Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:12:26 +0100
Subject: Re: <fwd> S.J. Gould on new genome findings
From: sezgin <sezgin-AT-unternehmen.com>


Please see below ...

> Von: Michael Pennamacoor <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>
> Antworten an: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Datum: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:25:57 +0000
> An: heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Betreff: Re: <fwd> S.J. Gould on new genome findings
> 
> a belated interjection... I've only skimmed this thread lazily (especially
> those posts of
> Catweasle {sorry, cat, but part of a habit recently})
> 
> Rene recently spake thusly:
> 
>> Jan, Malik, Catweasle,
>> 
>> Sure, guilt is something personal.

It is what prevents us from becoming responsible.


>> Meanwhile any possible sort of disaster
>> is spelled out in any possible sort of "information". Amazing to see, how
>> Catweasle - thanks for your reaction - completely refuses to see the
>> enormity of destruction, that science made possible, and real, in the last
>> century. 
>> What was the consequence of this finest positivist period of the fin de
>> siecle,
>> wherein German, French, English, American scientists worked like monks for
>> the 
>> ever rising humanity: the industrial killing of WW1. (compared to which a
>> crusade
>> is just a holiday)
>> Something, another lazy philosopher, Nietzsche, had seen coming, and warned
>> for with
>> a loud voice. He advised Bismarck, to lay arms down ...
>> N.: "The interim-character of national wars" "Europe only wants one thing:
>> to become one."
>> "What if Napoleon ..."  Etc., etc.
>> (For the morbid relation of this to the holocaust see: Omer Bartov:
>> Industrial
>> killing: World War 1, the holocaust, and representation. The idea: The only
>> way
>> to prevent the horrible massive killing, is horrible massive killing of
>> those,
>> who want to horrible massive kill you.
>> The term "representation" may come as a surprise, behind it is Heidegger's
>> Erlebnis.)

I have just recently heard a friend citing from Konrad Lorenz' "Das
sogenannte Böse" where he states words to the effect that the threat to a
species is not the "eating enemy" but the competitor from within the own
species. I have not yet had the time to think through this adequatly, but
Lorenz' point seems to be that inter-specie aggression is an inevitable part
of (human) existence (too).


> 
> Is this not a good moment to contemplate Heidegger's assertion that science
> and the
> scientific, and all who sail in her, are held in the sway, in the grip of
> technology
> {particle accelerators, computer simulations and modelling, drugs, etc}, in
> the
> 'safekeeping' of control methods and the dispensations of the techno
> will-to-power, etc.
> One aspect of the holocaust might be seen as an application of modern
> management science,
> mass production and conveyor-belt techniques, and, the sudden growth of new
> industrial
> chemicals in equal parts...? Surely relevant on this list is Heidegger's twin
> statements
> concerning (the essence of) technology: that the essence of technology is
> nothing
> technological (it [is] Being]; that the essence of technology holds sway as
> the greatest
> danger AND can dispense/give the one saving power? What is swaying, gripping,
> holding and
> giving in this context?

Please note the importance of Heideggers pointing to the Kehre, the turn.
That turn is granted, if I have understood right, at the moment of greatest
danger (die höchste Gefahr). Then, where to can we be turned if not only to
its opposite? But this is not something that the essence of Technik
"dispenses/gives" but Beyng grants the turn of the essence of Technik from
danger to rescue.


> Are we held captive by technology/science when we only
> ever think
> it in technological/scientific terms, only and always technologically and
> scientifically?
> Or is this a release, this thinking along the lines of what is to be thought?

It is certainly important to grasp what sciento-logy is. Having no idea
(Ahnung) of there being a danger at all is itself being in the grip. We are
only overwhelmed by what we do not understand (understanding: seing/saying
gathering of meanings of beings). However, understanding of sciento-logy
demands stepping back from it, since the essence of Technik is the opposite
of letting be. That is our part in the turn: turnig towards Beyng and away
from other-than-it.

(By the way: have you read Michael Eldred's "Draft Casting of a Digital
Ontology"?)

> 
greetings,
Malik Sezgin
> 
> 
> 
P.S. to Mr. Catweasle: Have you ever come across Heideggers "Besinnung"?
There he says: "The word (Spruch) of Seinsdenken is: 'Beyng is, beings are
not.' (Das Seyn ist, das Seiende ist nicht.) the intermediary word
(Zwischenspruch) is: 'Beyng essences (west), beings are.' (Das Seyn west,
das Seiende ist.)"



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