A Nuclear Bomb And A Rabbit's Foot
""Mankind is rolling, at supersonic speed, back to the Dark Ages, with a nuclear bomb in one hand and a rabbit's foot in the other." -- from To Young Scientists by Ayn Rand
Sciemce they tell you is the province of reason -- but ethics, they say , is the province of higher power, which man's impotent, fallible intellect must not be so presumptuous as to challenge. What power? Why feelings?This is usually accepted as axiomatic, but axiom or not all doctrines, as you know, cannot go unchallenged. Before you accept it you must identify concretely and specifically what it means. If you believe that ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions, that determine the purpose and course of his life, it means that you as a scientist are competent to discover new knowledge -- but not competent to judge for what purpose that knowledge is to be used. Your judgement is to be disqualified, because it is rational -- while human purposes are to be determined while human purposes are to be determined by representatives of non reason.
That was the case back in the 60's, and it remains the case today. Agree? Disagree?
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but even science is swaying away from the rational and into the fantasy land of anything that we can't explain at present lies in the realm of "Once Upon A Time."
Sciemce they tell you is the province of reason -- but ethics, they say , is the province of higher power, which man's impotent, fallible intellect must not be so presumptuous as to challenge. What power? Why feelings?This is usually accepted as axiomatic, but axiom or not all doctrines, as you know, cannot go unchallenged. Before you accept it you must identify concretely and specifically what it means. If you believe that ethics is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions, that determine the purpose and course of his life, it means that you as a scientist are competent to discover new knowledge -- but not competent to judge for what purpose that knowledge is to be used. Your judgement is to be disqualified, because it is rational -- while human purposes are to be determined while human purposes are to be determined by representatives of non reason.
That was the case back in the 60's, and it remains the case today. Agree? Disagree?
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but even science is swaying away from the rational and into the fantasy land of anything that we can't explain at present lies in the realm of "Once Upon A Time."
