Technoscientific Angst: Ethics And Responsibility

1 Responsible Technoscience: The Haunting Reality of Auschwitz and Hiroshima

1 Responsible Technoscience: The Haunting Reality of Auschwitz and Hiroshima Background The commemoration in 1995 of the fiftieth anniversaries of two major events of World War II, the liberation of Auschwitz (January 1945) and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 1945), invites us to use these events as starting points for self-examination. I focus here only on the "technoscientific" facets of these two events, and not on the entire historical background of the rise of fascism, the period between the two world wars, and the circumstances surrounding World War II (see, e.g., Dawidowicz 1975, Gilbert 1985, and Hilberg 1973). Furthermore, my concern is not with the relationship between science, technology, and politics in terms of power structures and capitalist industrialism but, rather, with the self-policing functions of the technoscientific community. Finally, as the following four brief outlines illustrate, though laudable intentions may be ascribed to this community and though we may applaud its cultural ascent, it remains painfully inept when assuming responsibility for horrible events such as the use of gas chambers in Auschwitz and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Norbert Wiener reminds us that the Greeks regarded the act of discovering fire with very split emotions. On the one hand, fire was for them as for us a great benefit to all humanity . On the other, the carrying down of fire from heaven to earth was a defiance of the Gods of Olympus, and could not but bepunished 1 2 Responsible Technoscience by them as a piece of insolence towards their prerogatives ... The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection ... It isa dangerous world, in which there is no security ...If a man with this tragic sense approaches, not fire, but another manifestation of original power, like the splitting of the atom, he will do so with fear and trembling. He will not leap in where angels fear to tread, unless he is prepared to accept the punishment of the fallen angels. Neither will he calmly transfer to the machine made in his own image the responsibility for his choice of good and evil, without continuing to accept full responsibility for that choice. (Wiener 1989, 184) Perhaps we have forgotten the sense of tragedy that permeated the cultures of ancient times; perhaps we have become accustomed to overlooking the sadness within our joyful implementation of new technologies; perhaps we have forgotten the limits of our humanity. Moreover, when we do appreciate our limits and worry about the consequences of our productions, we seem to relegate our worries to others, pretending that the potential for the military use of technoscientific inventions justifies critical silence in the face of national security . As Wiener comments: It is the great public which is demanding the utmost of secrecy for modern science in all things which may touch its military uses. This demand for secrecy is scarcelymore than the wish of a sick civilizationnot to learn of the progress of its own disease. So long as we can continue to pretend that all is right with the world, we plug up our ears against the sound of "Ancestral voices prophesying war." (Wiener 1989, izy) Technoscience Science, technology, and engineering are not separate activities undertaken in separate communities; instead, they influence and enhance each other's development in fundamental ways. For example, technical instruments are crucial for theoretical breakthroughs, and a conceptual background is essential for engineering applications. It therefore makes sense to speak of their constellation as "technoscience," as Jean-Francois Lyotard does: In the present epoch, science and technology combine to form contemporary technoscience. In technoscience, technology plays the role of furnishing the proof of scientific arguments: it allows one to say of a scientific utterance that claims to be true, "here is a case of it." The result of this is a profound transformation in the nature of knowledge. Truth is subjected to more and more sophisticated means of "falsifying" scientific utterances. (Lyotard 1981, 14-15} Responsible Technoscience 3 The combination of the terms "science" and "technology" into "technoscience" is still explained by Lyotard in traditional terms— technology is the implementation of science, a form of testing scientific knowledge—and not as a blurred site of knowledge production, that is, not as a site wherein one cannot do the one without the other, as Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar describe it (1986...