The madcap race to tinker with Frankenstein. Delusions of Darwinian times.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/152/focus/Better_babies_+.shtml
Better babies?
Why genetic enhancement is too unlikely to worry about
By Steven Pinker, 6/1/2003
THIS YEAR, THE 50th ANNIVERSARY of the discovery of the structure of DNA has
kindled many debates about the implications of that knowledge for the human
condition. Arguably the most emotionally charged is the debate over the prospect
of human genetic enhancement, or ''designer babies.'' It's only a matter of
time, many say, before parents will improve their children's intelligence and
personality by having suitable genes inserted into them shortly after
conception.
________________________

It is hard to see how current genetic biology could even a project of human
genetic enhancement in the current  confusion of biological theory. Such a
hope, in the context of positivist reductionism, is simply delusional about man,
and his evolution. The worst fallacy is the one-sidedness of the narrow
meritocratic world of contemporary technological civilization and its smart-stupid
propensity, dominated by the whiz syndrome. This group cannot apparently by any
means grasp its own history of theory, see the limits of Darwinian theory,
critique the same in a context of media domination by Big Science, or escape the
implications of human history whose inherited lore of man is simply eliminated
from reconsideration.
The problem is that the self of man is not a tangible entity open to
scientific examination. To presume to tinker with the genetics in any general sense is
surely misguided thinking, which does not preempt reasonable enquiry into
genetic medicine and the like.
The obsessive scientism of current biological and Darwinian evolutionary
theory is unrepentantly obstinate in its thinking. And yet as Wallace suspected,
something is awry in the whole history of the Darwinian account of man.

One fallacy is the belief in the one-to-one correlation of genetics and
achievement, speaking historically.
Yet it is not hard to show that a great deal of human creative advance is
correlated with a macrohistorical factor. Current science and culture is too
stuck in the Nobel Prize and Next Einstein syndrome to see the limits of this
thinking.
This issue is outlined in the model where the temporal sequence of creative
breakthroughs is correlated very strongly with the so-called eonic effect. Thus
the greatest breakthroughs are bound up in a form of historical evolution
that current theory simple refuses to consider or allow. And yet the evidence is
overwhelming.
For a short version of this argument, cf. <A HREF="http://eonix.8m.com/intro_6.htm">http://eonix.8m.com/intro_6.htm</A>.
The Greek Miracle so-called in the period after Archaic Greece is one of the
most brilliant in history. But this phenomenon, which ac5tually misled Darwin, is
easy to show as correlated with a large scale historical effect, rather than
solely to the abilities of individuals.

In general, current Darwin-dominated culture is so far off the mark as to
theory that it is unnerving to contemplate the whole idea.
The most unnerving thing is that no matter how many times you point to the
problem with current biology the more obstinate scientists seem to get.
They need a severe awakening, and a good spell in something like a Zen
monatery, and some study of history, and the greater heritage of evolutionary
psychology, before the current bogus theory junk of the sociobiologists came to the
fore.
Man is in a poor position to 'know himself', in the noumenal mystery of his
total organism, and the delusion over genetic issues current and at such a
primitive level of scientism has become a danger to the whole of general culture.




John Landon
Website for
World History and the Eonic Effect
http://eonix.8m.com
Blogzone
http://www.xanga.com/nemonemini