The danger of man's slavish attitude to science. Meanwhile, this aversion to modern science and technology is not only due to a tenacious clinging to the cultural and scientific ideals of the past, The particular nature of science and technology itself contributes to this. It is significant that they themselves do not provide us with some idea of the revolution that is happening through them. They exert their influence as if in spite of themselves, and as sciences they do not realise what they actually are. For the question of what the physical sciences actually are is not a question that can be posed within the physical sciences themselves. It cannot be answered with the intellectual apparatus of these sciences. Similarly, reflection on the technical sciences and technical activity does not belong to technology itself. The aforementioned concern about the reign of science and technology flows, in our view, at least in part, from the typically detailed nature of these fields of human activity. Thinkers fear that, in the pursuit of science and technology, man is hijacked by something that he himself has set in motion, but over which he cannot retain spiritual authority. Because of the detailed nature of the natural sciences and technology, there is a real possibility that man practising them will plunge into them without being clearly aware of what he is doing.
Andrew G. van Melsen, „Nauka i technologia a kultura”, Instytut Wydawniczy „PAX”, Warszawa 1969 s. 9.
This possibility points to the real danger that science and technology, instead of being genuinely human domains of activity, become a cause of human degeneration, leading man to a kind of passivity, a surrender to life rather than to life, a passivity that draws the whole human community and the social order into an inexorable spiral movement. For the more life is based on science and technology, the greater their demands on man. Education, for example, is increasingly attuned to these forms of knowledge. Universities, which were once centres of culture, are in danger of becoming schools that prepare scientifically trained human robots, programmed in such a way that they will always produce ever newer and ever more perfect creations. Eventually it will be the case that these human robots will become redundant as they construct real and more perfect robots to take over their creation. This may, of course, sound somewhat exaggerated. Nevertheless, it is striking that contemporary novels about the future spread exactly the same vision. We can mention Aldous Huxley's The Brave New World, for example.
Oryginał: „Science and technology”, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh 1961.
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