Nature, Applied Scientific Discipline As Well As The Sacred: A Postscript

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology as well as the Sacred: Religion as well as Spirituality inwards the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter xi – Nature, Technology as well as the Sacred: a Postscript

I notice myself pasting huge chunks of Szerszynski, but it is generally because the writer articulates his nuanced declaration incredibly well, as well as so it would travel a shame to dilute it. I similar this summary he provides of his mission: “As Weber himself pose it inwards a dissimilar context, nether weather of modernity ‘[t]he many gods of old, without their magic as well as hence inwards the flat of impersonal forces, rising upward from their graves, strive for ability over our lives as well as start out i time again their eternal combat alongside themselves’ (Weber, 1989: 22-3). I possess got been similarly suggesting inwards this mass that inwards contemporary club nosotros tin come across non a decline but a profusion of the sacred; dispersed across the social, natural as well as technological landscape, the sacred becomes feral. / But the contemporary sacred is non thereby without monastic enjoin as well as pattern” (171).

The of import nuance with Szerszynski is to empathize that engineering does non disgod nature, or indeed strip an pregnant from it; but rather it “serves ceremonial functions inwards maintaining a item sacral ordering of nature” (172). So, if nosotros are going to endeavour to answer the query of “which enchantment of nature powerfulness offering a genuine choice to the domination of nature as well as humanity yesteryear modern technology” (124), nosotros possess got to start yesteryear agreement these “sacral meanings” (172). And hither is withal around other first-class query to consider: “But what should travel our guide inwards such a procedure [of achieving the correct relation to nature as well as to technology]? (172). Here is the problem: “I possess got suggested that the feature flat of the sacred inwards contemporary civilization is a postmodern sacred where the ultimate the world of value as well as pregnant has been drawn into human subjectivity itself. This ordering of the sacred is non without its distinctive modes of truth. Yet it seems unable to render either a house exterior the social as well as technological world, or an inherent rationality inside it, on which could travel grounded a critique of modern society. It thus seems exclusively able to generate either celebrations of the contemporary extension of consumer selection that merely sacralize the modern technological condition, or at best offering purely symbolic escapes from that status that ultimately travel out it unchallenged (Roberts, 2004)” (172).

I remember the lesson to possess got away from this mass is that a critique of engineering cannot travel done good without taking into line of piece of employment organization human relationship the “historical conditionedness” (174) of the unique, Gestalt ordering of the world; i.e. the worldview or mindset of the users as well as producers of that technology. Technology offers the misleading hope of “overcom[ing] finitude”; as well as therefore, the writer suggests that, “the really embracing of our historical conditionedness, as well as ultimately of our embeddedness inwards the ongoing transformation of the sacred, tin itself travel seen equally an anti-technological move, a negation of the negation of finitude” (174). In other words, the genuinely radical affair to gain is to, equally a starting fourth dimension footstep inwards technological innovation, is to recognize the historical conditioning of that innovation. So it is silly, really, to “refuse what is handed us yesteryear the past; such is the impossible dream of Enlightenment. Instead, the chore must travel to have that yesteryear to a greater extent than consciously as well as responsibly” (174). We must travel humble, but nosotros must likewise humble science: “Thus the embracing of finitude is probable to involve a humbling of scientific discipline equally exclusively i way of knowing nature, as well as of engineering equally exclusively i way of dealing with it” (177-8).

The writer concludes with this: “…technologies demand to travel engaged with to a greater extent than fully, to travel ‘read’ inwards a far richer way: inwards damage of what relationships they deport to our yesteryear trajectory, how they powerfulness travel harnessed to non-technological goals inwards the present, as well as upon what futurity trajectory they powerfulness laid upward us. Understanding the embeddedness of our ideas of nature as well as engineering inwards the ongoing transformation of the Western sacred is an essential ingredient of that task” (178).

Now my PhD is seeming incredibly daunting! – if I possess got to, equally component of the process, contextualize the modern epistemology as well as the modern human relationship betwixt engineering as well as nature… as well as humanity. But what’s somewhat heartening is the proposition (between the lines) that if nosotros alter what engineering agency to us, it may alter our human relationship to nature, maybe ushering inwards an epoch of greater environmental stewardship.