Can Science Make Sense of Life?
eBook - ePub

Can Science Make Sense of Life?

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Can Science Make Sense of Life?

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access Can Science Make Sense of Life? by Sheila Jasanoff in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Philosophy & Ethics in Science. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Front Matter
  3. Prologue
  4. 1 A New Lens on Life
  5. 2 Book of Revelations
  6. 3 Life and Law: Constitutional Turns
  7. 4 Life in the Gray Zone
  8. 5 Language Games
  9. 6 A New Biopower
  10. 7 Life’s Purposes
  11. References
  12. Index
  13. End User License Agreement