Abstract
In this article, we problematize the national scientific policy, as proposed by Ordinance 1.122/2020 of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações - MCTIC), which establishes priority technological areas with regard to research projects, technology development and innovations. We seek to demonstrate how the idea of hierarchical transversality underlies this policy, with the social, human and basic sciences accessory to the applied areas, as well as the expectation that scientific projects generate marketable products and services. Through a discussion that explains the notion of technology mobilized by the Ministry and the privilege that it confers on the relationship between companies and technological areas, we attempt to demonstrate how this perspective differs from that proposal, in the middle of the 20th century, by cybernetics, which bid on communicative possibilities between different scientific areas. We argue that the most recent debate concerning an ecology of practices allows us to carry on an even more expansive perspective, which recognizes the situated character of all science and envisions collaborations between scientific and non-scientific knowledge practices, mutually implied by particular ecological situations. In this context, the potential of social sciences includes enabling this type of cooperation, in order to respond to problems that take into account the maintenance of the multiplicity of ways of life.
Keywords:
scientific policy; technology; cybernetics; knowledge practices; social studies in science and technology