The The knowledge society and humanism

Abstract

The paper discusses epistemological aspects of the relationship among science, technology and humanism in the era of information, here called society of knowledge. The fundamental assumption is that there is a simultaneous development of scientific and technological knowledge, on the one hand, and humanism, on the other. However, this relationship is not parallel. Humanism operates transversely to science and technology. To the extent that science and technology do not have a value in themselves, but in their uses, so can they be instruments to avoid human autonomy as, on the contrary, facilitate this autonomy. In the society of knowledge, scientific and technological developments are “necessary conditions” for the emergence of humanism – or at least the kind of humanism engendered within it – , but they are not “sufficient conditions”. The paper attempts to show that the simultaneity and the transversality intersections between knowledge and humanism in this model of society suggest that this relationship necessarily includes an epistemological perspective, that is, there is an epistemological assumption in the human ethics condition itself. We are ethical beings because we know, although the act of knowing does not make us necessarily ethical beings.