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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Links to websites that offer contents on science and technology subjects, information and resources.

The word “Science” comes from “Scientia”, which means “knowledge”, and can be applied to a wide range of intellectual activities and disciplines with a variety of common features.

Science is knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws attained through study, experimentation and test through scientific methods in a search for useful models of reality based on natural phenomena.

This definition of science refers to pure science to differentiate it form applied science.

In any way, science implies the possibility of making precise statements susceptible to some kind of proof or demonstration, with a former classification of sciences in exact sciences (mathematics, physics, etc.), which are characterized by the possibility of exact measurement; and descriptive sciences (astronomy, geology, and others), in which precision can be established by observation and measure of repeated phenomena.

In both cases, the scientific method includes the generation of hypotheses about natural phenomena, and experimentation or observation to text those same phenomena under certain conditions, which lead to the formulation of a theory describing the process that makes possible its future prediction.

The word “Technology” comes from the Greek term “Tekhnologia”, and refers to the field of knowledge that deals with the application of scientific concepts and theories to the design, manufacturing and use of technical means and utensils for industrial and commercial objectives, and their interrelation with life, human society and natural environment.

Therefore, technology is a complex reality that encompasses systems, methods and techniques, and the resulting material objects, means and tools.

Technology has a significant and diversified effect on its surroundings, helping individuals, groups, communities to develop more advanced economic systems that, indeed, improve social infrastructures and, consequently, life conditions. Nevertheless, there are also new concerns and ethical questions and debates over the potential benefits and disadvantages of technical development, such as pollution and environmental damage, depletion of natural resources or human alienation, which deserve specific attention and particularized attention.