by With this week’s lesson concerning how Darwin developed his ideas on the theory of evolution and natural selections, I realized that social context plays an important role behind the formation of scientific theories. Factors such as religion, culture, societal structure, and demographic movement all drives sciences into certain directions. Even though we cannot affirm whether these motivations are entirely positive or negative, there are still times when the social context clearly promotes the development of science and when it hinders the development of science. In this entry, I would like to discuss examples when the promotion and hindrance happened.
The way how social context facilitates the advancement of science is that the society has certain need. One example for it is the development of vaccine for coronavirus during the pandemic of COVID-19. At the beginning of 2020, the virus of COVID-19 spread around the globe. According to data provided by google, there were about 42.6 million confirmed cases already, and 1.15 million people were dead.
10/20/2020
We should understand that 1.15 million is not just number but real people. With these enormous deaths and confirmed cases, big medical corporations all started to develop vaccines to prevent healthy people from being infected. Currently, about 7 countries and 18 vaccines are being tested, and 5 vaccines of the 18 were approved for limited use (Felter). This is the accomplishment we made within 1 year! Normally, a vaccine takes a longer time to develop. The diagram shown below is an estimate made my New York Times in April:
The truth is we took much less time to make usable vaccine, and this accomplishment will not be possible without the investment of multi-million dollars and the cooperation between company and the countries and between countries. The primary force that drove this cooperation are the strong need within the society or the social context of this year. Because of the amount of death and how urgent the world need this vaccine, countries are willing to invest tons of money and energy into this project.
The social context was not always on the same side of the scientific development. This means they may also hinder science from developing correctly. For instance, in the 19th century, a lot of the English people believed in god, and this trend posed an issue for scientific research. One example is that Darwin was a person who both believes in god but also found the theory of evolution. I feel these two beliefs are very conflicted since the biblical documents taught us that the world and animals, including animals and humans, was created by god while the theory of evolution teaches us that all animals, including human, were evolved from single-celled organisms through processes such as natural selection, which denies the presence of god. However, despite how conflicting these two believes are, they are presented together within one person. The coexistence poses a problem that Darwin refuses to confirm or talk about certain ideas. For example, when he was on the voyage on Beagle, he collected numerous fossils and samples of plants and animals. Even though these fossils and samples all lead to the idea of evolution, Darwin still considered the possibility of “center of evolution”. I believe this “misunderstanding” has a lot to do with his theological belief since his belief may encourage him to exclude the possibility of evolution. This is an issue since it’s possible for him to realize the idea of evolution earlier if he was atheist. The religious influence on his science work also exist in his writing, which he avoided talking about the idea of creator, the first origin of life, and human origin (he talked about in his second book). The social background of Darwin leads him into a different scientific path than atheist scientist which may slow down his progress. This is how social context might be a hinderance to scientific research.
When talking about science and research, all people think about are researcher who don’t communicate with the outside world often. This impression causes people to neglect how social factors influence the progress of scientific development. But, it’s still undeniable that the social expectation will lead science into different paths—shortcut or puzzle. It’s another way of saying that science developed in response to different need. This is an interesting fact to take into account when predicting the future of science and technology as we can refer to the social trend when making such prediction.
Felter, Claire. What Is the World Doing to Create a COVID-19 Vaccine? 1 Oct. 2020, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-world-doing-create-covid-19-vaccine.