Opening My Eyes

Of everything that we discussed this semester I think the thing that amazed me the most was just the simple correlation between culture and science. I had never really thought about how things like religion and politics play directly into how we interpret science. Not to say that I was oblivious to the bias inherent in our system, just that I had never had it thrown at me and discussed in such detail. There are the obvious things where the bias is apparent, such as global warming and our last section of the class, but I was more surprised when we talked about things like apotemnophilia and corn and all the cultural implications these things have. I will also take away our discussions from the poster presentations and the trends that were observed our history and how they are directly related to cultural norms at the time.

I also found some of the more philosophical concepts, like the idea of Cartesianism and the language of science, very interesting. They are things so deeply imbedded in our lives that I didn't even realize their existence until it was pointed out to me. Overall, I think this course taught me to listen to all sides of a story and to find where my facts are coming from before forming an opinion on the matter.

Everything is Corn!

I think the one thing that I will always remember from this class is discussing the issues and concerns surrounding food. I am pretty sure I will always be haunted by the fact that everything is made of corn. I had no idea how dependent we were on corn, and how it has changed human lives forever (and that we also have changed corn forever). I feel a little ignorant growing up in the MidWest and not knowing the impact of it.

It's upsetting because of how corn has invaded pretty much every aspect of our lives. I was shocked to find that even our fish were starting to eat it, ridiculous! My grocery store experiences have been profoundly changed by the discussions and topics surrounding food in this class. I had always thought of myself as "above average" in the ways of nutrition. But I found that accomplishing a well rounded diet is pretty much impossible with all of the corn in everything. I find myself looking at labels even more than I used to.

Our class was awesome with discussions. I learned a lot from just their comments in class. I was intrigued by how so many people new about food being thrown away. I was so shocked by the massive amounts of food that gets disposed of when there are so many people who are starving. I was brought out of my little bubble with class discussions, and I now see things in a different way.

Cartesian Driven World

Of all the things we talked about this semester (cutting limbs, 6 genders, the end of the world, etc.) I would say that the most memorable thing we talked about was the effect of Cartesian thinking on our society. Our lives are structured in such organized ways where there are steps we take in certain situations, rules of logic we apply to make the "best" decisions, and labels we create to organize our world. Realizing actually how deeply integrated this idea is into our society kind of scares me, to be honest. Its overwhelming to realize that there may have been a different way of thinking, once upon a time. Or maybe not. This could be just the way our human nature is, we need to organize in this way and use our "logic". But in any case, it was most fascinating to me to realize this idea.

This idea ties into our discussion about Brave New World, where we have two completely different worlds, the "civilized" and the "savage". One bases all decisions on Cartesian logic, the other on feelings, or whatever. Although the novel took these ideas to extremes, i think that its very important to see the immense contrast, and to see where we fit in as a society. Every time I make a decision I think about it in a new light. There are always two ways to make a decision. For example, I could do a cost benefit analysis to figure out what is a better decision, or I could draw a slip of paper and let "fate" decide. I have to say that I have no idea where I would fit into this binary, but I think thats the point.

That brings me to my last point, where id like to say, as I sort of mentioned in class, that overall I think that the most important thing I have taken out of this class is that I have no idea. There are so many different ways at looking at things, and so many of them make perfect sense. I cant say that i'm able to make better decisions in life, in fact, i'm practically unable to make any decisions at all now because there are so many angles to consider. But I think that education and knowledge is much more than knowing where you stand in the society. Its really just about experience and the rest of it will fall in to place, hopefully, and I think that the most that this class did was try to bring that kind of thinking to the University setting, where everything taught in a very linear way. It was different, but in some small way it opened my eyes to the chaos of the world, so thanks.

what to call myself now...

This semester is my last one as an undergrad, and ever since I heard that I had enough credits to graduate a year early, I've been a little unnerved. My aunts and uncles and my grandparents were all thrilled for me, constantly asking what I had planned for my future, proud that I had been so driven and was able to finish ahead of schedule...but the truth is I never intended to finish school early, and if I wasn't paying for my education with loans, I would have stayed in college for at least another year. Because my answer to my relatives' questions was always the same: I don't know.

A few of my relatives told me to appreciate that freedom. To take advantage of not having any ties and go and experience life...but I always thought, that's easy for them to say, they aren't the ones with all this "freedom." Up until the end of this semester, that lack of knowledge, that uncertainty about where I was going and what I was doing was entirely terrifying. I knew everything would work out, I wasn't genuinely "afraid" of anything, but something still made me uncomfortable when I thought about life post-grad. I didn't understand what it was until this semester that was throwing me for such a serious loop, but now I think I get it.

