Continuing from our previous thoughts: the question of technology and our modern understanding of it is a question of whether the pursuit of scientific reasoning is to be bounded by any limits in nature. And, of course, whether generalizations about the distinctions between ancient and modern are accurate or helpful.
On this issue, Robert Cheeks at Pomo Conservative found this by Robert Walsh:
"In his discussion of the idea that while we love technology and its benefits [Walsh writes that] we steadfastly refuse “to submit to the demands of rigorous efficiency. Nostalgia for the old, monuments of spiritual aspiration, the worldwide revival of ancient religious forms, the power of orgiastic political movements of destruction, and the protest impulse that has driven artistic expression for more that a century all testify to the profound ambivalence with which the success of instrumental rationality has been greeted.”
Walsh adds, “The problem, is that we seem to have struck a Faustian bargain. We have been able to obtain this vast technical prowess only because we have been willing to override all presumptive limits.”
Matthew Lee Anderson
Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.
