Ethics in an Age of Technology Book Review

Ideals in an Age of Technology

HarperSanFrancisco, 1993 - 312 halaman

The Gifford Lectures have challenged our greatest thinkers to relate the worlds of religion, philosophy, and scientific discipline. Now Ian Barbour has joined ranks with such Gifford lecturers as William James, Carl Jung, and Reinhold Neibuhr. In 1989 Barbour presented his first series of Gifford Lectures, published as Organized religion in an Age of Scientific discipline, in which he explored the challenges to religion brought by the methods and theories of contemporary science. In 1990, he returned to Scotland to present this second series, dealing with ethical issues arising from technology and exploring the relationship of man and environmental values to science, philosophy, and religion and showing why these values are relevant to technological policy decisions. "Mod engineering has brought increased food production, improved health, college living standards, and ameliorate communications," writes Barbour. "But its environmental and human being costs take been increasingly evident." Nearly of the subversive impacts, Barbour points out, come non from dramatic accidents only from the normal operation of agricultural and industrial systems, which deplete resource and pollute air, h2o, and land. Other technologies have unprecedented power to bear upon people and other forms of life afar in time and space (through global warming and genetic technology, for instance). Big-scale technologies are also expensive and centralized, accelerating the concentration of economical and political power and widening the gaps between rich and poor nations. In examining the conflicting ethics and assumptions that lead to divergent views of technology, Barbour analyzes iii social values: justice, participatory freedom, and economic evolution, and defends such environmental principles as resource sustainability, environmental protection, and respect for all forms of life. He presents example studies of agricultural technology, energy policy, and the employ of computers. Looking to the future, he describes the effects of global climatic change, genetic technology, and nuclear state of war and cautions that nosotros must control our new powers over life and death more than effectively. Finally, he concludes past focusing on appropriate technologies, individual life-styles, and sources of modify: education, political action, response to crisis, and alternative visions of the skilful life.

Tentang pengarang(1993)

Throughout his career, Ian Barbour has been at the forefront of the dialogue betwixt scientists and theologians. Trained as a physicist, with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1950), and every bit a theologian, with a B.D. from Yale University (1956), Barbour has drawn on the philosophical insights of both disciplines to transcend their boundaries. As a professor of both physics and religion, Barbour'southward initial books depict the relationships between physical scientific discipline and religion. For example, his broad-ranging overview Problems in Science and Religion (1966) and his classic Myths, Models and Paradigms (1974) focus on the language parallels between these disciplines. During the 1970s and 1980s, Barbour began to expand his focus to include technological and environmental themes; at that time, the field of STS emerged in response to increased concern over technology'south societal impacts, specially regarding energy and the surround. During this period he published Applied science, Surround, and Human being Values (1980) and Energy and American Values (1982), also as several edited collections of essays, including Earth Might Exist Off-white: Reflections on Ideals, Faith, and Ecology, (1971) and Western Man and Environmental Ethics (1972). All of the books focus on the need for an enhanced technological and ecology ethic. Recently, Barbour has continued to pursue these intertwined themes in his 1989-91 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, which were published as Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and Ethics in an Historic period of Applied science (1993). Barbour serves as Winifred and Atherton Edible bean Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and Order at Carlton College.

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