I knew that we lived in a Cartesian society, that we loved to categorize and classify everything around us, but it didn't strike me until this class that that includes ourselves. My fear for my future was that someone would ask me who I was and what I was doing and for the first time, I wouldn't have a definition of myself to give to other people. In high school, people would ask me about myself and I could say "I'm a student" or "I'm a choir-nerd" and in college I've been able to say "I'm an English major." In a few days, I will no longer be that. I'll be a college grad, true, but that will be my past. Telling people I'm a waitress isn't a category that I want to put myself in, yet I'm sure really sure what category I want to put myself in yet. I won't have a label that I can be happy to tell people about, that I want to define myself by.

I get when people say that what we've talked about in class has been a little unnerving, but it's sort of had the opposite effect on me. I went into this past semester totally ready to not have to go to class anymore, but really unsure of what that meant for who I was going to be when I was done. Now, while the idea of not having a nice, handy label for myself is still a little daunting, I think the things we've talked about in class have been sort of reassuring. The labels we come up with as a society are definitely not always right, and in a lot of ways can be more restricting than helpful, so maybe the same will be true for me. Maybe what my relatives say will be true, and the freedom will be, well, freeing!

How do I use this?

I am left unsure of what to do with the knowledge I have acquired. I am a scientist, a biologist, but now I am more unsure than ever of what this means. I had thought that this position would entitle me to a superior understanding of the world that had authority over other views. While I still believe the lens I use to view the world will give me the most accurate view possible, and I am not certain i will ever see absolute truth. One thing I now understand is that nobody sees the full truth. I must now acknowledge the ways that the "humanities" will always affect science. The two are intertwined, and I will forever see a hybrid when I think of how the world works. I now also understand why some people do not accept science as a supreme source of truth. These people live in a different view of reality, with their own paradigms, and their own concepts at the center of their hybrids. I will always be cautious in my quest to understand the world, and I will ask where the facts that I make come from. Despite being more unsure of myself, I definitely know more, and I am content with this new knowledge.

A REALISTIC REALSIM

Latour’s, “realistic realism”, is a concept I’ve been fighting since it was first introduced to me early on in the semester. Understanding the relationship between ontology and epistemology through the lens of a realistic realism has exposed the interconnectivity between the Cartesian “brain-in-vat”, and the outside world, and how science and politics are necessarily linked to and work through each other. Accepted concepts like “Might is Right” or scientific truth versus mob rule are suddenly delegitimized and falsified because science has been placed unjustifiably above common knowledge. A fact then, does not become a fact until it has been accepted as common knowledge. It is this point, when examined, and applied, that has colored and complicated my interpretation of the world.

We know the danger in relying on “facts” that fail to get the “mob” to go along with them; look to our discussions/debates on issues regarding global warming, food and the fossil fuel economy, and Michael Crichton’s real-world impact through the vehicle of a fictional novel. Rhetoric and fact are deeply connected, but in making them ontologically separate, we are unable to settle those issues that are connected to them because of the hierarchical structuring of scientific fact and the mob’s common knowledge. Latour reminds us however that this relationship is not vertical it is instead circular: fact and common knowledge depend on each other—one does not command the other. Latour’s fourth “public representation loop” (Latoure, p. 105) illustrates this point nicely, capturing the ways in which common knowledge plays a part in what scientific fact claims to be true.

Initially, I stood in contestation with this claim. How can the talk-show friendliness of a scientific fact affect whether or not that fact actually becomes one? Having completed the course, I now have a better idea of what Latour was getting at—although I’m not sure I will ever understand his reasoning entirely. In a way, if everyone were to believe in something, it makes it true. Where there is no belief, there is no fact. There is no sole determining factor in the creation of fact, there is instead a series of complex and interconnected relationship that work together to determine whether a claim becomes a fact or not. It is important for me to keep these things in mind. As a political science major, much of my time is spent exploring concepts of human nature, examining the role and likelihood of international cooperation, understanding the implications of international and domestic policy and so fourth. All of these concepts, in some way or another, are affected by the interpretation and implications of fact—scientific or not. Changing understanding is no longer dependent on the power of facts, it is instead dependent on the systems of signification and meaning that work to constitute and shape our very subjectivities.

Even before taking this class, the issue of diet and what I chose to consume has been big in my life. In high school, my mom and I started eating healthier, buying more organic and fresh foods, and discussing health and nutrition articles that we happened to find. Reading 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' deepend my interest in closely examining what I eat and where it comes from. I found this text, along with the overall themes of the class, frustrating (in a good way) because it challenges me, and forces me to question what is real and what is 'right'. I have been a vegetarian for the last four years, I try really hard to eat healthy and I admit to being drawn to local/ organic foods and places like the seward co*op. After reading Pollan's book and his views on the "stories" that places like whole foods feed you, factory Vs.family farm practices and corn, I had to ask myself what I believed in, what is real.Do I abstain from eating meat because it is gross or because I dislike the idea of eating the flesh of another living thing? Is it for health reasons? Is it because I disagree with the idea of growing animals as fast as you can and by any means necessary (pollution, sickness, disease, antibiotics, large swamps of toxic manure)? And if that is the case, would it be okay for me to eat a chicken or cow that was happily raised on Salatin's farm? I am also into not wasting things, so is it more wasteful than good to decline something containg meat when it would be thrown away anyway? I don't want to contribute to/support pollution or unethical practices, but I'm not really sure what the best solution is.I guess this course taught me to question everythingand allowed me to look at many different viewpoints surrounding heavy subjects. It also made me uncomfortable in some ways, as there are many possible ways of percieving, but it is debatable as to which one is "right". There are a number of different ways of seeing, and nothing is concrete.

