From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Fri Oct 15 1999 - 15:11:45 MDT
A Selection from THE GREAT ASYMMETRY by Stephen Jay Gould
"This tale of technological 'progress' gone ethically and socially awry*
illustrates the most troubling of all widely believed generalities about
the relationship of science to human life and history, the unfortunate
myth that underlies most of the fear and negative feeling that science
often evokes. In this legend, abetted by innumerable cultural props
(from misreading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the demonization of
science by Hollywood), the practice of science, by recording either the
intrinsic immorality of technological growth, or only the naïveté of well
-intentioned people who confuse complexity with improvement, can
only build dark Satanic mills upon our planet's green and pleasant land."
"I cannot think of a more important task in our campaigns for improving
'public understanding' of science than the dissipation of this myth. The
idea that science is monolithic, incomprehensible, soulless, and basically
bad for us forms the core of a central paradox of our times: Science has
become least popular and most feared at the height of its influence and
intrinsic interweaving with our daily lives and activities--least pursued
and cherished when most essential to the core of education for all
thinking people."
* "As an example of the misuse of science and technology for destructive
and immoral ends (usually quite contrary to the inventor's genuine intent
as well), the guillotine [or the D.C. electric chair by Thomas Edison RMO]
hardly merits a glance compared with such efficient agents of wartime
destruction as gunpowder, napalm, or atomic weaponry--not to mention
the truly unintended and purely consequential impacts of technology on
global environments, human social problems, and biodiversity."
======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
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