TY  - UNPD
A1  - Gierer, Alfred
T1  - On modern science, human cognition and cultural diversity : an essay
N2  - The development of modern science has depended strongly on specific features of the cultures involved; however, its results are widely and transculturally accepted and applied. The science and technology of electricity, for example, emerged as a specific product of post-Renaissance Europe, rooted in the Greek philosophical tradition that encourages explanations of nature in theoretical terms. It did not evolve in China presumably because such encouragement was missing. The transcultural acceptance of modern science and technology is postulated to be due, in part, to the common biological dispositions underlying human cognition, with generalizable capabilities of abstract, symbolic and strategic thought. These faculties of the human mind are main prerequisites for dynamic cultural development and differentiation. They appear to have evolved up to a stage of hunters and gatherers perhaps some 100 000 years ago. However, the extent of the correspondence between some constructions of the human mind and the order of nature, as revealed by science, is a late insight of the last two centuries. Unless we subscribe to extreme forms of constructivism or historical relativism, we may take the success and the formal structure of science as indications of a close, intrinsic relation between the physical and the mental, between the order of nature and the structure of human cognition. At the metatheoretical level, however, modern science is consistent with philosophical and cultural diversity.
KW  - cultural diversity
KW  - science
KW  - history
KW  - Europe
KW  - China
KW  - Jesuits
KW  - electricity
Y1  - 2006
UR  - https://edoc.bbaw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/165
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b4360-100800
UR  - http://edoc.bbaw.de/oa/articles/reWzceNyax8Ok/PDF/27bD6bWJkm5vE.pdf
ER  -