Not New, but certainly improved.

At the start of this class I considered myself an odd mix of mediocre scientist with an even worse mix of philosopher/sociologist/artist. Whenever my science classes brought up moments in history that shifted the understanding of science towards our current state I was amazed and fascinated more by the historical perspective than the science itself. Early in class we discussed the dichotomy of these two spheres of thought, science and humanities, and I thought why do these things need to be exclusive modes of thought; In retrospect I fear this may have been more from ignorance about how the subjects as institutions have polarized themselves over time rather than some tacit insight of a keen observer. Courtesy of Latour, my initial views seem to have gained a bit of agency - I feel even more strongly that this dichotomy is constructed, fabricated, and an untrue manifestation of reality; the two arenas are inseparable, and to do so results in nothing more than a loss for our understanding of the real world... of reality. I'm excited by the increased sense that I am more capable to see the world with greater clarity. All things are interconnected in the web we've used so often to illustrate their relationships. However, these representations where always two-dimensional; I prefer to think of things from a more submersive perspective. Imagine being within the web, seeing the filaments extending from one junction to the next - do direction, no up, down, left or right - just the web, mind bogglingly complex and nearly unfathomable. Touching the filaments causes reverberations throughout the web and close observation elucidates the nature of the relationships. There's no bias regarding whether science or non-science is the cause or effect, which is more important, just the relationships and their meaning. It's an ideal state in my mind - I unfortunately cannot see all the filaments and certainly cannot discern their significance but I feel better capable of being able to do so now having been in this class... I feel as though I (my mind or me?) have been transformed. It's an experience that isn't easily forgotten. I'm older than most students, I feel comfortable saying I have more life experiences than the average student in this class and this is sincerely an experience that will remain with me far longer than most.

Thanks to all of you for your insight in the things we discussed in class - it made for a very rich experience.

Food, glorious food!

I really enjoyed the food section. I have worked with food for years, enjoy cooking, and was pretty shocked to see the dots of the food production process connected. I really knew very little about the involvement of corn in the manufacturing of SO MANY foods/things. Also the push towards, and away from GMOs is shocking. I remember someone's post (sorry for not remembering the author) comparing making a purchase to the license agreements we sign by checking the box before using new computer applications. That bit has stuck in my head ever since. By buying products, we are signing our agreement/acceptance of the entire process it took to get it to us. I had made this connection in terms of some processes, like sweat-shop made garments, but NEVER connected it to food until then. It connects to more than just food because we often stanp our approval on many things without really acknowledging the entire process or hybrid that connects to it. I had a lot of fun in this class. I wish more of my classes actually provoked thought...

I will always remember reading Sexing the Body in public...

I am sure some of you can relate to me in regards to the weird stares that were given in my direction when I whipped out my copy of Sexing the Body in public. Trying to catch up on the reading for the upcoming day, I would open my book before Chemistry or while on the campus connector to read for a few minutes when I had the time. Apparently, the rest of the University was unaware there there are indeed six genders, or possibly even a continuum of mixed genders. The private body on the front of the book, coupled with the interesting title sure did not invite people to sit in the open seat next to me on the campus connector... the funny thing is, is that this class has taught me why.

After completing this class, I feel that I have a deeper understanding of not understanding, if that makes any sense. Like Ben said in class on Thursday, "we have been taught to unthink that is ordinary, different, and not like the norm/accepted." The public's view of sex and gender is private, concrete, and two dimensional. It is considered taboo by the public mob to question, or even consider, the possibility of multiple sexes. For this reason, I received stares in public while reading Sexing the Body.

I will admit that I even felt embarrassed to read this book in public at times. Embarrassed from simply reading a book! This emotion connects to the deep roots of public opinion and what is deemed right in our own minds. In the concrete world, men have penises, women have vaginae, and people read about topics that matter, such as global warming (thanks Crichton).

I guess what I am trying to say is that this class has given me a new perspective on looking and evaluating issues in science and beyond. I am a pretty black and white thinker when it comes to academic related issues. I seek concrete and distinctive answers. I love math and chemistry because you can always put that (Cartesian) box around your answer to draw borders to separate it from the outside world: it is the one true answer. This class has taught me that there really is not such thing as a "true" answer. I have been "untaught" to think in a non concrete way. This is intriguing because, like Robin said in class, "We have to learn how to think like an idiot so that we can learn 'how they hell they could believe this bullshit?'" This thought erases the pretty boundaries that surround my nice, perfect answer.

