Promoting Science for the Modern Archipelago: Science in the Twentieth-Century Philippines

Abstract

Reviewing the history of science and technology from American rule to the Mar-cos presidency, this paper shows that science was considered the central way to modernize the Philippines. Imperial scientists from the United States encouraged science and technology to achieve a more effective exploitation of the Philippines and to make it a more secure colony for American officials and inhabitants. Therefore, they not only scrutinized and classified thoroughly natural resources with modern scientific ways, but they implemented several sanitary orders and disciplined Filipinos medically. Meanwhile, the educated Filipinos participating in the colonial bureaucracy in part regarded science as the tool for national inde-pendence and self-governing. They succeeded and reorganized scientific institu-tions established by the American rulers and emphasized scientific minds for a future and modern Philippines. During the Marcos presidency, 1965-1986, science was honored and promoted for national economic development. In his proclama-tions and executive orders, Marcos stressed the importance of science to social and economic development of the Philippines and pushed ahead numerous poli-cies that encouraged science and technology. Although the goal of modernizing the Philippines with science and technology had different meanings to those actors in each phase, it penetrated the history of science and technology in the twentieth-century Philippines.