Ciência e sociedade

During these dystopian times in which we are living, it is worth remembering the questions proposed by Rousseau in the eighteenth century: Will science destroy our habits? Will it maintain our virtues? Has science been useful in reducing inequalities? Santos (2008) affirms that we have reached a moment of rupture in the scientific order which asserted its hegemonic rule over scientific development in the last centuries. He believes that the twentyfirstcentury will not distinguish between the natural and human sciences, and that the social sciences will free themselves from positivism, since this is, in effect, “also a totalitarian model” (Santos, 2008, p.11). In this model, the author continues, “to know means to quantify” (Santos, 2008, p.15), but this implies a reduction in complexity, in a mechanistic determinism that does not contemplate the contemporary view that “all natural scientific knowledge issocial scientific knowledge” (Santos, 2008, p. 37).