Quote:
Originally Posted by New-ideas
… is it more important that the planet evolve socially, global relations, moral understanding, religous tolerance etc.
Or should we be focusing on scientific advancement to further humanity in the World, things such as medical research, Waste disposal methods or alternative fuels?
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I don’t believe social and scientific progress present an either-or option, but rather are complimentary. Societies experiencing great advances in science and technology are, I think, likely to experience advances in global relations, religious tolerance, and other cultural improvements.
This question seems to me to conceal a question about the dominant methods (or paradigm) best suited to addressing social, technical, and scientific problems – as Tormod notes, a very complicated question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TZK
Social evolution is key. Our lack of it thus far has created an extremely dangerous situation. IE a bunch of monkeys running around with nuclear weapons.
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As someone who grew up in tense
“détente” period of the Cold War, I agree emphatically. Although I lack a ready supporting reference, I recall that a poll conducted of Americans in my age cohort during the 1970s indicated over half considered it more likely than not that they would die as the result of a major US-USSR nuclear war. Added to the ambient anxiety and pessimism of the 1970s, that period exposed me to the “
Fermi paradox”, and the popular explanation of it that holds that the invention of nuclear weapons marks an uncircumventable limit to the technological progress of nearly any society, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.
Quote:
Originally Posted by New-ideas
I would not be surprised if what is currently seen as an age of great scientific advancement will one day be seen as a dark age of sorts.
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Though I suspect New-ideas may be correct in his prediction of future history’s view of the last century or five, I think the darkness’s cause is more likely to be ascribed to non-scientific (though occasionally scientifically informed and supported) factors having to do with the control of people through economic, social, and governmental means by exploitive minorities, than to advances in science and technology. That is, it will be explained by many of the same causes attributed to the previous
“feudal era” Dark ages, though the “present dark ages” will, I suspect, be considered less dark than the previous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by New-ideas
An age devoid of the very social evolution you are talking about, which in my opinion can truly only arise from introspection.
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”Devoid” seems an overstatement. In my estimation, particularly in richer nations, a greater fraction of people in present-day society than in any large society at any time in history is engaged in serious introspection. As sociologist, historians, and philosophers (such as
Josef Pieper anthor of “Leisure, the Basis of Culture” have noted, there appears to be a connection between the wealth of a society and the amount of introspection that goes on in it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by New-ideas
An approach to self understanding which is considered outdated by psychology; an approach to self understanding modeled after the highly succesful methods used in investigating classical physics... Typical human mistake - trying to replicate a method that was succesful somewhere else in a situation where the attributes that made the approach successful before are no longer present.
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One does get this impression of
psychodynamic (Freud, etc) and more modern psychology. As Psychologist
Abraham Maslow put it “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
However, the complicated question of what the right tool looks like is, I think, profound and unanswered. I’ve no confidence that the long or short term improvement of humankind can be accomplished entirely or even predominantly though introspection. The right tool may, I suspect, still be the scientific “hammer” so successful in classical and modern physics, but a hammer of a correct and improved kind.
Mine is by no means an original opinion.
Alfred Korzybski, WWI German Intelligence officer turned sociologist, linguist, philosopher, and developer of the theory of general semantics, was said to have responded to the social calamity of WWI by noting that, if human beings built governments as well as they built bridges, war, injustice, and most other social problems would be eliminated. Korzybski concluded that this could be accomplished with increased precision in non-scientific language, with which I do not entirely agree, but I applaud his central position that, just as scientifically engineered bridges have helped people more than hurt them, science can be made to realize its potential to solve, more than create, social problems.
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Moderator: Computers and Technology; Medical Science; Science Projects and Homework; Philosophy of Science; Physics and Mathematics; Environmental Studies
Social and scientific progress don't present an either-or option
