Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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As a result of breastfeeding, the newborn can spot, mark, and destroy infectious agents on its own, even though the baby may never have been exposed to the threat. Breastfeeding literally creates a differently functioning body for the baby. technology. Possibly the oldest technology we have used with our youngest children is the wet nurse. New mothers would use the breast milk of other women to feed their own children. We now know that breast milk actually plays a role in how the body functions. Thus, the wet nurse shaped the way a baby’s body works, creating an aspect of the newborn’s immune system. Given our contemporary understanding of what it means to be a parent, doesn’t the wet nurse now count in some small way as one of the parents of the child because the child’s body will function and develop in part as a result of the nurse’s biological contribution? With in vitro fertilization (IVF), the sperm of the father and the egg of the mother are combined in a petri dish, then re-implanted in the mother. This process has been a miracle for infertile couples and has given rise to other technological advances. Once it’s conceivable to have fertilization outside the body, controls and other possibilities are introduced that were not options before. The most obvious is that the implanted zygote may not include the sperm or egg of the parent or parents who intend to raise the child. Sperm donation gives rise to a number of interesting issues. Often, sperm donors are unaware of when, where, or with whom their contribution will be used to create life. This is frequently intentional. The donors can donate without any concern for the ultimate results of their donation. From a purely Darwinian standpoint, this practice is both advantageous and disadvantageous. 210
The use of one’s DNA in creating multiple offspring with multiple partners without the energy investment of courtship and parenting is a winner from an evolutionary perspective. At the same time, however, sperm donation is the ultimate person who will make use of his genetic information. Because the most likely to survive, sperm donation ought to seem a bit problematic. Further, because the infantile stage in human children is incredibly long, parenting is crucial to our species. But the very notion of sperm donation makes the genetic father that his offspring will successfully reach procreative age in a functional way. The drive is to create not only offspring but offspring who will themselves have offspring. The fact that the donor has no control over this second step is a concern from an evolutionary standpoint. We can build on this idea to identify cultural, nonbiological concerns. If a man impregnates a woman in the normal way, there are legal means by which he will be held responsible for the well-being of the child. With sperm donation, however, the genetic father is contractually removed from such obligations. If this removal meets with society’s approval, then fathers’ obligations to their offspring become contractual rather than care-based. This contractual nature also appears in the selection process. At the sperm bank, mothers can browse through lists of possible is simply sexual selection made one step more abstract. But it also makes a commodity out of genetic material and takes a step toward the concern of creating designer babies. 211
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Topic Philosophy & Intellectual His
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Steven Gimbel, Ph.D. Professor of P
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Table of Contents LECTURE 11 Dark M
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Table of Contents SUPPLEMENTAL MATE
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: I and technological a
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This question allows us to turn fro
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The study of reality is what philos
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Semmelweis noticed that the inciden
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ut sometimes, even after checking t
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. The Matrix. We don’t believe
Page 21 and 22:
Wisdom comes from rejecting the imp
Page 23 and 24:
Thus, Aristotle’s prime mover, th
Page 25 and 26:
Aristotle had said that an object
Page 27 and 28:
For centuries, mathematics was cons
Page 29 and 30:
th century, the Russian mathematici
Page 31 and 32:
had turned their attention to logic
Page 33 and 34:
Abbott, . Bell, Men of Mathematics.
