For about twenty-five hundred years Socrates has been claimed to be one of the worlds greatest philosophers. Her is the base of all questioning and the real start of the "What is Humanity" movement. His interesting questioning process led him to be renounded for challenging the status quo. His challenging of what is thought to be right and what should be looked deeper at. Socrates appears in our classes novel Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. He is the bases for the main character, Sophie, to understand how little we know as people and knowing that we know little makes us wise. He is a explorative tool that can open a world to new possibilities by trying to understand what is out there.
Recently, a huge push in scientific research has brought the attention of genetic engineering into the inner circle of daily science. This new, profound, way of making life is challenging the current views of many ethics. Now, you may be saying "what does socrates have to do with gentic engineering" but the truth is, he has everything to do with it.
He is the push. The looking forward of new life. Test tube babies are a new creation that can limit disease and perfect humanity. It can accelerate learing and reshape humanity. However, like all things in science, ethics is apart of the decisions. Socrates always challenged what was known. And, at the root of it, that is what science is. There is the continuos test of pushing boundaries and making new limits. Socrates would challenged why create new life? Is there consequences? Does it lose humanity?
But wouldn't he also ask why not? Wouldn't he try to find the answers for the good in it? He would look to learn about why people want this science. Why people would want better children.
It may seem like a stretch to compare the insanity of one man twenty-five hundred years ago to a radical new science of current day, but they're both closely intertwined in the nature of what is to become of science in the future.
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