Some people think that with all the advances in science and technology, we are losing our humanity. There are many debates about the issues of genetic engineering, computer advancements and dependencies, weapons development, and nuclear power. People argue that we are losing our quality of life, our respect for life (ours and others) at the expense of advancements in technology. I disagree with this mind set. Science, humanity, and technology are dependent on each other to define their values. If one concept advances, then the others must follow suit.
Science is knowledge; knowledge of the world and its habits. Technology is the tool used to learn this knowledge. Humans are the only species (that we know of ) that have the awareness of these concepts, and use them. Science and technology have no value to plants, fish, mammals, or to our primate relatives. Without our humanness, science and technology are meaningless. But, even more important, humanity would be nonexistent without science and technology to support it. The moment humans gained cognitive awareness of the world, is the moment science and technology were born, and humanity separated us from the other creatures we encountered. We no longer depended solely on instinct. We used the seasonal positions of the stars as tools to gain knowledge of our world. We learned to navigate, we learned to grow crops, and even learned to worship the stars as our guides to survival. When another early ancestor picked up a rock, and decided to refine its shape to make a better tool, we took another step away from instinct toward the evolution of thought. We could do more than just react to our world, we could pro-act, plan, and manipulate our environment to accommodate our comfort.
In the process of manipulation, we lost our compassion for the other inhabitants of this world.
Our comfort reigned supreme, regardless of the discomfort we imposed on other forms of life. But is it fair to blame this on science and technology? If science and technology depend on humanity to define them, and humanity is nonexistent without our understanding of science and technology, then they are inextricably intertwined. We cannot blame our ills on just two of the values; we must also include humanity when we place blame. Nobody said humanity was a necessarily a good or a bad thing. Humanity is only a quality that makes humans unique and separate from other life forms on this planet. Humanity is a thinking and acting concept. We all know that humans use this quality in different ways, some harmful, some helpful, and some neutral. If there are different forms of humanity, then there is definitely different forms of science and technology. So if some advancements have certain moral deficiencies, which concept is more to blame for this disregard for "what is right?" It isn't logical to blame this on science and technology and embrace humanity as our only saving grace.
If we can remember that science is a state of knowing, technology is the tool used to get to this state, and humanity is the quality that made us aware of this state and the tool, then we can move away from placing blame on only part of the system. Realizing that the three concepts have a relationship with each other, and that humanity can be either good or bad with science and technology following suit, maybe the focus should be on how we react to our new found knowledge and tools. Maybe we should be aware of how we use our humanness to manipulate the knowledge and the tool. With all this in mind, we can see that genetic engineering, itself, is not a good or bad thing until we apply our concept of humanity to it. Yes, it can turn into a serious moral problem, but it can also turn into an evolutionary coup that advances us to the next level of awareness and survival. We cannot discard our science or our technology without also discarding our humanity. The three are inseparable, and they will guide us to a new future; one that I look forward to with excitement and wonder.