We are in the course of
witnessing a period of extraordinary technoscientific change
That will even change fundamentally the way that we humans experience life and death, Serres rightly asserts, is to alter the “human” “itself.” Thanks to technoscience, the nuclear bomb concretely forms a new, global humanity— insofar as August of 1945 undeniably transposed the global extinction of humanity from the realm of apocalyptic myth to the realm of material possibility. Likewise, with our mapping of the genome and related achievements in biotechnology and bioengineering, the generation and manipulation of human (and other) life promises to fall within our grasp. A kind of destruction and creation that remained previously the sole privilege of gods or, even more, of God Himself become more and more our own responsibility—and we thereby become, like that God, our own cause
If we look to history the genesis of our modern day rationality there is the common assumption that modernity stands at odds with the mystical goes back in decisive ways, of course, to those Enlightenment traditions according to which the human subject would achieve his freedom—which here means his individual autonomy or self-determination—through the exercise of a rationality or science that yields a full and accurate understanding of the natural and social worlds we inhabit. To comprehend the rational order and operation of our natural and social worlds is, from this perspective, to acquire the means to manipulate or master those worlds
That will even change fundamentally the way that we humans experience life and death, Serres rightly asserts, is to alter the “human” “itself.” Thanks to technoscience, the nuclear bomb concretely forms a new, global humanity— insofar as August of 1945 undeniably transposed the global extinction of humanity from the realm of apocalyptic myth to the realm of material possibility. Likewise, with our mapping of the genome and related achievements in biotechnology and bioengineering, the generation and manipulation of human (and other) life promises to fall within our grasp. A kind of destruction and creation that remained previously the sole privilege of gods or, even more, of God Himself become more and more our own responsibility—and we thereby become, like that God, our own cause
If we look to history the genesis of our modern day rationality there is the common assumption that modernity stands at odds with the mystical goes back in decisive ways, of course, to those Enlightenment traditions according to which the human subject would achieve his freedom—which here means his individual autonomy or self-determination—through the exercise of a rationality or science that yields a full and accurate understanding of the natural and social worlds we inhabit. To comprehend the rational order and operation of our natural and social worlds is, from this perspective, to acquire the means to manipulate or master those worlds
No comments:
Post a Comment