Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
reductionist science.”
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Sciences that repudiate a “reductionist”
method—certain “holistic” or “synthetic” branches of ecology, for
example—may cling to an Aristotelian notion of structure and function,
for instance, as defining species and ecosystems. For these so-called holis-
tic sciences of the natural world, genetic engineering poses a tough con-
ceptual challenge. Rollin explains, “For we may now see
telos
neither as
externally fixed, as did Aristotle, nor as a stop action snapshot of a per-
manently dynamic process, as did Darwin, but rather as something infi-
nitely malleable by human hands.”
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British philosopher Alan Holland has explained that the distrust of
genetic engineering represents what he calls a “metaphysical fear” that
“centers on concerns over the implications of this technology for con-
ceptions of identity, integrity and origin which are foundational to our
world view and to our ability to classify individual beings.” As the prac-
tice of animal cloning makes clear, breakthroughs in genetic technology
are likely to arise in agriculture and then be applied to human beings.
As Holland concluded: “Animal biotechnology is fully implicated. For a
combination of the view that 'organisms are merely the vehicles for
genes' with the realization that species boundaries are fully permeable,
brings it home that we should ponder long over our treatment of
non-human animals lest we should come to treat our fellow humans
likewise.”
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Biotechnology and the Tree of Life
Of the two meanings of the term nature that Mill identifies, only one is
relevant to science—that is, the concept of nature as everything in the
universe. In this sense, humanity and all it does is natural since it fits
within the causal fabric of the world. The second sense of the term nature
refers to all that exists independently of human action or intention. This
conception of nature, while meaningless as a scientific notion, neverthe-
less carries a great deal of force in arguments having to do with what
we ought or ought not to do. Its force may depend, however, on how
one judges the moral worth of nature—for instance, whether one con-
demns nature as a gruesome war of each against all or reveres it as what
God has made. These views, of course, are compatible; for example, in
Calvinism, God is the reverse of beneficent. The Calvinist God who
