Synopsis
Modern molecular technology in the so-called life sciences (biology as weil as medicine) allows today to approach and manipulate living beings in ways and to an extent wh ich not too long aga seemed Utopian. The empirical progress promises further and even more radical developments in the future, and it is at least often claimed that this kind of research will have tremendeous etfects on and for all of humanity, for example in the areas of food production, transplantation medicine (including stem cell research and xenotransplantation), (therapeutic) genetic manipulation and (cell-line) cloning (of cell lines or tissues), and of biodiversity conservation-strategies. At least in Western, industrialized countries the development of modern sciences led to a steady increase of human health, well-being and quality of life. However, with the move to make the human body itself an object of scientific research interests, the respective scientific descriptions resulted in changes in the image that human beings have of themselves. Scientific progress has led to a startling loss of traditional human self-understanding. This development is in contrast to an under standing according to which the question what it means to be "human" is treated in the realm of philosophy. And indeed, a closer look reveals that - without denying the value of scientitic progress - science cannot replace the philosophical approach to anthropological questions.
From the Back Cover
The question, what does it mean to be human, is as old as philosophy and the sciences. Furthermore, from the very beginning of human history this question for human nature was inextricably interwoven with the question for the nature of nature. Anthropology in this sense was always accompanied by cosmology, and philosophical approaches find and found their counterpart in scientific research. However, although one can clearly identify here a common origin, the systematic relationship between philosophical and scientific considerations on human nature remains nevertheless unclear. This abeyance has led to intensive struggles between both fields of research during the entire history of sciences. Thereby, the general defense and acceptance of positions changed between those, which emphasised more "reductive" and those which stood for more inclusive approaches. Rather then arguing for one or the other side of these alternatives, a third way can be seen in the search for the formulation of a rather integrative perspective. If the goal is such a multi-perspective, transdisciplinary approach, then a discourse must be initiated, which emphasises and structures the discourse between such different disciplines as socio-biology, morphology, evolutionary theory, ethics, philosophy of sciences and epistemology. On the basis of such considerations the Europäische Akademie organised in spring 1999 the symposium "On Human Nature. Biological Approaches and Philosophical Reflections". The main results of this symposium, complemented by the approaches of invited authors, are presented in the current volume of the series "Wissenschaftsethik und Technikfolgenberteilung". The authors and the editors hope to invoke a comprehensive and inclusive discussion on a modern "concept of humankind", for which the results of this books may serve as a transdisciplinary contribution.
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