Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
bioengineering and genetic research. The most obvious difficulty we
face is the degree of specialization now characteristic of the pursuit of
scientific and technological knowledge that when coupled with the rapid-
ity with which this knowledge is developed and disseminated, makes
it extremely difficult to construct the kind of overview necessary for
effective assessment and evaluation. In addition, the calculative kind
of thinking employed in the constant improvement and refinement of
methodology and technique simply does not lend itself to—though it
does not necessarily preclude—a reflective or self-critical turn of mind.
When the focus is on results and cost-benefit analyses, it would be
naive, perhaps even otherworldly, to expect technicians and scientists
to think like traditional humanists. All of which tells us that there exists
a culture that has grown up around a class of intellectual elites whose
progressive mores, values, and goals go unquestioned, if they are
considered at all. The best description of this culture remains Francis
Bacon's visionary
New Atlantis
, which already in the seventeenth
century outlines the kind of research community best suited to the devel-
opment of a systematic scientific knowledge that lends itself to tech-
nological exploitation and application. Guided by the goal of the “relief
of man's estate” and the emerging modern principle of the division of
labor where every researcher has a function to perform much like factory
workers on an assembly line, Bacon foresaw an enterprise whose
collective wisdom would be ensured by the goodness of its intentions
and the triumph of its techniques. What is more, the communal
aspect of “Solomon's House,” Bacon's somewhat presumptuous though
revealing name for this enterprise, would, he believed, transform the
nature of scientific endeavor from the empirical groping of isolated
individuals into a vast, intricate project requiring large amounts of
financial and technical support that could be made available only by a
civilization that sees and defines itself in terms of that project. And he
was right.
The obstacles confronting a critical assessment of this project, which
has been in full swing for centuries now, are thus formidable. But they
are not insurmountable. Indeed, in the case of genetics and its various
technological applications, something new has occurred. While it is true
that the cloning of nonhuman animals and the engineering of agricul-
tural products have gone forward without much serious public reflection
