Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
flaws, failures, and death. To do so, unfortunately, is to leach out the
surprise, the beauty, and the accomplishment that is the true, yet
ephemeral, fruit of human life. Since the loss of the ephemeral can be
easily forgotten, the price of such a choice will not be obvious or com-
pelling. We will simply live out the uneasy distinction of having reversed
Geppetto's preference for a real son over a puppet.
Notes
1. The week I am writing this, Advanced Cell Technology has announced their
(failed) attempts at cloning human embryos. The announcement of failure was
made for several reasons, including the desire to be first and the desire for the
research support that comes to those who are first. Apparently, it is just as good
to be the first failure as it is to be the first success in today's research investment
market.
2. René Descartes,
Discourse on Method
, in
The Philosophical Works of
Descartes
, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), 1:119-120.
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Inequality among Men,” in
The Essen-
tial Rousseau
, trans. Lowell Bair (New York: New American Library, 1974),
146-147, 152-153.
4. Aristotle,
Metaphysics
7.4.1029b14.
5. This is clear in Aristotle's argument that matter is not the primary sense of
substance (
Metaphysics
7.4.1029a8-30). Also for this reason, it is inappropriate
to speak of natural laws in Aristotle's metaphysics; there are only natural things.
6. This is in dramatic opposition to Cartesian dualism, which takes the view that
the weakness of the body causes a weakness in the mind; when the weakness of
the body is removed, generally by medical care, the mind gains in wisdom: “We
may find a practical philosophy by means of which . . . [we] render ourselves
masters and possessors of nature. . . . This is ...to be desired principally because
it brings about the preservation of health, which is without doubt the chief bless-
ing and the foundation of all other blessings in this life. For the mind depends
so much on the temperament and disposition of the bodily organs that, if it is
possible to find a means of rendering men wiser and cleverer than they have
hitherto been, I believe it is in medicine that it must be sought” (Descartes,
Discourse
, 119-120).
7. Aristotle,
de Anima
2.1.412a29.
8. Aristotle,
de Anima
2.1.412a20-23 and
Metaphysics
9.3.1047a30-1047b1,
1050a15-24.
9. Aristotle,
de Anima
2.1.412a223.
10. Aristotle,
Metaphysics
9.6.1048b28-35.
11. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics
1.8.1102a28-1103a4.
