From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 21:32:15 MDT
At 06:46 PM 8/27/02 -0700, Spike wrote in triumphalist mode (with implicit
smiley, but don't think we were fooled...):
>>>culture blind and value neutral.
[I sez:]
>> But that's simply *not the case* with technohistory.
>>*You and I* might value tearing up the ground and making ball bearings out
>>of it...
> I think of it as repairing the ground.
> I find my idea gusting.
> I find the cultural results relevant and grading.
You do indeed, and by and large so do I, but all I'm stressing is that this
opinion is not *culture neutral*. Nor is science *value neutral*. Its
successes usually lead its practitioners and well-wishers to find it
gusting, relevant and grading, according to standards that are *optional*
and *culturally conditioned*.
>>...the implicit values of technocivilization are not
>>universal and neutral
If we wish to persuade others of the virtues of this historically new way
of living in the world, we must first abandon the old positivist line that
science just looks at what's there and then it does what follows
inexorably; that's just propaganda.
Damien Broderick
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