Abstract

Hermínio Martins, Vico’s verum-factum principle and the cyber-scientific age. In the context of technological civilization agribusiness techniques, biotechnology, ICT, AI programs, robotics and nanotechnology bring into question the humanistic character of scientific knowledge. Vico’s verum-factum principle seems inadequate to describe the serendipity and the irreversible side effects of engineering and industrial technology. First technoscience, then cyberscience, transform the human epistemic adventure in a risk and uncertainty factor for the survival of the species. The knowledge-power equivalence adds artificial vulnerability to natural vulnerability. The progress of technological innovation takes on characteristics of autonomy, incomprehensibility and uncontrollability which are dismissing man from the status of master of its own historical destiny.