culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

VIORICA – TORII CACIUC
and the Universe. If science has, as object of study, the discovery of the laws in
nature, then technology has, as object of study, the control over the destructive
forces of nature and the transformation of the natural resources into material
goods, useful for human society. The creation of technical means, from the
simplest tool to the most active technologies of our times, proves the humans’
active attitude towards nature and society. What may be noticed is the existence
of a reciprocal interdependence between science and technology, the latter
determining the progress of science, so as the former, in its own time, determine
the progress of technology.
Technology makes the battle against the humans’ hostile nature unequal,
nature being not only subdued, but destroyed also. In this battle of domination
on nature, man is not naturally endowed with means of defence, of protection
etc., but he is endowed with reason and intelligence and, through the technology
created, he may overcome the natural drawbacks.
The demand formulated by Descartes at the beginning of the modern
epoch – that, with the help of science and technology, man must become “lord
and master of nature” – is seen today, in many respects, as the seminal cell of
that greed for power and for the violent way in which we are subduing nature,
which turns it into a prey of ecological degradation (natural resources being
explored on a short term, with no care for its resident content of value).
Strictly speaking, the technical dominance of nature has three components
or steps (Birnbacher 1999: 484-508):
• nature’s objectivity, as the object of observation and theory;
• the explanation of its phenomena through causal principles;
• its active component layout through the technical interventions amended
towards the purpose.
In this way, nature is reduced to a simple useful material, and its
destruction does not have its roots in the so-called dominance, but in the way in
which we subdue nature; nature does not lose a part of its dignity only through
the changes it suffered, in the period between the end of the XVIII th century and
the XIX th century, but “the dominance of nature is incompatible with the respect
needed to be had for nature’s dignity only when nature is violated, when its
living breath is taken, when it is radically subordinated and destroyed”, as it
happens in the XX th century (Birnbacher 1999: 484-508).
Ecological ethics may intervene to ameliorate the building-up and the
reconsideration of the human behaviour towards nature, through the rethinking
of the philosophical system of every individual, but also by creating a new
philosophy that should guide science and technology through their next
strategies of development. It is necessary that the new strategy of durable
development of contemporary society should have at its base the following
ecological ethics (Caciuc 2003: 119- 133):
• the attainment of a worldwide conscience, with the help of which each
individual will understand his role as a member of the global community, based
on new moral values, like those of cooperation and unity, of self-support;
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