Prediction Models

As history dedicates full movements of Enlightenment and Golden age periods based on the victories of science, it is blatantly of no surprise that culture feels the effects of this as well. Just as activities of science have altered and shaped culture, the reverse has also been true across time and space. The importance of the relationship between science and culture lies at the intersection in which they merge, despite the ignorance surrounding their interaction. Since the beginning of time immemorial, the human race has fueled itself on the fire of invention, the wheel, plough, and sedentary agriculture are merely the first few examples. Coming later to the laws of nature and physical sciences, controversy and brilliance have often characterized the relevance of science in culture.

Further, still, the often-occurring flirtations that science has with philosophy has given birth to entire fields of metaphysics, logic, and going on to affecting the understanding and interpretation of various theological traditions. In the setting of the pre-modern and modern world, the rise of science, at least in the West, is attributed to the Era of Enlightenment. Starting from this, several

scientific inquiries and tools came to existence and popular use.

Establishing the disciplines of Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and later Neuroscience and Psychology, the scientific method has given rise to a plethora of culture changing phenomena. Each and every one of these fields have garnered results that have gone on to profoundly effect and shape culture, society, and human existence.

In every facet of life possible, from family to profession to politics and consumption, scientific developments have so intrinsically played a role that the separating of the cause and the effect has almost become unnecessary. However, this is not to say that culture in turn has not affected science. The reality is that science is conducted within the boundaries of culture, and though it may push at the lines, culture completely, and does not leave science.

Understanding this, we embark to move forward, and analyze the relationship and interactions the two spheres share, as well as the impact they cumulatively have on other areas.

An example of this interaction is visible in the case of gender-based use of social media in India.⁴¹ Invented as a scientific answer to the problem of socialization, Facebook has sought to make developing personal connections easier. With virtually, any user having access to view and ‘friend’ any other user, the levels and process of

41Kim Arora, “In India, only 24% of Facebook users are women,”

The Times of India. 2016.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/In-India-only-24-of-Facebook-users-are-women/articleshow/54272718.cms.

connectivity has been utterly transformed by the advent of such a site. As we culturally rely and communicate with each other, science has come to solve a problem posed by culture, however, the effect of this science on culture has been apparent too. In India, where the culture typically controlling towards, and prejudiced against women, the use of Facebook is divided on the basis of gender. As the skewed user databases favors men by a majority, questions of women’s right to internet autonomy rise. One response has been that families do not want to risk the ‘moral corruption’ of their daughters and discourage them from these Westernized practices. In a few recorded cases, when proposing marriage, the brides have been asked if they are in possession of such accounts, and if yes, they must end their use. Or alternatively, the content of their accounts is also severely monitored to track what they are posting, viewing and with whom they are engaging. Clearly, a free tool for all, culture has gone on to tremendously affect the reputation and consumption of Facebook. Of course, this social media site is not the only one with such gender skewness, Twitter, Instagram and others are also victim to such patterns of gender division.

Beyond the scope of this example, another illustration about the relationship of science and culture can be viewed in the American push for STEM education programs.⁴²Though, initially a product

42Robert Herman, “America’s High-Tech STEM Crisis,” Forbes

(September, 2018):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/09/10/americas-high-tech-stem-crisis/#55688be0f0a2.

of the Cold War, the American government sponsored and pushed for education efforts in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. A call to answer the current cultural tensions between the losing American side and winning Soviet side, science was used to alleviate war like hostilities of the time. As the threat of the USSR’s political model swept through Eastern Europe and to Central and South-Eastern Asia, the United States was under immense pressure to preserve American culture and maintain their rank as a global super-power. In doing this, the cultural rhetoric was re-framed to promote science educations, as Russia launched the first space-craft to cross the atmosphere, America sped up its motion of winning the Space Race. However, this is not all, since yet another competition was that of the Arms race. The goal of developing the hydrogen bomb and other military grade weapons needed to be achieved by the aid of scientists and engineers. To advance this cause, the U.S Department of Education began to hard push for STEM students and even started to provide Federal Assistance in paying for this education. This effort trickled down from Graduate to Undergraduate to eventually schooling level. In doing so, the students studying science were idolized and praised which created a culture focused on science. Thus, this shows how society was able to change culture by the ways of science for its own gain.

A by-product of the push for STEM was the heightened engagement in technology, particularly for artificial intelligence.⁴³ AI for short, this technology seeks to automate computer and mechanics in order to maximize work done, and minimize energy used. As any previously blue-collar employee can tell you, many of this ‘intelligent’ machines have been used to replace human workers, and especially so in factory settings. This has led to a monumental shift in the economic landscape, globally. As the demand for unskilled workers is being offset by machines, more and more individuals are having to secure better and more competitive education so they can maintain family income levels.

The production of such scientific development has led to a plethora of changes, from the quotidian incorporation of digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa, to smart houses, to robot servers, AI has transformed life as we know it, and in doing so, has had a severe impact on culture as well. Besides the shift in the economic and market landscape, Artificial Intelligence technology has become widely available and areas of robotics have expanded into nearly every industry possible. This mean mechanized farmers and farm tools, and eventually genetically modified organisms.

