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El Ágora U.S.B.

Print version ISSN 1657-8031

Ágora U.S.B. vol.15 no.1 Medellin Jan./June 2015

 

EDITORIAL.

By Diego Alejandro Muñoz Gaviria1


ABSTRACT.

To think today in our Latin America and particularly in Colombia, where the overcoming of an important component of the armed conflict is at stake, which is derived from its unequal social and political structures. It is important that research be more than policies leading to techno-bureaucracy of knowledge, and that, on the contrary, researchers can open the range of possibilities, which is a challenge as a traveler and eccentric kind. It is a political and imperative call so that we do not allow ourselves to be captivated with the accumulation and the facade of "scientific" research.

KEY WORDS: Science Metrics, Research, Educational Policies, and Higher Education.


It can be anthropologically stated that the human being is a curious being, that his transformation, characterized by a traveling species (Homo Viator), is based on the search of new possibilities, in the conquest of new horizons. This human condition of curiosity has also a strong connection with the eccentric condition of the human being, with his possibility of breaking with the center itself. The fact of being curious will be the condition of possibility in the human being, of his openness to the world, of his leading experience of meaning (Scheler, 1990).

The previous ideas allow us to defend a project of humanity that resists the reduction of the human condition to mere contemplation, mere adaptation, just a mere function. These ideas claim with all their political and historic power, the human condition as a permanent chore, which although emerges from the initial naive curiosity, enables the configuration of more and more epistemic curiosities, which are able to ask, to stress, to problematize, and to transform different states of things. Epistemic curiosity and its guiding question: "why this and not the other?," allows the invention of other worlds, always possible and alternative to those which have been taken for granted , and therefore, are assumed as status quo.

It is assumed that in the Western civilizing process, the creation of science has been legitimated by the epistemic curiosity, by the philosophical anthropology of a traveler and eccentric human, by the political ability of the invention of other material and spiritual realities. From the beginning of the so-called modern Western knowledge, its basic substrate has been the culture of questioning, the search as a revitalizing factor of the scientific construction. Yet in the classical epistemological debates from the 18th and 19th centuries, either in its explanatory clue - positivist - in the comprehensive reading, or in the transformative proposal - criticism. The common place of these epistemological traditions of explanation, understanding, and transformation is the search and the creation of new realities, the discovery as the foundation of scientific progress (Mardones, 1991).

For our twenty-first century, it would be pertinent to ask ourselves about the validity of the epistemic curiosity, of the discovery as the foundation for the explanation, understanding, and processing, even of the active human condition. And these issues are vitally important to contextualize the ways that certain social settings, which could be laid down in their generality as constituents of the modern world system -capitalist -colonial, validate or not this questioning substrate of science. It would seem as if the disputes or controversies around the way in which human beings approach the construction of their truths, would stay in this type of societies reduced to the instrumental use of certain techniques and technologies that distract from the founding issue, that is to say, which move us away in their technical reason from curiosity and the human questioning (Zemelman,1998).

What the critical theories of the 19th and 20th centuries had called instrumental reason seems to be the format of validity of the current search for truth and discovery seems to be subsumed in a mantle of fascist modernization, science seems to be reduced to myth (Horkheimer, 2003). The myth of the instrumental uses of research technologies, the myth of production statistics, the myth of justification contexts, the myth of the market consulting, the myth of science as a generator of capital, the myth of a researcher as an accumulator of products and research as funding. In this context, the question of the human epistemic curiosity is seen as an attack on the semantics of the dominant order, a challenge to the conservative forms of life, which attempt to perpetuate themselves in this world system.

Both the existential crisis and meaning that awaken this instrumental colonization to science, research, and the world of life, is the condition of possibility that we have today those who defend anthropologically and historically the human condition as active life, the subject as an agent and not as a mere spectator. For the particular case of this issue of the Agora journal, it aims to generate critical readings to research technologies, to the existing instrumental reasons stated there, to the myths of disguised scientific nature, of those researchers reduced to the accumulation of products, which is present in the technocracies of the official research in Colombia (Habermas, 1986).

Today it is vital in terms of a critical theory of science in Colombia, to reveal the existing mythological and conservative background in the instrumental reduction of the search for truth to the policies of science and technology in the country, and to their presentation formats. To think today, in our country, that research is more than these policies and that researchers can open the range of possibilities, is a challenge as a traveler and eccentric kind. It is a political call so that we do not allow ourselves to be captivated with the accumulation and the facade of "scientific" research.

It only remains to say that this space, along with many others, can allow us to recognize in our lives that in this reading of history, as something natural, we do not stand alone; as an academic and political community, we must not only resist this instrumental colonization, but alter it - transform it.


References.

Habermas, Jürgen. (1986). Ciencia y técnica como ideología. Madrid: Tecnos.

Horkheimer, Max. (2003). Teoría crítica. Madrid: Amorrortu.

Mardones, José María. (1991). Filosofía de las ciencias humanas y sociales. Materiales para una fundamentación científica, Barcelona, Anthropos.

Scheler, Max. (1990). El puesto del hombre en el cosmos. Buenos Aires: Losada.

Zemelman, Hugo. (1998). El conocimiento como desafío posible. Argentina: EDUCO.

Habermas, Jürgen. (1986). Ciencia y técnica como ideología. Madrid: Tecnos.         [ Links ]

Horkheimer, Max. (2003). Teoría crítica. Madrid: Amorrortu.         [ Links ]

Mardones, J. M. (1991). Filosofía de las ciencias humanas y sociales. Materiales para una fundamentación científica, Barcelona, Anthropos.         [ Links ]

Scheler, Max. (1990). El puesto del hombre en el cosmos. Buenos Aires: Losada.         [ Links ]

Zemelman, Hugo. (1998). El conocimiento como desafío posible. Argentina: EDUCO.         [ Links ]