SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Science and technology make our life bueaty and easy. With the use of science and technology will have longlife and do everything easy. Plz following me in reading this, omoyin naa ni @yetunde.
Science and technology
A scientist can also be a technologist, and vice versa. Both are necessary in any society.
It is obvious that science and technology are two words joined together by the conjunction “and”. They are often used together because, as we have seen, they are closely related. In fact some treat science and technology as a singular word as I will do in this article. The popularity of the term science and technology derives from the fact that human civilization practically depends on it.
I subscribe to the view that if one is aware of the power of science and technology in promoting development, one is obligated to continue to implore the Nigerian government and the public to do what most of the advanced nations have done for centuries, and that is, to translate science into productive technologies and use the latter to fuel the development of their country. Nehru, the late prime minister of India could not have put it more succinctly when he said:
I do not see any way out of our vicious circle of poverty except by utilizing the new sources of power which science has put at our disposal.
Initially, nature was studied by trial and error using natural ingenuity and very simple instruments and methods. Even though unsophisticated techniques were used in the early experiments, the conclusions that were drawn from them are still valid today because science utilizes very stringent methods and demands that scientists’ observations must be repeatable by anyone in any corner of our planet. In other words, experimental observations made by scientists are universal phenomena and can be treated as basic facts.
Types of Scientific Research
Man has an unquenchable innate curiosity and has continually tried to find out through scientific research how the natural world works. Scientific research can be classified under three headings:
(a) basic or fundamental research,
(b) applied research, and
(c) developmental research.
Basic research is the search for truth about nature for its own sake.
The sole aim of basic research is to contribute to the pool of new knowledge and thereby provide a better understanding of the subject
being studied. It is the search for truth for its own sake, and its intent is not to create or invent a product. Basic research is very expensive and is usually funded by the government.
In contrast to basic research, applied research is usually carried out to address a specific problem and it leads to products or services or to solutions to important problems that face society. Applied research is usually funded and carried out by companies, the government, research institutes and the universities.
In the process of carrying out applied research important new basic information about nature may be uncovered. So the distinction between basic and applied research cannot be made too rigid.
Finally, research aimed at turning applied research discoveries into large-scale, marketable commercial concerns is developmental research.
In Nigeria this quintessential continuum from basic to applied to developmental research is, as yet, practically nonexistent.
The type of scientific research that a country should be doing can become a source of controversy. In some countries people are currently debating whether their government should be investing in basic or applied research. The controversy is because basic research, whose chief purpose is to add to the pool of new knowledge, is very expensive and so is funded primarily by the government and therefore by all the citizens of a country. While, in contrast, private for-profit commercial companies use basic research information to produce marketable products for the financial benefit of only a few people in the society namely, their share-holders.
We should not join this debate at this time because we currently have a more pressing problem. Rather we should devote all our efforts to ensure that Nigeria invests adequately in the training of our children locally and in science so that they are in a position to fully appreciate science and technology and its capabilities.
Our young children should be made to know quite early in school that science and technology plays a vital role in determining the efficacy of a country’s economy and the way people live. Most people know about or have used such technology as television, motor vehicle, telephone, iPad, printer, aeroplane, computer, the Internet, email and MRI used in diagnostic medicine. The list goes on.
The point is that today technology is so ubiquitous that there is virtually no facet of our lives that is not impacted by the beneficial effects of technology whether we know it or not. In fact, Nigeria is on the way to addressing some of her developmental needs with the help of satellites which are fairly recent technologies with immense beneficial capabilities (Nigerian Satellites: The way to go. Vanguard, Feb 26, 2012). I applaud Nigeria’s decision makers for taking this progressive action.
If all the technological devices we enumerated previously originated in Nigeria you can imagine what a salutary impact this would have on Nigerian economy and how we live.
However, we acknowledge the fact that not all technologies or products of technological innovation necessarily generate beneficial effects.