From New Perspectives Quarterly:
The role of the scientific imagination in shaping the world to come is today uncertain as the great leaps forward . . . have revived old doubts and raised new fears about the human condition under the regime of reason. . . science is under attack both from religious extremists on the right who argue stem-cell research violates the sanctity of life as well as from "post-intelligent intellectuals" of the academic left who view science not as the discovery of objective reality through observation, but as a "social construction."
At the same time, new paradigms pose the possibility of a reconciliation between the humanities and hard science, perhaps even a new convergence of humankind and technology. Reconciliation begins by engaging the deepest level of critique.
The late poet and Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, often voiced his concern that the modern scientific worldview had excommunicated from society the reverence for being at the core of all traditional religions. . .
. . . In the 21st century, the scientific imagination is well on its way to healing this rift. The late Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine has demonstrated that creativity in nature leads, through infinite bifurcations or decision points, to an unforetold plurality of possibilities, not a predestined fate for man or molecule. There are objective laws and structures, to be sure, but there is also choice. Those choices, in society and nature, affect outcomes in complex interactions within everchanging structures in which everything is related to everything else. . .
. . . Milosz would be happy to see the haiku and the double helix coming together again in mindful science.
Worth reading in its entirety.
Thanks to MetaFilter.
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