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Chapter #1
(Air Pump)
1. Robert Boyle: leading intellectual figure of the 17th century and one
of the founders of modern chemistry. One of the founders of the
Royal Society of London. Boyle believed that scientific knowledge
(or natural philosophy) should be generated through experiment,
and that Matters of fact” about the world could be produced
through experiments.
2. Thomas Hobbes disagreed. Hobbes, is a philosopher, (1651) book
Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most
later Western political philosophy. In Hobbes view, Boyle’s
experimental procedure could never produce the degree of certainty
that he believed was necessary for any philosophical field (for
example, Geometry)
What counts and knowledge and valid “evidence”? This was during the
Reformation, when political stability was the goal, and a universal
truth might prevent further splintering of factions. Both Boyle and
Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that would preserve
social order and consensus. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued
that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that
gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone
agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for it in natural law and sovereignty and
viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.
I don’t think I have to tell you who won the dabate…contemporary science still
follows the scientific method that Hobbes and the Royal Society established.
Or, in other words, the way we order science and technology (as
knowledge and practice) has repercussions in the social and political
domains.
IRB
Imagine you’re about to be a freshman in college (it’s the summer) and you
get a package in the mail from Virginia Tech. As part of your orientation
experience, you are invited to submit a saliva sample for three genetic
markers (not sensitive or potentially health-related). You don’t have to do
anything, but those who participate can go on a website and enter a code
that matches their sample to get the results.
Principles
Questions we asked:
Bioethics as Biopolitics