ABSTRACT
Science and technology have dramatically changed our world in the last centuries, albeit in conflicting ways. On the one hand, they have significantly contributed to the improvement of our individual lives, our collective well being and the organisation of our society. On the other hand, they have resulted in various threats to life and well being and provided multiple tools to distort and even destroy our society and habitat. The development and application of modern science and technology in the various ‘sectors’ of our society (health, food, water, housing, energy, transport, industry…) can be called one of the five evolutions that, in a historical perspective, made up modernity. The other four happened in the ‘fields’ of politics (the emergence of democracy, the nation state and international politics), economics (the emergence of globalised markets and the financial economy), culture (the emergence of popular culture and modern and postmodern art) and the social (the emergence of new lifestyles and new forms of communication).
