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part ii the limits of Mechanism: Contemporary problems and Solutions in philosophical terms, the seventeenth century represented a turning point, which many consider the beginnings of modernity. not all philosophers agree with this; some hold that modernity started much earlier, for example, with the renaissance and the beginnings of humanism, while others see it starting a century later with the enlightenment and the age of reason. From the point of view that is being set forth in this book—the body and its relation to nature and the cosmos—it was the seventeenth century that provided the mechanistic framework that has governed science and philosophy up to the present, and thus represents the beginning of modernity. While many believe that the mechanistic paradigm is shifting, i maintain that, to the extent that this might be taking place, such a shift remains on the fringes of mainstream science and philosophy. there might be many marvellous discoveries in biology, genetics, physics and even medicine, but the reigning paradigm at the level of the day-to-day world is still a mechanistic one based on a dualistic metaphysics of mind and body.1 Most importantly, for most people and their doctors, the body is still a machine. as we have seen, this approach to the human body, both scientific and philosophical, has its roots in the sixteenth century with the breakdown of the idea of the macrocosm-microcosm resulting from the discoveries of Copernicus and galileo (the heliocentric view of the universe), and with the subsequent breakdown, directly related to the first, of the connection between the human soul and world soul. the year 1543, with the publications of both Copernicus (on the movements of the planets) and vesalius (on the fabric of the human body), has already been mentioned as 194 reCovering the Body pivotal. But it was descartes who, in the seventeenth century, provided the metaphysical foundations—based on dualism and mechanism—that have supported Western scientific endeavours, including the disciplines linked to biology and psychology, for the last four hundred years. Mind and body are distinct realms of study, requiring different kinds of explanations. the application of mechanistic science to the study and explanation of the human body has had an enormous influence on how ordinary people perceive their bodies, as well as on the development of technologies affecting the body. the separation of the subject that knows the body from the body that is known results in an objectification of the body, which is a presupposition of many of the wonders of medical technology as it is applied to the body today, as well as of many practices based on the notion that a person somehow ‘owns’ or ‘uses’ his or her body for ends relating to the development of the ‘self.’ in this second part of the book, i will examine the legacy of the objectified body, the body-machine, through the lens of several contemporary problems and practices. in Chapter 7, i will address the impact of dualism and mechanism on modern medical practice, in particular organ transplantation and reproductive technologies, and will maintain that these practices are based on notions of the body as an object of knowledge—including medical knowledge. the body in modern medicine is “viewed not primarily as purposive and ensouled; nor as the scene of moral dramas; nor as a place wherein cosmological and social forces gather; but simply as an intricate machine,” with the role of medicine being to draw upon “a reservoir of scientific knowledge concerning how the machine works, and [employ] the technologies of repair.”2 i will also address the impact of dualism and mechanism on current research in robotics and the expressed goal of some of its practitioners of downloading human consciousness into a machine (from the body-machine to the robot-machine). this research and the practices resulting from it bring the platonic idea of the body as an obstacle to knowledge right into the twenty-first century. the only reason for pursuing the research in the first place is the assumption that our physical bodies simply slow us down and get in the way of the attainment of true knowledge.3 the fact that much of the literature in this realm refers to a ‘post-biological’ future or the ‘obsolete body’ is a clear indication of dualism taken to an extreme, and the idea of ‘reverse engineering the brain’ in order to download consciousness into a machine represents mechanism taken to the edge of absurdity...

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