I think it possible that you commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness
when you quote Rorty in this manner. You pull out of context a specific
piece of the puzzle and in so doing mistake the map for the territory.
What Rorty, Toulmin, Taylor, Giddens, Shotter and others are doing is
re-thinking the philosophy of science which holds that we are seperate
from, as in 'over and against' what is 'outside' which of course is
'nature.' Rorty is suggesting that to hold such a view is fundamentally in
error precisely because we are embedded in an inter-subjective reality
that co-discovers and co-creates itself. That is, as either the system or
the environment changes, the whole changes. This is I believe the first
theorem of systems thinking. If by better engineering you mean that there
is some hope for engineering science finally adapting a systems
perspective, then perhaps more engineering would not be as dysfunctional
as it has been in past.
deguerre@cci.net.ab.ca
"DeGuerre, Don" <deguerre.don@syncrude.com>
* * * Quote of previous msg * * *
From: learning-org-approval
To: learning-org
Subject: Re: Learning the earth system LO3799
Date: Wednesday, November 22, 1995 4:22PM
Replying to LO3785 --
>I have always been bothered when I hear people say that human beings
>should not tamper with nature. Why? Human beings are a part of nature.
>We can't not tamper with nature. Nature tampers with itself and we are
>just part of that happening. I suppose the issue is the intelligence with
>which we participate in this and our awareness that it's going on..
>Whenever we think/act as if we are somehow separate from the nature that
>created us, we will inevitably create problems for ourselves--that is a
>false assumption. I like to say that "human nature is just the human form
>of nature."
>
>John Woods
>jwoods@execpc.com
I agree with John Woods, and I immediately recalled some words by Richard
Rorty I had recently come across: 'the notion of reality having a "nature"
to which it is our duty to correspond is simply one more variant of the
notion that the gods can be placated by chanting the right words' (in
'Objectivity, relativism, and truth'). 'Tampering with nature' and
'social engineering' seem to me to belong in the same basket. But using
these terms bypasses the point that human culture is a giant engineering
feat in which we have little choice but to participate. We simply need to
constantly seek ways of being better engineers.
--
David Frampton
D.Frampton@gu.edu.au
* * * End quote of prev msg * * *
-- deguerre@cci.net.ab.ca "DeGuerre, Don" <deguerre.don@syncrude.com>