Applying this to sexing the body and gender, we are left with uncertainty. The gender/sex line is a little unclear Uncertainty is a scary thought, so we live in a world where facts and solid evidence is a necessity. Yet, this class has taught me that there is always another seeing device possible in order to skew the "facts" a different direction. It is by this logic that I can conclude that there quite possibly are no facts (in society). Who knows what that babies sex is/was/is going to be? The facts sometimes get lost in the ideology.

This class has taught me an entirely new way to look at issues. I am more open to see diverse viewpoints from different perspectives. Thanks Robin and Ben for an interesting and intriguing class!

A big ass mess...

If there is one thing that I can honestly say I fully understood coming out of this class that changed me, it is that, as Jim said today, "the world is crazy." There is nothing clean about how things work. Much as we may try, purifying or depurifying, everything is a mess of knots of inter connectivity with so many other issues in major and minor ways. We may try as best as we can to obtain pure data by removing outside influence from say the environment, but the human element is always there. The is always a human bias simply because we are the one looking for the ideas and we are the ones creating them and using them.

Most, or at least most who spoke, seemed to find this mess of inter connectivity that depurifies everything bothersome. I will honestly say that I disagree. While it may be true that I certainly know more, about what I know and how it may have come to be what it is, or where it came from, this does not fundamentally change the way the world works. Have some foundations changed? Hell yes, some shifted left or right, up or down, and some were removed altogether. But society has not changed fundamentally and I can continue to live as I did before, except I know have a level of clarity, or blur as it may be, about what I am seeing and what the natural human interpretations of what I am seeing may be. Perhaps this discontent simply comes from the fact that none of us can think exactly as we did before, hence the shifting foundations. But we all should have seen this going in unless we became a wall to the information presented to us. When paradigms shifts, so do the foundations upon which they are built. I will be more thoughtful about what I learn as a result of this class, but it does not fundamentally change anything except which neurons might fire in my head (hello Pinkerton) or how my past experiences influence my train of thought (hello Lewontin), as it may be. The basis of knowledge that we "know" does not change all that dramatically. Liquid helium was discovered in a scientific race, and so was the composition of the moon. Obviously there were certain motivations to most, if not all, scientific discoveries in our Cartesian system of knowledge, but that just make them all the more interesting if I may say so myself, it gives them a humanity if you will. Facts still emerge and these facts can still be used, we just have a new, dirtier looking glass that presents a fuller picture of what we are seeing. As long as we remember how the knowledge was created, we can better interpret its meaning to the fullest, and I think this is exactly what the "we have forgotten so much" idea is getting at. I am very excited at the prospect of a muddled and messy scientific humanitarian world in which each of our realities is created upon, and how these realities coalesce into a conscious base of knowledge is all the better for it, given we can understand that not all realities are created equal, given the weight that the humanities, or the idea that human knowledge is created by and for humans, does indeed carry in the field of science, and how this plays into this interaction between the two and between these realities.

...now I understand why Latour had such difficulty giving words to this idea...

Awesome class Robin and Ben!

Blog posting #10 (due FRIDAY 5/7, 11:59 P.M. (comment due SATURDAY 5/8, 11:59 P.M.)): Final reflection/discussion

This last post is real open...and meant as a kind of final reflection/discussion. We'd like you to do the following:

1) Choose one thing from this class (a text, an issue, a concept, an object, a theme, a case study, etc.) that you are taking away with you from this class -- something that still excites you, or bothers you, or intrigues you. Ideally, something that has changed, even in some small way, the way that you see and act in the world.

2) Describe it, briefly: what it is, and why it excites/bothers/intrigues you.

3) Reflect on what about it you are taking away from this class, and how it has (in whatever way) altered your thoughts about and actions in the world. If possible/appropriate, make reference to how the issue played out in class discussion, in the context of other topics/issues/themes/texts/concepts/cases we have been dealing with. If you recall what one or two of your colleagues had to say about it, bring that in too!

Addicts as Prisoners

I don't mean to copy Robin's post, but I'm really glad the prison poster and the addiction poster were on the same day of lecture, with the prison and the industrial complex following the addiction poster. The connection is inevitable in our culture as our means (the science) of treating addicts connects to this new era of sentencing them to slave labor (the industrial complex).

My first concept for my "intervention piece" failed due to lack of credible sources, and my second choice was privatized prisons. I changed again because I couldn't think of an actual intervention that would make a difference... not that my final project made any difference. I am very passionate about the prison system and am extremely against the privatization of the system.