The food industry has been one industry which culture has been sharply changed through the means of science. From the late twentieth century green revolution, agriculture as it had existed for

43 D. G. Johnson and M. Verdicchio, “AI Anxiety,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68, no. 9.

(2017): doi:10.1002/asi.23867.

millennia completely has been revised and altered. From the techniques to tools and the individuals and the actual food produced, all facets of this process now have newfound uses for science which contribute further to cultural change. Though initially a breakthrough by Norman Borlaug, the popularization of chemical and genetic crossing in produce is now a worldwide phenomenon.⁴⁴

In the mid twentieth century, Borlaug, an agronomist, visited Mexico in hopes to improve the country’s wheat production. In order to do this, he and his team crossed over 600 varieties to wheat to create a strain that was conducive to poor growth environments and resistant to rust and disease. After much experimentation, they were able to invent a kind of wheat that was crossed with a Japanese form of the grain and suited well in the Mexican agrarian landscape. It was this achievement that was used by Mexico to change its net importer of wheat status dramatically, to transform into a net exporter of the grain. Borlaug’s technique quickly found its way over the world to other nations such as Pakistan and India, and further went on to be applied to several grains, vegetables and fruit. In the contemporary era, a multitude of ‘new’ harvests have

44Norman Borlaug, “New approach to the breeding of wheat varieties resistant to Puccinia graminis tritici,” Phytopathology, 43, no. 9 (1953): https://knowledgecenter.cimmyt.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac

detail.pl?biblionumber=10640&shelfbrowse_itemnumber=9477

been made available to the common market which has had an impact of the culture surrounding food as well.

For one, previously, nations using a ration system are much richer in foodstuffs now, and thus better provide to their populations. This means that the cultural attitude towards the scarcity of food has seen powerful alterations. Additionally, the GMO culture has resulted in discussion of the purity of the item and its creation process as many begin to concern themselves with organic and fair-trade food. The obsession for organic produce is become a visible part of class distinction in several societies as the prices for the non-organic choices are consistently lower than those of its counterparts. Further still, the processing plants of food have been so mechanized, as related to our earlier discussion of artificial intelligence technology, that the availability of fresh foods has decreased and, in its wake, left droves of food deserts, especially in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. Thus, the association of eating ‘fresh’ and ‘healthy’ has become related to higher income earning households, and brands such as ‘Wholefoods’ have embraced this status wholeheartedly as they employ specific market strategies to attract particular individuals by promising against Non-GMO options.

By practicing genetic modification, cultures have had to accommodate for several rising concerns, including: obesity and other health risk, loss in diversification of produce, control of large farming practices and the loss of individual farm-lands, ethical

questions surrounding genetically modifying nature,⁴⁵and many more. To discuss the particular issues of farmers losing land and profits to giant agglomerate agricultural businesses and the ethical ramifications of introducing, we address the existence of the AFSA (Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa) that advocates for farmers’ sovereignty and authority in food production.⁴⁶ This organization has a focus on the producers and seeks to alter food culture to take production their sovereignty into consideration. As modern agricultural technology requires heavy investment, it is often alienating for farmers to partake in, and thus goes on to flag the ethical conundrums that come from the elimination of individual farmers, their land and techniques to favor the more scientifically advanced methods introduced by the Green Revolution. However, it is really the culmination of these aforementioned inquiries that affected several facets of cultures such as family life, eating habits, medical practices, economic

45 A. Komparic, “The Ethics of Introducing GMOs into sub‐

Saharan Africa,” Bioethics, 29, no. 9 (2015):

doi:10.1111/bioe.12191.

46 E. Holt-Giménez, "From food crisis to food sovereignty: The challenge of social movements," Monthly Review, 61, (2009): 142-156.doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.14452/

MR-061-03-2009-07_11 Retrievedfrom

http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/docview/213162139?accountid=7118 .

changes, just to name a few, ergo reiterating the monumental effect that science has on culture.

However, genetic modification of organisms is not the only scientific development that is connected to the medical practice aspect of health. The advent and accessibility of robots and genetic coding, as well as disease testing, and vaccine administration have all experienced technological momentum and continue to gain speed across culture and globally. In particular, genetic testing has become a thing of the quotidian with parental and ancestry exams entering the mainstream marketplace. These distinctive advances pose several threats on privacy and create huge ethical dilemmas as well.⁴⁷As techniques of genetic sequencing under the Human Genome Project have become available to private companies for marketable use, it has become a sensation within popular culture to use these exams and reveal ones’ ancestry. However, the matter becomes problematic when the data garnered by these examinations is sold to other companies for profits. This is specifically a case of ethics when the data being sold is to a health insurance company that can increase premium or even deny people rates based on their genetic vulnerability to certain diseases. Also, the case of vaccinations in culture has seen an increase non-vaccinators who argue that these life-saving injections may cause developmental impairments to their offspring. This has caused

47 T. May, "Sociogenetic risks—ancestry DNA testing, third-party identity, and protection of privacy," The New England Journal of Medicine, 379 (5), (2018): 410-412.

somewhat of a cultural schism between the vaccinators and non-vaccinators. Lastly, the use of robotics in medicine has greatly improved the efficiency of health care providers and resulted in several success stories of patients. Science has also managed to improve other medical testing techniques and now more accurate and timely diagnoses are able to be provided. All this has increased longevity and hospitals have become more commonplace than they were once. As society familiarizes itself with science in medicine, a cultural shift which is geared towards the Western biomedical model is observed.

As scientific developments continue to seek to shape culture, the latter impacts the former equally as well. This is an important distinction to be made, and one that is often overlooked as the highlight it provided on the excellence of science. Nonetheless, lest we forget, science is coded within the context of culture, and responds to solve the problems that exist in this basis. Thus, from elements such as social media, to education, to artificial intelligence and agriculture to even medicine, science has changed and re-changed itself along with the culture it falls in to grapple with and expand the pre-existent boundaries of practices, outlooks and habits. As both these areas share a profound connection with each other, their relationship is one that has lasted through time and space.