ABSTRACT
O século XX foi cenário da construção de um sistema para a operacionalização da ciência estratégica das grandes potências, chamada Big Science. Este sistema é constituído por uma vasta rede institucional integrada, o "complexo militar-industrial-acadêmico", que desenvolve pesquisas estratégicas e direciona a ciência de ponta. O objetivo deste estudo foi investigar a lógica desta construção sob a ótica do poder, fazendo um contraponto entre os desenvolvimentos tecnológicos da Física e da Biologia. Os movimentos de poder identificam algumas características que, em tese, refletem o incentivo para indução do desenvolvimento científico da modernidade, potencializado na era atômica com a fabricação de armas de destruição em massa, as armas de alta tecnologia. Nesta perspectiva, buscamos a relevância do desenvolvimento biológico de interesse político-militar, tomando por base a fabricação de três gerações de armas ao longo do século XX, com crescente posicionamento na corrida armamentista. Esta análise envolve as décadas de 1940 até 1980, na busca de demonstrar uma convergência técnico-política nas trajetórias do desenvolvimento biológico e da guerra biológica, que culminou numa conexão científico-militar no início da era biotecnológica.
The XX Century was the scenario for the construction of a system devoted to operationalizing the strategic science of the great potentials named the Big Science. This system comprehends a vast institutional and integrated network, the "military-industrial-academic complex", which carries out strategic research and guides high quality science. The objective of this study was to investigate the logics of such construction under the perspective of power, highlighting a counterpoint between the technological development of Physics and Biology. The power movement points to some characteristics, that theoretically reflect the incentive to the induction of the scientific development of modern times, potentialized during the atomic age by the manufacturing of high technology weapons. In this perspective one can search the relevance of the biological development of political-military interest in the three-generation manufacturing of weapons throughout the XX Century, and the participation in the armaments race. This historiographic analysis encompasses the decades of 1940 through 1980, in an attempt to show the ethnical-political convergence in the paths taken by the biological development and the biological war which eventually led to a scientific and military connection at the beginning of the biotechnological era.
Subject(s)
Humans , Biological Warfare , Biology/economics , Biology/legislation & jurisprudence , Biology/trends , Biotechnology/economics , Biotechnology/legislation & jurisprudence , Technological Development/economics , Technological Development/history , Technological Development/policies , Physics/trends , Biological Warfare Agents/economics , Biological Warfare Agents/ethics , Biological Warfare Agents/history , International Cooperation/history , Genome, Human/physiology , Genome, Human/genetics , Genome, Human/immunology , Power, PsychologicalABSTRACT
The reduction of sciences to a limited number, in whose terms all scientific-phenomena could be explained is conceivable. Particularly, is the reduction of biology to physics posible? The present article reviews critically this issue. First, it speaks about the topic on the parts and their relationships in the so-called llevels of organization. Secondly it refers to the reduction of one branch into another within a same science. Finally it analyses the arguments against the possibility of reducing biology to physics