Page 35 and 36:
Scientists thought that the physica
Page 37 and 38:
H. A. Lorentz had found, when you a
Page 39 and 40:
Thinkers as far back as Gottfried L
Page 41 and 42:
E grounds. First, the prin
Page 43 and 44:
If you woke up tomorrow in a small
Page 45 and 46:
speed up going in and slow down com
Page 47 and 48:
Is it true that a difference that m
Page 49 and 50:
Einstein thought, there would be lo
Page 51 and 52:
Scientists largely hated this idea,
Page 53 and 54:
If Gamow and Alpher’s work was ri
Page 55 and 56:
Although physicists at the end of t
Page 57 and 58:
In the 19 th century, there was the
Page 59 and 60:
In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell publis
Page 61 and 62:
The idea of a large central mass at
Page 63 and 64:
We know, however, that for a given
Page 65 and 66:
whether light is a particle or a wa
Page 67 and 68:
is a particle, then the slits would
Page 69 and 70:
One of the early results of quantum
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eams, we also knew that there were
Page 73 and 74:
The hadrons are made up of quarks,
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As the meaning of the physics began
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The demon is a being with a super-i
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ignoring certain elements, we can c
Page 81 and 82:
One of the simplest fractal pattern
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Earlier, we talked about Thomas Kuh
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so greatly separated that no proces
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een able to form in that environmen
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Nicolson, . Panek, . Our theories
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Similarly, James Clerk Maxwell, in
Page 93 and 94:
But as we move away from the pole,
Page 95 and 96:
Great press has been given to a pot
Page 97 and 98:
Some people take the idea of a theo
Page 99 and 100:
see from CAT scans that when someon
Page 101 and 102:
Because we are just atoms, we, too,
Page 103 and 104:
Would the randomness of quantum mec
Page 105 and 106:
Aristotle thought that this world i
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If you select strange enough traits
Page 109 and 110:
Although this aspect of the theory
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Darwin posited that children look l
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The key to understanding how we pas
Page 115 and 116:
This picture of illness is quite di
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How much of who we are is determine
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inferred that the function of that
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a byproduct of mental illness, Freu
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With the genetic approach, we are w
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After Freud, psychology developed i
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experiences that are not our own, t
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Behaviorism was an attempt to make
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Psychology, which had begun as a se
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I th century, psychology had the lu
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part, in the group. To understand t
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acting in ways that showed a lack o
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has learned from the so-called barb
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led him to begin one of the most fa
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ules. We are now adult in our ethic
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In a contract-based relationship, y
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The study of psychology changed for
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Instead, we are a part of the world
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But it turns out that exposure to c
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Glickstein, . Lynch, . mean we
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But evolutionary psychologists Leda
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suited to solving these problems an
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As such, when we look at the innate
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In looking at reality, we can exami
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We see this also in the writings of
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one universal is crime. Crime is no
Page 167 and 168: To avoid such situations of anomie
Page 169 and 170: Historians create narratives that e
Page 171 and 172: Society is composed of individuals
Page 173 and 174: © Digital Vision/Thinkstock.
Page 175 and 176: The concept of race has long been a
Page 177 and 178: there are different combinations am
Page 179 and 180: Perhaps race is what Durkheim calle
Page 181 and 182: Gould, . Hernnstein and Murray, . K
Page 183 and 184: Slavery, for example, was a necessa
Page 185 and 186: Parsons’s picture is not the Marx
Page 187 and 188: In defeat, the smaller neighbors wo
Page 189 and 190: Economics became a science with the
Page 191 and 192: self-interest. Second, the large-sc
Page 193 and 194: Under the classical model, this sho
Page 195 and 196: How do we account for these effects
Page 197 and 198: If the star is large enough, when i
Page 199 and 200: © amenic181/iStock/Thinkstock.
Page 201 and 202: What environment on Earth could pro
Page 203 and 204: The possibility of life on other pl
Page 205 and 206: Our newfound alien interlocutors te
Page 207 and 208: Perhaps the best evidence for extra
Page 209 and 210: Mayor and Frei, . Morrison, Billing
Page 211 and 212: It has long been argued, however, t
Page 213 and 214: But the idea of using the body’s
Page 215 and 216: Although that seems worrisome, it i
Page 217: I equally much for how w
Page 221 and 222: With cytoplasmic transfer, the nucl
Page 223 and 224: Macintosh, . Given that multiple
Page 225 and 226: we could begin with the desired por
Page 227 and 228: The second step is trickier. Here,
Page 229 and 230: Aside from medical uses, we can alt
Page 231 and 232: We can now use medical technology t
Page 233 and 234: The problem here is that sometimes
Page 235 and 236: of disease and disorder. In America
Page 237 and 238: performance-enhancing drugs? We see
Page 239 and 240: Advances have led to hand-shaped ap
Page 241 and 242: Warwick then went a step further. H
Page 243 and 244: Scientists at MIT have taken DNA fr
Page 245 and 246: Computers can do many things, but c
Page 247 and 248: possible right answers. The machine
Page 249 and 250: player having a king and a pawn and
Page 251 and 252: If intelligence or sentience is an
Page 253 and 254: enable us to become a global villag
Page 255 and 256: engineers used their technological
Page 257 and 258: Another intriguing development on t
Page 259 and 260: In these lectures, we’ve seen tha
Page 261 and 262: leave messages or comments, and whe
Page 263 and 264: This ability of mothers doesn’t m
Page 265 and 266: But Einstein showed us that the rea
Page 267 and 268: Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: Th
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———. The Descent of Man: and
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Gilligan, Carol. . Cambridg
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Kramer, Peter. . New York: Viking
Page 275 and 276:
eings that we are willing to act in
Page 277 and 278:
Rothman, Sheila M. Medical Enhance
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———. . London: Century, 2002.
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