Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is a concept that is increasingly unsupportable, appeals to a fixed human
nature, in Sagoff's view, have become irrelevant. Instead, the problem
facing us is not whether engineering of the human genome will alienate
us from our nature—for, as he tells us, nature in fact became hostile and
lost its moral resonance when we were evicted from the Garden of
Eden—but whether we can bear the coming moral burden of responsi-
bility for the creation of a “second nature,” including our own.
Paul Rabinow is likewise opposed to turning our backs on genetic
intervention out of a misplaced allegiance to human nature. His argu-
ment in “Life Sciences: Discontents and Consolations” is that romanti-
cism about a fixed human essence is not only impossible in the face of
modern scientific development and its disenchantment of the world but
constitutes an all-too-familiar cultural immaturity and even narcissism
that can lead to the kind of dire political consequences that littered much
of the twentieth century. Applying the Freudian analysis of civilization
and its modern discontents, Rabinow challenges us to strip away any lin-
gering illusions about occupying a privileged place in the cosmos and
finally to accept the scientific demystification of the natural world. The
lessons of the Copernican, Darwinian, and Freudian revolutions have
combined to deflate humanity's pride and tendency toward a megalo-
mania. A twentieth-century heir to the Enlightenment, Sigmund Freud
regarded his own work as embodying a scientific wisdom that counsels
pursuit of the truth wherever it leads, however subversive such knowl-
edge may be to our reigning self-image or however uneasy it may make
us feel. Max Weber expresses similar sentiments in his essay “Science as
a Vocation,” one of the great statements, according to Rabinow, of the
scientific ethos as a model of maturity and sober realism. But unlike
Freud, Weber rejects the Enlightenment equation of science with wisdom,
restricting knowledge to the rarified sphere of specialization and calcu-
lative reason. Today, the knowledge business is an exclusively technical
affair with no pretensions to wisdom or meaning. Indeed, the idea that
science could or should submit to the guidance of the cultural sciences
is as futile as it would no doubt be harmful to the
Geisteswissenschaften
themselves. As Rabinow puts it, the value of science is simply “to invent
concepts and conduct rational experiments,” not to judge its usefulness
for mastering the world or for producing the greatest happiness for the
greatest number (a goal Rabinow scornfully dismisses as suitable for