Addicts are addicts because they can no longer control their behavior. It has become so much a part of their identity that they can no longer rationalize the entire decision making process. I have a bit of experience with both addiction and the prison system and feel that addicts need help and prisons are meant for horrible, potentially dangerous offenders. The industrial complex invites a misshapen structure to the “correctional” process. In reality, how much bad behavior is corrected in prison? It invites corporations to make private profit by keeping prisons full and productive. It continues the value of private profit over human life much like many corporate processes.
This system shapes policy and the way addicts are viewed in society. In the poster presentation about addicts, I heard “do they think these actually work? When viewing the “stay off drugs” clip from the add council. Are they marketing rehabilitation or that addicts are disgusting? I couldn’t tell, but our treatment of addicts hasn’t changed. They are sent to prison and in some states, forced to make products (like office furniture) that will be sold (to government agencies) to make money for large corporations.

What is God's Plan?

I would like to draw a connection between the super babies and birth control. One of the main themes in both of these projects is the idea of religion versus science. The question religion adresses is the idea that these two things are interfering with gods plan, and therefor shouldn't be allowed. This is a very tough issue because there isn't any clear cut way of arguing against a religous argument. The perspective religion comes from is incompadible with science, but as latour has shown us, outside forces do affect science, and religion is a great example of this. The other common thread for the two projects is the ethics of the good of an individual versus the good of society. In this case the individual being harmed is the potential baby. On the other side, society benifits by having either super babies that won't have an expensive disease, or society will have one less debate. The reason these topics are so contreversial is because the rights being trampled are that of an unborn child, a human being that can't argue for itself. To complicate matters further there is also the rights of the parents involved. By not allowing them any of these things their personal freedoms are also being limited. Science has given us this new dilema, but it doesn't have any way of adressing the ethics and religious debate that has insued.

Lingering question: When is enough, enough??

I would like to tie cosmetic surgery to animal testing. As the world continues to evolve, I feel as though "natural" is losing all reason and rhyme. There are always new ways to improve the looks of yourself, and a lot of ads we are exposed to each day are telling us how we can enhance our looks. This takes us back to the question we have been battling all semester- when is enough, enough?

Through animal testing, (according to the more than likely bias source) 94% is for cosmetic reasons, which is all for the purpose of changing how we humans appear. Cosmetic surgery is becoming the norm, and it soon will be an addiction (along the side of food, sex, and Internet).

Designer babies and sports enhancement can also be closely tied to animal testing and cosmetic surgery. All for are changing the physical make-up of humans original form. Through many articles and novels we have read this semester, the debate between culture and nature seems to be behind it all. What I mean by that is the natural state of how things are "suppose to be" is conflicting with our culture's advances, wants, and desires.

It is hard to know what will be next, or if natural will ever be back in style, but until then, the lingering question remains: when is enough, enough?

The White Man's Burden and Genetically Engineered Babies

Pear’s Soap ads, in addition to creating a distinction between clean, good smelling, white Christians, and “them”, also employed the phrase, “the white man’s burden”. Using this phrase from Rudyard Kipling’s Poem not only made imperialism a noble endeavor (i.e. washing the dirty salvages clean), but also a moral obligation, as we the “civilized” whites had an obligation to help the “uncivilized” savages better themselves. To what extent then, is genetic modification a noble endeavor, and is it or can it be a moral obligation? Of course, answering these questions relies heavily upon which moral and theoretic lens one sees this question through, but across the entire spectrum—from those for and against imperialism to those for and against genetic modification—these issues blur the lines between what is natural and artificial, deeply complicating the methods employed to measure what is noble and moral, while cementing a structure in place that makes the distinction between “us” and “them” possible only by virtue of the relationship between the two.

The parallels between “the white man’s burden” and genetically engineered babies run along the lines of noble endeavor and moral obligation. Again, whether or not the two are held as noble or moral depends largely on the institutions that develop and affect specific kinds of intellectual faculties. The structure however, that these practices have set in place, is a structure that makes the relationship between one who uses soap and one who does not, or the relationship between a genetically engineered baby and a baby that exists through conception, possible only by virtue of their relationship between one another. To be frank, one who stinks, only stinks in relation to one who smells good. A genetically modified baby is seen as unnatural or unmoral only in relation to a baby conceived naturally. What this does is complicated how we define what is defined as moral and noble because this social structure shapes a person’s self-understanding and interest. To put it another way, depending on where you fall in the structure, your conception of what is moral and noble and will shaped, internalized, and appear self-evident. It boils down to ways of seeing and ways of knowing, and often times these ways of seeing are predetermined for us.

