Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ness,” and points out that for Duns Scotus this self-interest of a divine
creation was good, while Dawkins and Wilson are ambivalent about
this wellspring of evolutionary development. Duns Scotus's conception
of
affectio justitiae
refers to an “inclination to seek the good in itself”;
it is, in other words, “the means by which we can transcend nature and
go beyond our individually defined good and ourselves to see the value
of another being.” While Duns Scotus sees this as a fundamental human
inclination, Wilson and Dawkins struggle with the phenomenon and find
no clear explanation. Duns Scotus is able to speak of the human will
as free and as oriented to a transcendent good that allows it to act
unnaturally—that is, to transcend its own nature. The materialism of
the sociobiological position must find a purely naturalistic position and,
Shannon argues, stumbles in the effort. This added dimension of Duns
Scotus's account is a central example of the advantages of ressource-
ment for Shannon. It also illustrates the larger philosophical problem at
stake here: Is there a need to understand the larger phenomena, that is,
understand what they are, before we begin to locate the phenomena's
material conditions? For example, we need to understand in some sense
what memory is before we go looking for its “place” in the brain, or we
need to understand what altruism is before we look to see its genetic
basis.
The discussion is, in essence, about the contrast between materialism
and freedom, and the adequacy of each in explaining the phenomenon
of human life. But our knowledge of genetics reinvigorates another
traditional discussion, that of nature and grace. Genetics reminds us that
nature is not abandoned, and thus cannot be ignored, in the full expres-
sion of a human life. Shannon quotes Lindon Eaves and Lora Gross to
sum up the theological implications of his argument: “Genetics provides
a basis for grace within the structure of life itself
.” Matter must be
taken seriously even while it cannot be taken as providing the entire
explanation.
Clearly, for Shannon, the discussion of freedom illuminates the orien-
tation of human nature toward the transcendent, leaving unanswered the
question of the relationship between transcendence and genetic engi-
neering. Genetic engineering can be seen as an expression of transcen-
dence and freedom, one that should be tempered by the inconsistent
rhetoric of materialist explanations of human life and existence. Bernard
