Date: Tue, 24 May 94 13:21:26 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject: The broad and the narrow


Kirez writes:

> I'm making arguments about the broad
> principle, that the human capacity to reason and thus make tools 
> evolved because it proved to be beneficial, and that it is still 
> beneficial, and that in fact humans can't be truly human, and live 
> as humans, unless they employ their distinctive means of survival: 
> science.  

It is not at all clear to me _why_ you are making these broad
arguments.  I don't think anybody here has spoken against reason, 
tools, or science, and therefore I don't see why those things need
a general defense.  What is of more interest is the particular 
_directions_ that reason, technology and science take -- how these 
directions get established, what controls them, how they can be 
evaluated, whether they could or should be changed, and so on.
Not: "Should there be technology?"  But: "What _kind_ of technology 
should there be?"


- malgosia