated.

Thank you.