Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ate the grief, sense of loss or trouble.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary
claims that the verb is modern, appearing first in 1693.
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Its core meaning
is “support” as the verb is a transformation of the noun
console
first
used in 1664 to refer to “an architectural member projecting from a wall
to form a bracket for ornamentation.” Although Freud disdained
support for those seeking a firm stand for their ornamentation, he was
offering the hope of some alleviation of the sense of loss or trouble for
those seeking an orientation in life, or more precisely a life of science—
science understood as enlightenment. Freud's enlightenment was reserved
only for the few able to bear it; it was certainly no longer a wave of ben-
eficial historical progress carrying along the many in its wake.
Equally, if differently, Weber was concerned with consolation. Or at
least we can legitimately read Weber's affectively complex conclusions
into the semantic space of consolation. “The only question that
remains,” Weber contends, “is the sense in which science gives 'no'
answer, and whether or not science might yet be of some use to one who
puts the question correctly.”
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That use would surely not be as a means
of achieving technical mastery of the world or as a support for orna-
mentation. It is in this context that a further meaning of the verb is rel-
evant. In English, the verb
to console
has an older layer of meaning. That
meaning is found in the noun
consolation
, first used in the fourteenth
century, to indicate “a contest held for those who have lost early in
a tournament.” Weber held that the “intellectual aristocracy” of the
mind had been eliminated from the hotly contested and amply rewarded
championship fights over meaning, history, science, and humanity—by
modernity.
Recently, for many, as least for a short period of time, after the Enlight-
enment and modernity came postmodernity. Postmodernity has now
passed, and many are presently obsessed with globalization. Let those
who will, play these championship games of metanarratives; there is
always an attentive and enthusiastic audience for these matches. Con-
temporary consolation is to be found elsewhere. It seems fair to say that
Sydney Brenner is a mature scientist. His proposal to stop talking about
substantive and essentialized entities that used to be called genes, and
instead take up the challenge as to how to reappropriate the slot (topos)
as “either an open reading frame or a site to map mutations,” taking
place in time as well as in a complex, multileveled environment that we
