Impact Of Scientific Progress Research Articles

HUMAN AND IMMORTALITY IN THE VIEWS OF TRANSHUMANISTS

With the development of science, a lot of people don’t believe in the afterlife, but believe in biotechnology and the ability to overcome death, or at least delay it as much as possible. At the same time, the revolution in medical technology has created the illusion of controlling death. In this study we will consider the impact of scientific progress on changing transhumanity’s vision of death. The aim of the article is a socio-philosophical review of the dynamics and changes in transhumanist ideas about obtaining human immortality from the ideas of cryonics to cybernetic modification of human nature. Research methods are comprehensive and based on philosophical-anthropological and philosophical-cultural analysis of transhumanist concepts of human immortality.Discussion. Comparing the arguments of transhumanists about overcoming death by various methods, it becomes clear that the possibility of obtaining immortality through cryonics technologies is no longer the subject of discussion by scientists and philosophers. The attention of philosophers N. Badmington, N. Bostrom, J.Wilsdon, YN Harari, A. Turchin and M. Bakhtin is focused on the possibility of modifying the human body into an eternal cyborg personality. Conclusion. Human modification for the sake of immortality or its cyborgization is the dominant idea of solving the problem of human mortality. The expansion of the boundaries of human nature and the same time of human existence is first of all a transition to a new qualitative level of existence. As a result it is the opportunity to transfer human thoughts, memories and consciousness into the digital form or to an artificial device. So transhumanists will be able to take refuge in digital immortality. And this immortality will depend only on the ability to build and store these devices.

Features of Sanitary Legislation in Ukraine in the Mid-20th Century: Historical Overview

The paper deals with the determination of main features of sanitary legislation in Ukraine. The designated chronology of research is the latter half of the 20th century as an era of changes in this legal sphere as an answer to the technical and social changes of that time. There were outlined such features as: dynamic, interdisciplinary and preventive character of sanitary legislation with elements of international awareness. It was outlined the extended usage of statistic data and periodicals as specific sources of this sphere. The impact of scientific progress in 60-70th was indicated as one of the affecting features of that time changes in sanitary legislation. It was carried out an extensive analysis of the legislation of Ukraine of the abovementioned period.
 Keywords: Sanitary law, legal history, legislation, Ukraine

The Scientific Study of Religion and the Pillars of Human Dignity

A familiar theme in discussions of science and religion is the impact of scientific progress on our conception of ourselves. Of particular concern in understanding this impact is the question of how our view of human dignity is affected by scientific progress-or even influential scientific theories, whether or not they are ultimately well confirmed. I include here theories in the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but my concern is wider. It has been said that Darwin unseated our sense of our uniqueness in the biological realm and that Freud undermined our sense of rational self-control. Even supposing these claims are true and that they weaken or eliminate two of the pillars of human dignity, they do not by themselves undermine the possibility of justified theistic beliefs or other justified beliefs that support the view that human persons have a kind of dignity. Granted, the bare truth of theism does not imply that we are free and autonomous in the sense widely taken to be most relevant to human dignity, but some versions of theism-such as those implying that God would not have created persons who are not free and inherently valuable-tend to support the view that we have a kind of dignity. If, as many philosophers and others believe, scientific findings undermine both arguments for theism and, even apart from that, some cherished views about the uniqueness and rationality of human beings, the idea that human beings have dignity is deprived of one source of support. This paper will explore whether developments in CSR might threaten our positive selfconception and, independently of that, the idea that there is a rational basis for theism. Might the results and likely developments of CSR undermine the idea of human dignity as implying-in normal adult human beings- minimally, on the psychological side, free rational agency and a good measure of autonomy and, on the normative side, moral rights and a capacity for moral agency, i.e., roughly, for action based on moral judgment or cognition?1Scientists tend to presuppose, and philosophers widely agree, that our mental life depends on our neural life. Researchers in CSR tend to assume that their results can be accommodated by whatever is learned about the neural underpinnings of cognition, but most of them apparently proceed as if certain cognitive and broadly social-scientific concepts are adequate for scientific explanation of human behavior.2 This raises the question whether CSR is committed to the reducibility of the cognitive properties and laws crucial for its explanations to physical properties and correspondingly physicalistic laws. If not, it apparently presupposes a kind of autonomy on the part of those properties and laws. This, in turn, implies that the cognitive concepts and properties cmcial for religious expression and commitment might also have autonomous explanatory power, a kind that does not depend on taking them to be identical with any physical counterparts.Neutrality about reduction does not entail rejection of reducibility in principle. But it is not clear that anything essential in CSR precludes maintaining the irreducibility of psychological properties to physical ones (I hereafter assume that mentalistic concepts are not reducible to physicalistic ones and that in any case our main questions in this paper require considering reducibility only for properties and laws). If CSR does not entail such reducibility, then a kind of dualism important-even if not essential-for most religions cannot be attacked by naturalistic proponents of CSR as inconsistent with their scientific endeavors. If, however, CSR presupposes that physical (including neurobiological) properties and laws are explanatorily basic, it faces the problem of how to connect its own findings, at least in outline, with an underlying physicalistic theory. Section I will indicate some areas in which results in CSR bear on the issues sketched above. Section II will consider the relation between these results and a materialistic conception of the human person. …

