Subject: Re: AUT: science, technology and ecology
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 19:25:07 +0100



-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Hoh
Date: 3. februar 2002 12:44
Subject: Re: AUT: science, technology and ecology



Ben Hoh writes:

    "And aren't all of these concerns usually framed by a kind of
    instrumentalist anthropocentrism (i.e. an overinvestment in
    narratives involving mankind wielding his tools against the
    voracious elements!) that precludes an ethical relationship
    with ecology?"

1) What could "ethical relationship with ecology" possibly mean?
The sentence does not make much sense to me.

2)  Why should an ecological understanding be any less anthropocentric
than any other human thought. Human beings will necessary be
anthropocentric. What else could they be? The appreciation of "wild"
nature is in itself a very anthropocentric notion. It is also good reason
to question to the degree that one is to operate with something non-
anthropocentric,  if instrumentalist thought is not precisely a strong
manifestation of anti-anthropocentrism.

The declared anti-anthropocentric currents seem to me often to be
the foremost expressions of a (capitalist) alienation from nature. On
the other hand, it might be also be said that people who live close to
nature tend in some aspect to be more "instrumentalist" in their ex-
ploitation of nature. What is added, or at least becomes dominant
and intensified within capitalist relations, is that since production is
no longer carried out for immediate self-defined human needs and
desires, human are reduced to instruments for alien forces they do
not control. In a certain sense it might be said they are reduced to
mere nature to be manipulated.

Harald





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