In The Imperative of Responsibility, Hans Jonas opens in a movement from the Antigone chorus (natality, the absence of Antigone), to man and nature to the island city.
The great island city that is Manhattan is a phenomenon behind which lies one of the wonders of the modern world, the awaited new aquaduct (Tunnel No. 3.) It brings to mind the great Greek tunneling venture - tunnelling from two directions.
The keystone plays an important role in the Roman achievements that remain as functioning aquaducts.
What is missing from view is often the watershed. High above the cities of North and West Vancouver lie their watersheds upon which thou shalt not trespass. For New York City, the Catskills are one such watershed (American usage - British "catchment".)
A typical drainage basin reveals a fractal pattern. Local topography determines whether forests ensure the quality of that water and dampen the rate of drainage by forming an immense sponge.
In the city of Los Angeles, many tourists miss the Los Angeles River, a great concrete trough intended to prevent dangerous flash floods.
One surveys and sees techique: another sees decisions and fore-sight. Some of the "tunnels" are better understood as covered trenches (keystone?) and others as immese culverts.
After rainfall, area and slope appear as the determining factors. And with area, slope and flow we return to the heirs of Galileo.
Bolzano made first steps to characterizing the organization of the 19th Century European state - how to best characterize the state employment of science and engineering may prove far more challenging and those habitual characterizations much more in need of critique.
In the area of transparency, great technical undertakings may now be more examples than embarrassments. That transparency may have been lacking in the proposals for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico - and threatens to tar more than wildlife and beaches.
Showing posts with label Hans Jonas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hans Jonas. Show all posts
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Philosophical Tropes
At various points when Hans Jonas spoke of power over nature I find myself wondering what he could have meant.
The orbiting astronaut or cosmonaut demonstrates no such power: if any critical equipment failure occurs, we are most often powerless to intervene. They orbit in constant exposure to micro-meterorite strikes. Journalists report their high-velocity free-fall in the earth's gravitational well as "gravity-free" or "floating free of earth's gravity" in a foolish declaration of a falsehood as a triumph.
The fallout of the Soviet reactors should remind us how powerless we were to protect the Laplanders and their lichen-eating reindeer.
The most important features of the earth are the magnetic field shielding us from the solar wind and the molten inner core generating that field about the rotating planet. We demonstrate no power over solar activity. The magnetic field will reverse as it has reversed through the life of the planet.
What we are often powerless to do, is to undo the damage that we do. Whether in the result of draining the bogs of Europe or in the deforestation in the Levant, we do not seem to demonstrate so much power as our aptitude for triggering unintended consequences.
The hyperbole about our power over nature may have the unintended consequence of undermining efforts to explain such undesirable effects as climate change, species extinction and ocean pollution.
When a fool such a Palin rejects the reality of climate change on the basis that man does not control nature, we should all see some problem in this rhetoric.
If we succeed in recreating a wooly mammoth, you can be sure that we will be powerless to restore the elephant herds of Africa or the prairie grasslands.
Perhaps what is meant by "nature" is what suggests this trope of "man's power over nature".
Our inability to predict such a wide range of serious unintended consequences should sober us: the power was supposed to begin in prediction.
Consider Hans Jonas on the fundamental consideration that man is an organism. Some will contest that this is an optional "theoretical" standpoint. It is a fact. Jonas on the subject of death might have done better to consider the generations in populations.
What power over nature is being demonstrated by the gorilla with the "walking stick" or other innovations? [see: PLOS on gorilla use of tools.]
Man is no longer the "tool-using" organism. When we finally reassess the "laboratory" handling of "Nim Chimsky" we will eventually concede that we are not so exclusively the language-using organism.
The UN report on the devastation of coral reefs since 1970 is not a testament to our power over nature.
Hans Jonas on death might have benefited from consideration of petroleum: millenia of dead plant matter entrusted to the shale in the earth's crust now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Surely the reliance on petroleum is a metaphor worth perserving: refined as paraffin it brought odourless smoke to the candles and lamps of those who could afford it - while poisoning them silently with its fumes (as had the creosote of fires through the millenia.) The poor burned smelly fish oil or worse.
