Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Class Disucssion on Rappichini and Industrialization
Rappichini tried to play God through his science, and the concept of having no metaphysical presence in the world, and that the world is solely based on science, is thought to be bad by many, such as our founding fathers. Im confused about we talked about in class yesterday, I understand the concept of the "Watch Maker", but I don't understand how industrialization ties into the story. I understand what industrialization was, but in relation to the story im totally lost. I understand what we talked about but im not sure what to write about here. I think that im missing the connection between the concept of Hubris we talked about and Industrialization.
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Hawthorne and people like him were thinking about the 'next step' as we have labeled it in class. We are nearing the end of the heyday of the transcendentalists, but they have been asking questions that, in my opinion, turn out to be very important. For example, what happens when 'cold, hard science' becomes the only method that we use to make our decisions? Is it okay for us to experiment on unwitting people in order to benefit the rest of us? You can undoubtedly think of examples from your study of history where exactly that kind of thing happened. (Nazi Germany's medical experiments, for example.) What might happen if there was a Creator, but he (or she) just started the universe up to run according to certain rules? Does free will exist? All of these threads of thought don't necessarily resolved themselves into neat packages, they are, however, part of the incredible change happening during this time period.
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