Brad

My uncertainty with the below statement - (not with the onlineethics.org but with what
follows)...

But let Michel Serres put the case differently than I would myself - i would restate
the obvious replacement of the religious priest/jurist with the scientist priest/jurist
- Serres however... (conversation on science, culture and time...)

We have escaped the world of necessity...'... Towards the middle of the 20thC... we
have the rise in power of all the mixed scientific disciplines - physics, biology,
medicine, cybernetics - plus the whole set fo technologies brought about by them. We
are finally effective in the organisation of work, in providing food, in matters of
sexuality, of illness , in the hope of prolonging life. In short , in everyday life,
intimate and collective. Further we are masters  of space, of matter, and of life. All
of this has pushed back the limits and almost eliminated what does not depend upon us.
We have found ways to lessen fatigue, to practically abolish need and pain, to avoid
inevitable distress. So what remains irremediaiable?....'

Serres go on to say that....' So, here we are masters of thiungs that used to hold us
in subjection. Death is pushed back, and old age is rejuvenated. Life's briefness, wept
or sung by the ancient sages, has been succeeded by calculations of its expectency,
which for wealthy women in wealthy countries exceeds 70 years. Our wisdom is shaken by
the tearing down of these objective dependencies that were formerly irremediable and
unforgiving...'

the argument Serres is reaching towards is that science and technology in its recent
forms is destroying the foundations upon which morals were based. Morals and ancient
ethics were based on '...people crushed by the irremediable pains live in my childhood
memories and in the memories of the humanities...' Morality, religion and ethics formed
a system of practical means for dealing with the bondage imposed upon us by the world
and our fragility... Science and technology have become the true points of our
transcendence but are marked by our inability to allow the constitution of a modern
ethicical position from which to evaluate and guide scientific activity. The question
is how can we dominate our domination? hiw can we subjugate our mastery of the physical
world?


>     http://onlineethics.org/
>
> To my way of thinking, the problem is not with
> science, but that we are not yet scientific enough:
> As Edmund Husserl observed, the Galilean exact mathematical
> sciences of nature were mankind's *first* infinite task,
> but they only bring "the light of the mind which is the
> light of the world" to bear on one small region of the human
> lifeworld -- for the most part, we still live our lives
> "in finitude", i.e., taking for granted the accidental
> ethnic semiotic formations with which our childrearing
> infected us, rather than proving [incl., probing...] *all* things and
> holding fast [i.e., caring for...] *only* that which is good.
>
> To my way of thinking, a person who has a Nobel prize
> winning idea but has not absorbed the lesson of "The
> Gentleman and his Butler" from Hegel's _Phenomenology_,
> with regard to his or her lab techs and grad students,
> is still far more than half "primitive".
>

regards

sdv