The question then, is not whether or not “the white man’s burden” or genetically engineered babies are noble endeavors or moral obligations; it is instead a question how to understand, unpack, and separate oneself from a structure that has become so embedded into one’s culture as to literally shape one’s subjectivity and self-understanding. What this structure does do, is help to explain why there was a tension between those in the past that were for imperialism and the westernization of the undeveloped world and those who were not, and why the is a tension between those in favor of genetically developed babies and those are who not. For each position, there is a life experience and a structure in place to help shape a person’s self-understanding, and ultimately lead them to a position on a particular issue. Separating ourselves from the structure however, is not a matter of a choice; the structure is a part of us, it shapes how we think, act, and understand. Often times the advent of a new structure, or set of structural relationships, or way of seeing, is what exposes the current structural power at work. The ushering in of a new paradigm perhaps may help us to separate ourselves from our current structure, but it simply replaces the old with the new. Gauging whether or not something is noble and moral is contingent upon which angle we approach our measurement from, but the tools at out disposal for that measurement are contingent upon the structural power working on and through us. Conceptions of natural and artificial, noble and dishonorable, moral and immoral, exists only in relation to one another. They are not themselves natural. It is for that reason that these questions will continue to exist and complicate our understanding of understanding itself.

Addiction and Surgery

I decided to link up the presentation on addictions with the presentation on plastic surgeries. I think both are interesting because their presence in our society has sort of exploded in the last few years. As the group pointed out, the amount of things that people are now going to rehab for has gotten out of control: drugs and alcohol, sure, but sex and internet gaming? It seems less about that which we cannot control then that which we've simply chosen NOT to control. The line between simple irresponsible behavior and addiction seems to be moving further and further to accommodate our society's inability to control itself. And the plastic surgery group made it very clear that an insane amount of money is being spent each year on entirely optional surgeries, and the surgeries themselves are becoming even more efficient in order to get more surgeries in less time.

It seems like the abundance of what we now call “addicts” and people who are, well addicted, to plastic surgery, might be a sort of circulating reference. We've established through the semester that most people are at the very least uncomfortable with, if not afraid of, what they don't understand. In the past, addictions were simply thought of as immoral behavior. It was not entirely understood why some people were more apt to become addicted to negative things. Now, admittedly, some things are addictive, like drugs and alcohol, and rehabs for truly addictive substances are a necessary thing in our society. But once the black box around addiction is taken away (though arguably the genetic argument for addiction is still a black box), people become more willing to accept it's existence. Since people can place addiction as something out of their control, can categorize it as a genetic problem, then they are more comfortable with the idea. More and more people begin claiming their problems stem from addiction, and it starts a landslide effect.

I think plastic surgery is working the same way (arguably, the obscene amount of surgeries wouldn't be happening if society's acceptance of obsessive behaviors hadn't occurred first). Surgery used to be something that people were afraid of. A person cutting up their body, even when it was necessary, was not something the average person would enter into lightly. But now it has become common place. Since more and more celebrities, or wealthy people, or even the middle class, have begun getting face lifts, and breast enhancements, and liposuction, the trickle down effect occurs. It becomes typical, the black box is removed when the science improves, and what used to be a terrifying experience has become a moderately eventful weekend.

Human Nature: Addicted to Pushing Limits?

The two posters that I chose to discuss include the Hadron Collider poster and the Addiction poster. I would like to bring in our commonly used "Human Nature" that we tend to run into and have conflict with during class. I am not going to argue what constitutes Human Nature, instead I'd like to bring up the possibility that we (as part of our nature) are drawn/addicted to pushing the limits. The Hadron Collider illustrates this 'addiction' well.

We have established that we are all Cartesian, and that we believe everything can be figured out if we just put enough effort into what we want to accomplish. However, is part of being Cartesian also wanting to push the limits as far as they can go? Do we believe in limits? And does pushing these limits provide us with some sort of 'high' resulting in our addiction to pushing them further? I can see that we do have this constant urge to find out more, and in a way can see how we are addicted to finding out how far we can go. This can be linked to other events/things other than the Hadron Collider, (space exploration, designer babies, vaccinations, etc.)

Again, I am not trying to define what human nature is. I just think it's interesting that we continue to act in similar patterns, and to say it is an addiction may also be 'pushing it'.

The God Complex

I'd like to talk about Designer Babies and Large Hadron Collider. They are both dealing with the ever-growing advancement of science. In designer babies its biology, and in the collider its physics. The main thing i want to look at is how with both issues, one of the main reasonings against using this new advancement of science is the "playing God" question. First of all, what does that say about the nature of our science? and second, what does that say about how our society views religion?

In the Hadron Collider presentation, the group mentioned the "faith crisis", where the Catholic church will lose members if the so-called "god particle" will be discovered. Our science has grown so advanced that the possibility of the human being able to do what God can do is creeping closer and closer to a reality. Our ability to find out all of the secrets of the universe is pushing the idea of God out of our society. There are now basically two groupings of individuals: the scientific people and the religious fanatics. This is obviously a huge exaggeration, but its growing to be more and more like that.

