Educational and Ethical Aspects of the Technoscience Challenges in the University Landscape

Abstract

Education and research are the main vectors that determine the development path of the university, while the transformations of the nature of science are so significant that in the field of education they find expression not only in the emergence of new disciplines and specialties, but also in the revision of the educational paradigm of a modern university. The paper analyzes the impact of transformations of modern science and methods of scientific knowledge production on the university and its research and educational strategies. In technoscience as a modern form of the post-non-classical paradigm of scientific rationality, science and technology form a hybrid of theoretical activity and social practice. Knowledge is produced not only in the context of discovery and underpinning, but also in the context of the estimated consequences of its application. It is shown that the challenges of technoscience, together with the dynamically developing global economy of knowledge, influence the development strategies of the university, which today performs not only research and educational functions, but also implements the mission of social responsibility, contributing to sustainable development, the introduction of responsible technologies and innovations, defending the status of knowledge as public good as opposed to the status of knowledge as social capital. The specificity of the technoscience ethos in the educational landscape of the university is updated, due to the transdisciplinary organization of scientific knowledge. Transdisciplinary research is characterized by a new vertical dimension that goes beyond the plane of object connections not only into the sphere of human as an agent, but also into the sphere of his life, practice, socio-cultural values, combining the complexity of the world with the complexity of human knowledge. The introduction of converging technologies is characterized by the unpredictability of undesirable side effects arising during their creation and operation. In a practical aspect, the ethics of technoscience is designed to contribute to the creation of mechanisms of self-restraint and self-control in conditions of uncertainty; it requires the researcher to be able to self-reflect on the methods, goals and consequences of the technologies usage. The task of a modern university in the context of the technoscience challenges is to cultivate a responsible professional, a person who is aware not only of the epistemic responsibility of a professional, but also of the internal, existential responsibility of a person as a global citizen.