Christoph Reuss wrote:
>
> > Worldwide conformity kills Kiwis' GM-free option
> >
> > Sunday Star Times, NZ
> > March 21, 1999
> >
> > THE genetically modified food controversy is not just about what we eat.
> > There are far larger dimensions to the debate, such as the lack of
> > democratic decision-making, the claims of science to supremacy over other
> > paradigms and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> For the record: The pro-GE position is not based on science, but on the
> corruption of science, and on economic ideas (monopolization of markets).
Might we note that all science, at least since Galileo was made to
abjure
the heliocentric hypothesis by the Church, has been "corrupted" in the
sense
that it has kept its nose to the ground (the empirical world), and
worn blinders to keep from applying rigor to the study of its own
ongoing
social process? As Husserl might have said, we have never yet been
fully
scientific, since we have not included the event of doing science in the
domain of scientific inquiry (including the implications that would
have for the qustion of what is/are scientific method(s), since the
study of empirical phenomena may require different methods than the
study of the act of studying empirical phenomena, etc.)....
I am aware that there are exceptions (sociological studies of scientific
social practice), but these remain exceptions -- on the periphery,
rather
than being integrated into the heart of a "theory of everything".
> The same article provides some other examples of this a few lines later:
>
> > People have reacted suspiciously to claims of
> > scientists that this technology is safe. Barely a week goes by when we
> > don't hear of some scientific disaster -- nuclear test sites that are
> > leaking, contraceptives that cause blood clots, health effects from
> > contaminated polio vaccines given 40 years ago, compensation for women
> > with silicone breast implants.
>
> Condemnation of science is the wrong answer. It takes _more_ science (less
> corruption of it), not less science, to prevent desasters like the above.
>
> Chris
As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, scientific advances (incl. new
technologies)
change the structure of our social and individual life ("how we
interpret
everything"), as well as changing the facts as they would appear from an
unchanged interpretive perspective. Probably even the most
self-reflectively
self-accountable scientific practice (the kind Husserl envisioned) would
still produce negative "unanticipated side-effects", albeit perhaps
fewer and smaller than scientific practice which advances from motives
of "pure curiosity", the struggle for individual recognition and career
advancement, competition for grants, etc.
But none of us is likely to live forever (at least not at the current
level of scientific accomplishment). It remains, to my way of thinking,
a far different "worst outcome" for a person to end up being "a guinea
pig who does not know the reason for their death" (quote from Else
Morante's _History: A Novel_), than for a person to end up suffering
and dying from a scientific advance that, despite the best of intentions
and care, goes wrong -- and where the scientists and the sufferer
remain -- to the end -- peer members of a genuine community, in
which the scientists work through genuine grief with the victim, and
stay with the victim, supporrting him or her to the end, an end in
which the victim does not die alone, but in the arms of the
scientists who participated with the person in the attempt to
solve whatever social problem gave rise to the negative outcome.
To quote the end of Hermann Broch's _The Sleepwalkers_: "Do
thyself no harm, for we are all here."
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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