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The nanotechnological golem

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Abstract

We give reasons for the importance of old narratives, including myths, in ethical thinking about science and technology. On the example of a legend about creating artificial men we explore the side effects of having too much success and the problem of intermediate social status of bioengineered artefacts.

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Notes

  1. Plato, Republic X 621b.

  2. Plato, Protagoras 352b.

  3. A concise summary of such transgressions can be found in: [6].

  4. Words of Aegisthus in Sophocles, Antigone 1466.

  5. “… [it] condemns Ulysses to a hard life, for he must constantly live up to the height of new dangers, unless the reputation of his past deeds be tarnished. Peace of mind is forbidden to him, because he depends on a reputation placed under continuous threat.” [14]

  6. In Corpus Hermeticum, édition établie par A.-J. Festugière, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1954 (our translation from French).

  7. I use the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Jewish’ as references to dominant positions with regard to the ethics of technology in the corresponding theologies. For sure, there exist Christian (e.g., liberal Protestant) views that are closer to what I call here a ‘Jewish’ standpoint and, conversely, there exist interpretations of Judaism that employ a negatively marked rhetoric of “playing God”. However such views in both theologies remain in a minority.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA-Saclay/SPEC/LARSIM, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

    Alexei Grinbaum

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  1. Alexei Grinbaum
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Correspondence to Alexei Grinbaum.

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Grinbaum, A. The nanotechnological golem. Nanoethics 4, 191–198 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-010-0103-x

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