Looking at this issue from the Designer Babies perspective, there is more of the "playing God" fear, where people feel like it is not it their place to choose what their child will look like, because we have always relied on God for that one. Again, God is becoming less necessary for our society, and becoming more of a hindrance. We used to pray to God to help our crops grow and make our children beautiful, and now all we have to do is throw down some fertilizer and pick out a few genes.

This idea has obviously been around since the enlightenment, but with the growth of science God keeps getting pushed further and further from the mainstream of society and its surprising how often this type of idea comes up. Not only did it show up in these two presentations, but also Birth Control and countless other things we experience every day. This is clearly and important issue in our world, and something we may have to pay attention to a bit closer.

Too Much, or Not Enough?

I'd like to tie together the posters that discussed soap and enhancements in sports and industry. I think both of them show how a culturally accepted norm can suddenly jump to the wrong side of the fence and be considered culturally unacceptable.

I'll start with soap. We've all heard the wonderful stories of people bathing once a year and the disgusting conditions in which some of our earliest surgeons worked in. The soap group gave us all sorts of great historical background on this and certainly made me appreciate the cleaner world in which we live now. In this case the scientific discovery of germs and all the bad things they can do led to a cultural revolution. Before we knew all the creepy things crawling on every surface could make us sick there weren't companies like Clorox and PineSol and the list goes on and on. Through the effects of semantic contagion this knowledge spread like wildfire. Advertisements for these products talked about the good American housewife using this cleaner, that detergent, and as time goes on we see advertisements depicting all the nasty germs crawling on a lego block as the unsuspecting toddler goes and grabs it, effectively spreading it to his friends and family. Unfortunately, science has begun to tell us we've taken things too far, that by using certain products too often we are building supergerms that are immune to all our defenses! But we're at a point now where this science is hard to accept based on our current cultural state of mind.

All of the various enhancements discussed in the next poster also follow a similar trend. There are obvious enhancements like taking steroids to break records and the like, but the thing I found most impressive were the day to day things that many average people have. Things like corrective lenses give someone who is potentially blind to the world the ability to see the world as clear as possible, if not more clearly. We obviously can't deny our fellow humans this sort of opportunity, but as their one example showed, excellent vision could give Tiger Woods the advantage he needs to start winning lots of PGA tournaments. Much like our friends with the soap, we see the effects of semantic contagion. One guy gets this done, tells his buddy who says "hey I could benefit from this" and the enhancement spreads. Suddenly you have dozens of baseball players on growth hormones and steroids. Drugs that take away our nerves so we can perform in a no stress environment. All of these scientific breakthroughs, while (mostly) noble in intentions, have certainly been taken too far, even to a greater extent than our love of soap. We now have to start using our cultural beliefs and the human side of our sciences to determine how much is enough? How much is too much?

The Ultimate in Artificial Selection

Incest and designer babies make a fantastic sci-fi/horror/comedy/social commentary theme for any sort of media. Both generate deep emotional objections from most of us regardless of whether the feelings are rooted in religion, philosophy, or ethical science. A question which begs the asking is if designer babies are a possibility, why can't kissing cousins make a product of pure geneology that won't have three heads? The stigmas for each of these subjects are tucked deep into human culture that makes it difficult to see why both can't be mutually acceptable. Humans have had a basic understanding of the source of birth defects for millenia but with an ample helping of concepts such as sin, suddenly new agency is developed as an opposition force to incest. When "real" science gets thrown in, the stigma intensifies - some say they already new this: God told them so, others advocate relearning the forgotten teachings of the ancients. With Genetically Modified Humans (GMH) a possibility the ethical debate continues based on the paradigms established by the previous lesson. Evolution is dependent on one key ingredient: variation. GMH allow for an increase in the variation needed for our species to continue it's temporal march (for better stewardship or destructive domination, depending on your point of view). As we've stated in class, it's a difficult thing to undo thousands of years of culture but sometimes one needs to ask whether our current viewpoints are the best in terms of the longview.

Animal Testing and Designer Babies

Well it may not come into the minds of some people when talking about the connections between animal testing and designer (Genetically modified) babies, I found some connections between these two topics that relate to the class as well. First, let me start out in saying that I support animal testing and designer babies, to some extent. Animal testing has given us the basis in which we can create designer babies. They go hand in hand, because without first learning how to try to genetically engineer animals, we would have no knowledge to carry over to the human population.

I am skeptical of some of the facts presented in the animal testing presentation, such as the fact that 94% of animal testing was used for cosmetics. This blind stat which is lacking of a credible source and citation, can easily skew the seeing device in which we view the animal testing subject. I think that sometimes in this class the science is lost to a wikipedia and google search of the first kind of information that we can find. And, as odd as it may sound, Michael Crichton was more credible in most cases because even he had footnotes (which as we all know were "real"). I guess the problem that I have is that in a science studies class we focus on both the science and the implications of that science, but we cannot have the latter if the former is illegitimate. I guess we could go into a conversation of what classifies an argument as legitimate, but that is a conversation for a whole different blog post. In this case, a simple credible citation would suffice.

