Carl
>From: "Charles Brown" <cbrown at michiganlegal.org>
>
> CB: Plus, the bourgeoisie have developed science in many theoretical
>directions and practical uses that result in modes of life and death that
>make more people insecure, rather than in ways that provide material and
>thereby spiritual security and comfort. Nuclear weapons being the most
>aggregious example.
>
>I think there is a way, a la Marx's species-being, to develop meaning for
>us
>as individuals out of our human natural history, i.e. out of scientific
>disciplines. All the human striving and struggles, celebrations and
>wonderings, from hominids to homo socio, from gatherers to ...computer
>engineers have been "worth it" !
>
>
>(((((((
>Barack Obama/Christianity
>
>Carl Remick :
>
>
>I believe this was the argument raised in something I read many years ago
>in
>college, _The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers_ by
>historian Carl Becker (1873-1945). One web source sums up that book
>saying:
>
> "Here Becker advanced the paradox that the philosophes who had
>undermined
>the traditional intellectual world in the name of science were themselves
>dominated by a nonscientific faith in a rational universal order (a secular
>version of the Heavenly City)." By this argument, today's high-tech world
>-- for all the material benefits it brings -- is as incomprehensible and
>terrifying to its denizens as the world of nature was to the cave people.
>In an eerie approximation of the Tower of Babel myth, even understanding
>*within* the scientific world seems to be breaking down because of the
>every
>more specialized nature of scientific advance. People crave personal
>understanding that science can't provide them, and they want some assurance
>that their existence as individuals really matters, something that science
>definitely can't offer.
>
>If you let that toxic stew simmer for decades, it's really no wonder that
>holy rollers are running the country now. The electorate will be baying at
>the moon next.
>
>Carl
>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk