Fractured Images of Science, Language, and Power: A Postmodern Optic, or Just Bad Eyesight?
1991; Duke University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1772851
ISSN1527-5507
Autores Tópico(s)History of Science and Medicine
ResumoAlmost four centuries ago, Francis Bacon put forth a vision of a kind of knowledge, a veridical reading of the Book of Nature that would provide man with the power to bring nature to her knees, that would establish him in his proper dominion through the development of the techniques to effect mastery over nature. In the intervening centuries, Bacon's rhetoric of dominion served simultaneously to describe and to foster the growth of a social institution that succeeded in transforming that vision into material reality. In the late twentieth century, modern science has come into its maturity, producing technologies next to which Bacon's own vision seems almost puerile. None of the early architects of modern science ever anticipated a day when men would acquire the kind of control over nature that would enable them, should they so choose, to destroy the human species or, if not destroy it, to shape its future according to their fantasies of a personal best. With a few exceptions, it was not until the twentieth century that men dared to dream of the power over life and death that is today enabled by modern physics and promised by modern biology.
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