Keywords:
Myth, Technoscience, Complex technology, sustainabilityAbstract
A myth is a story full of fantastic facts and fabulous characters with which people try to explain and control phenomena that they cannot understand. With such a definition, nothing seems further from being a myth than the techno-scientific system. This text will not address the scientific method, the mechanism of scientific-technical work, which effectively does not meet the characteristics to be a myth, but will discuss the role that science and technology have in collective imaginaries. The techno-scientific system is incomprehensible to the vast majority of the population. Who knows how a computer works, what is the mechanism by which we withdraw money from an ATM or what oil refining really consists of? How many people can explain the Theory of Relativity or the workings of photosynthesis? For the vast majority of the population, these phenomena mean an exercise of faith similar to that of believing that Thor’s hammer generates lightning, only in this case the characters of authority are others. Despite that, technoscience is the fundamental way to explain the world. Moreover, its function is not restricted only to explaining it, but to directing it. It is the main tool that human beings conceive to shape the future. In these senses, it has characteristics of myth. This text will address two central elements for the construction of the myth of science and technology: its neutrality and its omnipotence.
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