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The Question Concerning Contemporary Technoscientific Rationality

ABSTRACT
This text is to understand, in the fissure of modernity and post-modernity, how contemporary people face the future; in particular, in the age of technoscientific rationality, how China face her binal crisis and to solve them. Until Now, in regard to the debate between modernity and post-modernity, domestic scholars usually fall into philosophic speculation, and don¡¦t touch the real condition of society. Besides, they usually follow the science of Western, and don't deal with the problems faced by China in the postmodern society, and how she can play a role in the postmodern society.
This text uses a method model that I obtain from my research of the methodology of social science for more than ten years. Basically, social science research begins from question and crisis; if there are question and crisis, we will proceed to interpret and understand them; if we have a foundation of interpretation, we may proceed to reconstruct and criticize in order to maintain original paradigm, or we may proceed to deconstruct and fuse in order to achieve paradigm shift. According to this method model, this text begins with exploring Western scientific crisis and the domination of technological society; further, we analyze the rational foundation and subjectivity characteristic of this phenomenon, at the same time we want to understand humanism and the Enlightenment that influenced the rise of Western science and technology. Through this understanding, we can understand the root of crisis and possible solution.
When Western technoscientific rationality faces with crisis, What Karl Popper and Jürgen Habermas do is to reconstruct and criticize, while Paul Feyerabend, Edmund Husserl, Matin Heidegger and postmodernists deconstruct and fuse. Basically, the former want to reconstruct the original normal standard and criticize the deformation of real society in order to maintain original paradigm; the latter want to deconstruct original paradigm in order to open the new possibility. The approaches of resolution about technoscientific crisis include: technical, democratic, aesthetic and post-metaphysical. The first two adopt a stand of reconstruction and critique, holding an optimistic attitude with regard to technoscientific rationality. The latter two adopt the strategy of deconstruction and fusion, holding a pessimistic attitude with regard to technoscientific rationality.
The dilemma of China in the technoscientific era is ambiguity, on the one hand, we must develop technoscientific rationality in order to enter modern quickly; on the other hand, we also must use traditional religious philosophy to participate in the discourse of post-modern. This contradictory plight demands that we adopt a stand of ¡§both/ and¡¨, so we can get rid of the anxiety of ¡§either/ or¡¨. Therefore we must equally emphasize science and humanism, and in this way, we can find a foothold in the postmodern society.
Key Word: science, technology, rationality, subjectivity

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0121103-162452
Date21 January 2003
CreatorsChen, Lung-Sen
Contributorsnone, none, none, none, none
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0121103-162452
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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