These obligations aside, the connections between designer babies and animal testing are substantial. Some may argue that both are unethical, both are inhumane, and that both empower humans far beyond whomever or whatever created this universe intended. In reviewing terms that these two topics relate to, I found ideas in my notes that I had previously forgot about. The ideas of biological determinism-the fact that in today's society it is accepted that if there is something wrong with you it is in your genes (argued against by Lewontin)- and the ever popular theory of "black boxes."

First let's start with biological determinism. This concept is present in both subjects in that designer babies are the basis in which biological determinism can take root, and further advanced through the use of animal testing. Because designer babies are based almost solely on genetics, biological determinism is legitimized as the cure to diseases and makes a person come out how we want him/her/it to. Animal testing gives us the knowledge to do this, as in this case I am talking about research done on animals that involves genetic modification and alteration.

As for black boxes, it is the basis for animal testing! Here, lets apply this chemical...alter this gene...see what happens when... The very fact that we do not know what we are doing or the expected outcomes let's us peek inside the black boxes of our own inventions. With this comes the ethical dilemma of are black boxes best kept sealed for our own good, and do we have the right to open these boxes and use them for our growth (ie. designer babies)? To these questions, I have my opinions, but no answers. I believe that the ethics of science have allowed us to progress more than we ever imagined, and the implications of designer babies, genetic modification, and animal testing are advancing our technological capacity. With this comes the question, do we have the right to advance past what is natural? But like I said, I really do not have the answers to that.

Wheres the money gone?

Focusing on the LHC and the Humanities and Sciences (H&S) posters, I found it very interesting that one, the LHC poster was direct evidence of the H&S poster, and two the focus on legitimation from both posters. The H&S poster directly showed how science, as it is, has become THE means to legitimize something, and therefore is getting ~all the money! whereas even the humanities have turned to science to legitimize themselves in some way (see neurosciences), and how this has tipped the scales in some ways, namely in term of opportunities (science has lots and growing, humanities has a few and shrinking). Most people would see this as a problem, that this is entirely understandable considering the subject division, even in the name of our class. But in all honesty, as Mr. Latour has said, the two are not separate. Long have the humanities trailed the science thanks to uncle Rene, but the "gridding" of the sciences also changed the humanities, regarless of how noticeable is has been. Paraphrasing a line from my favorite game Mass Effect 2 (which got some of its content from Gilbert and Sullivan, mind you) 'Art is a reflection of advances in society and technology.' As technology changes, so does art, and if science's paradigm shifts, you bet your ass that the humanities will feel it, and change along with it, as a system of progression forward (or backward if you like, its all relative).

Abortions and the end of the world

Two posters that I was able to link together after some reflection were Birth Control, and The Large Hadron Collider. In both of these topics groups were discussed that were opposed to advancements in the science being spoken of. This group is primarily in both cases a religious group opposed to the tampering in areas related to god's work, although I must also mention the not-necessarily-religious pro-life group and pro-not-destroying-the-world group. The opposition these groups presents appears to be a paradigmatic difference; these people don't want science in these areas, and live in a reality full of spirits and demons. Reality for these groups is their ideologies, which they must defend because the opportunity to live in Fairy Land is too good to pass up.
Another topic brought up in both presentations was black boxes. In reference to this post, I will discuss voluntary black boxes. The Catholic opposition discussed for the Hadron Collider referred to the fact that they are fully aware of what these discoveries may mean, but they don't want to know because it may deligitmate the idea of god for some people. For birth control, we have condemnation directed towards abortionative birth control. Here we have a pro-choice group that wants the concept of the beginning of life to remain a mystery, because if we do not have life, we can't destroy it. Revealing the innards of this black box could make the idea of birth control more morally reprehensible, or less, depending on what our definition of life is.

Superbabies

I thought that the presentations on designer babies and incest were very connected. Both dealt with reproduction and concentrated on focusing the highest quality of offspring. Although the science behind developing genetically engineered babies is relatively new, the ideas have been around for a long time. In the incest presentation, they talked about keeping the "good" or "royal" blood in the family through cousin marriage, and I think that the designer babies group also discussed a "rating system" that was once used to pair certain people with alike people. They also talked about how you can be assured, through science, that your baby will indeed retain "good" traits. Compatibility and fitness to reproduce between two individuals are dealt with in these topics.
Along withe the good, there is also the bad. Designer babies and incest are both focused on keeping the bad stuff out whether it be impure blood or hereditary diseases. Basically the idea behind these two concepts seems to be to pass on the desirables, weed out the negatives, and breed to produce the highest quality of offspring possible.