The orbiting astronaut or cosmonaut demonstrates no such power: if any critical equipment failure occurs, we are most often powerless to intervene. They orbit in constant exposure to micro-meterorite strikes. Journalists report their high-velocity free-fall in the earth's gravitational well as "gravity-free" or "floating free of earth's gravity" in a foolish declaration of a falsehood as a triumph.
The fallout of the Soviet reactors should remind us how powerless we were to protect the Laplanders and their lichen-eating reindeer.
The most important features of the earth are the magnetic field shielding us from the solar wind and the molten inner core generating that field about the rotating planet. We demonstrate no power over solar activity. The magnetic field will reverse as it has reversed through the life of the planet.
What we are often powerless to do, is to undo the damage that we do. Whether in the result of draining the bogs of Europe or in the deforestation in the Levant, we do not seem to demonstrate so much power as our aptitude for triggering unintended consequences.
The hyperbole about our power over nature may have the unintended consequence of undermining efforts to explain such undesirable effects as climate change, species extinction and ocean pollution.
When a fool such a Palin rejects the reality of climate change on the basis that man does not control nature, we should all see some problem in this rhetoric.
If we succeed in recreating a wooly mammoth, you can be sure that we will be powerless to restore the elephant herds of Africa or the prairie grasslands.
Perhaps what is meant by "nature" is what suggests this trope of "man's power over nature".
Our inability to predict such a wide range of serious unintended consequences should sober us: the power was supposed to begin in prediction.
Consider Hans Jonas on the fundamental consideration that man is an organism. Some will contest that this is an optional "theoretical" standpoint. It is a fact. Jonas on the subject of death might have done better to consider the generations in populations.
What power over nature is being demonstrated by the gorilla with the "walking stick" or other innovations? [see: PLOS on gorilla use of tools.]
Man is no longer the "tool-using" organism. When we finally reassess the "laboratory" handling of "Nim Chimsky" we will eventually concede that we are not so exclusively the language-using organism.
The UN report on the devastation of coral reefs since 1970 is not a testament to our power over nature.
Hans Jonas on death might have benefited from consideration of petroleum: millenia of dead plant matter entrusted to the shale in the earth's crust now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Surely the reliance on petroleum is a metaphor worth perserving: refined as paraffin it brought odourless smoke to the candles and lamps of those who could afford it - while poisoning them silently with its fumes (as had the creosote of fires through the millenia.) The poor burned smelly fish oil or worse.
Heidegger, Arendt, Jaspers
I have not seen a plain word spoken on Heidegger handing his willing Arendt to his friend Jaspers.
Heidegger remarks somewhere about Jaspers refusal to leave his Jewish wife. Did Heidegger imagine in some way that they would share his wood nymph?
Ambiguity remains in just how Heidegger and Arendt negotiated her transfer from Marburg to Heidelberg. Jaspers response to Arendt's disclosure decades later was something of a surprise. Was he inept at feigning ignorance?
The "transfer" to the esteemed Jaspers has its counterpart in her loveless marriage to the despised Guenther Stern. And with regard to both Stern and Arendt, the name of Hans Jonas.
In Heidegger's Children, Richard Wolin seems to indicate that there was nothing more to say about Jonas seeking out Arendt: there is no reference to a source. Heidegger simply sent him.
Heidegger remarks somewhere about Jaspers refusal to leave his Jewish wife. Did Heidegger imagine in some way that they would share his wood nymph?
Ambiguity remains in just how Heidegger and Arendt negotiated her transfer from Marburg to Heidelberg. Jaspers response to Arendt's disclosure decades later was something of a surprise. Was he inept at feigning ignorance?
The "transfer" to the esteemed Jaspers has its counterpart in her loveless marriage to the despised Guenther Stern. And with regard to both Stern and Arendt, the name of Hans Jonas.
In Heidegger's Children, Richard Wolin seems to indicate that there was nothing more to say about Jonas seeking out Arendt: there is no reference to a source. Heidegger simply sent him.
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