How is science affected by society and culture?

Question

Provide an example of how society and culture influences science.

Answer 1

Science strives for objectivity.  However, it does not exist in a vacuum.  Nor do the people who are part of it.  They are part of the prevailing social mores of the time they live in.  Consider Broca.  He was a French scientist that lived in the nineteenth century.  He measured cranial capacity by filling skulls with buckshot and measuring the amount of buckshot it took to fill them.  When he found results that appeared incorrect to him (an African skull with large cranial capacity, a female skull with large cranial capacity or a European skull with small cranial capacity) he would cull them from his samples as 'abnormal subjects'.  Using this unconscious manipulation he was able to produce results that exactly mirrored prevailing social thoughts of the day.  Europeans had the largest cranial capacity and Africans as well as other 'primitives' had the smallest.  Within these groups men always  had larger capacities than women.  His results mirrored the racism and sexism of his time.  He was not able to break free of the society he was steeped in to go where the data took him.  This is an extreme example but scientists are people too.  They must struggle with the biases of the cultures they exist in.

Answer 2

I guess the level of acceptance for new Science and technology of a society play an important role to encourage more new development and new discovery in what we have today. For example, during the Renaissance, in Europe, people were able to afford reading materials with the introduction of new printing machinery. As a result, people in Europe are able to build upon the knowledge from different parts of the world for example, India, Arabs and the Chinese etc. When people have access to these reading materials, people like Leornado Da Vinci and Pascal and many other scientists will be able to built upon those knowledge and introduce us to a new level of scientific discovery. Like what Sir Newton said, he was able to discover his many great findings because he is standing on the shoulders of the giants.