Can Science Make Sense of Life?

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5095-2270-5
Verlag: Polity Press

Buch, Englisch, 156 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes.

Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jasanoff, Sheila

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Politische Soziologie und Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Bildungssystem Curricula: Planung und Entwicklung
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Politische Soziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Allgemeine Didaktik Naturwissenschaften, Mathematik (Unterricht & Didaktik)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements vi

Prolouge 1

1 A New Lens on Life 13

2 Book of Revelations 37

3 Life and Law: Constitutional Turns 64

4 Life in the Gray Zone 92

5 Language Games 117

6 A New Biopower 142

7 Life’s Purposes 169
 
Notes 180

References 187

Index 202

Über Autor(innen)

Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School