A scientific-technological culture as a contemporary democratic society condition

Abstract

It is sustained that scientific-technological culture is a necessary condition for democratic life in contemporary societies. This thesis is supported through two recent examined events in Mexico: sanitary emergency during 2009 spring due to an influenza outbreak, and transnational demand for transgenic corn open field sowing, due to a Biosecurity Genetically Modified Organisms Law whose regulations were modified. In both cases, political decision making and population participation would have been different, and closer to an authentic democratic society, if an adequate scientific- technological culture existed, permitting citizen participation in an informed way and collaborating in the construction of a proper scientific-technological culture, besides the idea of science and technology philosophy which is rejected, keeping it separated from an “analytical” and “humanistic” aspect. Both are necessary and should be integrated in an adequate science and technology philosophic conception, essential in current societies.