The Deadly Dance of Technology and War. Advances, Challenges and Ethics in the Twenty-First Century

Science—theoretical and practical—and its applied and productive aspect, that is, Technology, are positioned as the greatest product of human activity, which characterizes and elevates human beings evolutionarily over the rest of the organisms, since it gives us the power to transform nature and not be transformed by it. However, a rigorous historical, philosophical and anthropological review reveals that on many occasions, paradoxically, the engines that stimulate these creative processes are none other than the impulse to annihilate the rival to prevail over him. This stark reflection on the dialectic between homo sapiens’ creative potential and its destructive motivations justifies the need for an intellectual and philosophical study on the relationship between Science and War that, beyond the mere descriptive conceptualizations about how technological advances are used in armed conflicts, may penetrate into the very concept of the condition of the human being and the role that the struggle for survival and the competition for resources plays in its evolutionary course.