Italians posing between public and private. Theories and practices of Social Heritage

According to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage (Unesco 2003), from the point of view on Social Heritage, the Family Photo, and by extension Family Albums, play a particular significant role. In particular, Family Albums are a specific referent point for conservation, transmission and development of a community Social Heritage. At the same time, Family Album can be considered “places” of the Italian memory and places of transmission between public and private, because the photography, since its debut, is a public space, as if to say: posing is already being in public. Amateurs photographs and professional photographs offer a chance to see a visual history of Italy and so a visual history of dominant ideologies, perceptual and cultural models of Italian life. In this sense, with Family Album we can analyzed the continuous interweaving between the idea of history and history of ideological, economic and political thinking, factors influencing consumers, tastes change and the impact of scientific progress. Specifically, Family photo is a new source for the study of Italian family’s history, that is “The True Homeland of the Italian” and so the institution on which the national identity is found (Ginsborg 2001).

Five Strategies for Accelerating the War on Cancer in an Era of Budget Deficits

In recent years, the National Institutes of Health's largest institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has adapted to difficult economic conditions by leveraging its robust infrastructure -- which includes risk factor surveillance and population monitoring, research centers (focused on basic, translation, clinical, and behavioral sciences), clinical trials and health care research networks, and rigorously validated statistical models -- to maximize the impact of scientific progress on the public health. To continue advancement and realize the opportunity of significant, population-level changes in cancer mortality, the NCI recommends that five national-level actions be taken: (1) significantly increase enrollment of Medicare patients into cancer clinical trials through adequate physician reimbursement, (2) increase NCI/Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services collaboration on clinical trials research to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of anticancer drugs, (3) establish a national outcomes research demonstration project to test strategies for measuring and improving health care quality and provide an evidence base for public policy, (4) leverage existing tobacco-control collaborations and possible new authorities at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to realize the outstanding health gains possible from a reduction in tobacco use, and (5) increase colorectal cancer screening rates though intensified collaboration between federal agencies working to address barriers to access and use of screening. These cost-effective strategies provide the opportunity for extraordinary results in an era of budget deficits. Of the chronic diseases, cancer has the strongest national research infrastructure that can be leveraged to produce rapid results to inform budget prioritization and public policy, as well as mobilize new projects to answer critical public health questions.

Наука глазами россиян

Развитие мировой науки играет решающую роль в изменении производительных сил, общественных и межгосударственных отношений. Научные достижения, реализованные в новых технологиях и инновационных продуктах, за считанные годы радикально меняют облик целых отраслей, приносят успех компаниям-инноваторам, способствуют быстрому экономическому росту отдельных стран и регионов. Мировое научное сообщество пытается оценить вероятные направления и последствия прогресса науки, а каждая страна - позиционировать себя в этом процессе и мобилизовать все возможные ресурсы, позволяющие достойно реагировать на вызовы будущего. Одним из таких ресурсов является интерес общества к науке, способность граждан осознать ее ключевую роль в развитии экономики, государства и общества, адекватно воспринимать возникающие в связи с этим запросы и потребности. Как же меняются сегодня отношения «общество - наука» в России и в мире? Хотя интерес к науке заметно снизился еще в СССР в начале 198 0-х годов, в начале реформ он упал практически до точки «замерзания». Тем не менее государство на данном этапе пытается поднять престиж науки, хотя сделать это непросто. Очевидно, что в обществе, зараженном синдромом разваливающейся науки, формируются достаточно жесткие ограничения, препятствующие притоку в науку молодежи, развитию у населения научно-инновационного мировоззрения.

Education in the Space Age

The dynamic persistence of scientific and technological development in the past two decades has aroused an intensity of public interest in education which is higher today than at any time in history. Perhaps the greatest impact of scientific progress has been the emergence of a more universal view of human society as a whole. We have two cultures-that of science, and that associated with the more traditional values of the humanities. This paper represents a technologist's attempt to present a bird's eye view of the broad educational scene, both national and international. In discussing the major issue of the controversial scientist-vs-the-non-scientist problem, the author finds that it is the non-scientist-the humanist, the artist, the literary intellectual, the politician-who is the most unbalanced member of our society, in terms of the formal education which he receives.

Scientific Progress in Agriculture, Land Requirements and Land Use Adjustments

SCIENTIFIC progress may be thought of as the sum total of all the various technological developments from the beginning of time, particularly those which have characterized western civilization since the early 1800s, and which have enhanced the abilities of factors to produce goods and services. This is called progress because we apparently prefer more to less. The introduction of technologies, however, disturbs the relationships between factors, between products, and between factors and products, and hence calls for re-examination of the way in which these factors will be combined. Today we examine particularly the impact of scientific progress on the land factor. First let us examine the nature of scientific progress in agriculture, then trace the more interesting contemporary facts about scientific progress in agriculture particularly with respect to land use before conjecturing about the future.