The reduction of culture by man into a scientific and technological model

Because of the predominant influence of science on culture, and the imprint left by modern technology, culture is increasingly based on the scientific and technological model. Once we have defined the scientific and technological model, we will have a better understanding of our cultural context. We will do so in six points.

Science has become more independent, autonomous and self-sufficient. People are invited to accept science as the sole truth and, therefore, to accept with religious confidence the conclusions it draws.

Science is also being invoked as the main instrument of human control over the world. Men increase their power over reality through the exploitation of scientific means, particularly in the development of industrial technology.

Many believe that modern technology is nothing more than applied science, so that culture according to a scientific model becomes culture according to the technological model. In other words, the rational and scientific control of nature and human society leads to the technological control of reality.

Concentration on control comes from man's religious yearning for personal fulfillment and liberation.

The universal desire for freedom is directly related to the potential of science and technology. They assume a messianic role. Man hopes to be freed from misery and suffering and to find material happiness through them.

Until the Industrial Revolution, the idea of progress motivated only men of science. But as soon as the material prosperity of the Industrial Revolution became available to the masses, they accepted progress as an article of faith.

Philosophies such as positivism, Marxism and pragmatism contributed to the belief in modern technology as a liberating force.

Economic and political forces do much to build the scientific and technological model. Only through these forces could there be room for large-scale development. For this reason, the hidden forces of economics and politics must be criticized, which the neo-Marxists are happy to do.

However, the neo-Marxist critique does not penetrate to the root of the issue; it may lead to a change of players, but the new players will only continue to build the scientific and technological model.

As the religious dynamics of the world are apostate, culture will become increasingly secular. The deification of science and technology goes hand in hand with resistance to Christian faith. Transcendent reality has become a myth, a projection.

It is believed that technological and rational man himself will one day achieve the utopia of control and subjection he himself has conceived. In this scientific-technological world, man will be lord and master, independent and sovereign.

There will be no trace of God in the world. All problems will be solved through democracy, which can channel science and technology in a redemptive way.

Problems and dangers

Reality has lost its meaning according to this way of thinking. Reality is no longer the richly differentiated creation, the living entity sustained by the Word of God.

Instead, man “creates” a world driven by technological dynamics and then tries to accept it as the real world, even though it is devoid of meaning. Modern man equates the technological world with total reality. Of course, the created reality does not allow for such a reduction.

All aspects of created reality cohere into a meaningful unity. However, if man denies God-centered coherence, the development of human reality brings about its own destruction. It may come slowly and cumulatively, but it will come.

It is impossible to establish an independent technological world

The growth of technological development is limited by the potential of the created reality. Energy sources and mineral deposits are limited. Environmental problems, such as pollution of seas and oceans and contamination of soil, water and air, show how current technology exploits the environment in a dangerous way.

Technology also reveals serious internal tensions around issues such as nuclear power and biotechnology. Increasing dependence on computing has caused unemployment, social dislocation, loneliness and alienation.

The specific and unique functions of each person, the individual and creative responsibility of man — in the context of the world of global experience — is being systematically eliminated from the technological model of reality.

Culture defined as a scientific and technological unity is torn apart from itself. Externally it reflects a cold, uniform, impersonal and homogeneous abstraction.

Creating an independent scientific and technological world and letting it dominate and destroy the globality of experience brings upon us the problems and dangers I have mentioned. The problems show that there is only one reality, created and maintained by God.

The problems also point out that scientific knowledge is always driven and permeated by pre-theoretical or supra-theoretical knowledge.

The uniqueness of the Christian vision lies in the fact that pre-theoretical or supra-theoretical knowledge is based on faith, grounded in divine revelation. This allows Christians to be both critical and appreciative of science and technology.

Seen from a Christian perspective, science and technology will only be meaningful if they remain within limited areas of the totality of human experience, and do not become models by which all other aspects of life are organized—to their own detriment.

“The world of experience” and “the scientific and technological world”

What do we mean by “our world of experience”? This world is the world we live in. To hope, to suffer, and to struggle represents the world in which we see things simply, in which we feel love; it is also faith and trust; indeed, faith and trust are the essential points of the world.

This world of original, primary experience cannot be fully understood; it is complex, concrete, full, very varied, and inscrutable. All human activities and their meaning—science, technology and their meaning—belong to this world.

Our knowledge of the primary and original world proceeds from the experience of being intrinsically related to and involved with it. It is an intuitive knowledge that precedes and transcends all scientific knowledge.

The second “world” is the world of philosophy, science and its application. It is also the world of scientific and technological control.

To build a scientific and technological model for all of reality, as many people do, one must subordinate the first world, the world of primary and intuitive knowledge, to the second.

Then the scientific and technological world begins to dominate the everyday world of experience.

Technocrats maintain the illusion that science provides the only true, complete, and concrete knowledge of reality—a belief that arose in the Enlightenment.

However, when the drastically reduced and abstracted world of science has become the primary world, the genuine primary world of total experience is reduced to a scientific abstraction.

This reduction will later end in chaos. The trends of scientific and technological models of reality can be seen in modern urban growth, industrial policy, housing, health care, social welfare, economics, politics, and defense.

Fortunately, because the real world of experience refuses to go away, the technology will never be completely successful.

However, as power is concentrated in technocratic society, we become aware of the disappearance of love, which cannot flourish in the cold and uniform structures of this society. After all, love is primarily oriented toward what is specific and unique.

The degree of social well-being provided for in the technological state cannot alter the complaint that “nobody cares about me.” In technocratic culture, the essential bonds of human relationships are severed and replaced by artificial bonds that undermine love, destroy compassion and empathy, and increase alienation and loneliness.

People who suffer the agony of a cold and impersonal world make a series of protests and demands public.

What is behind man's motivation to develop science and technology?

It seems that the reason lies in the human desire to control all reality through one's thoughts and actions.

Man's desire is to control the origin, existence, and destiny of all things, subjecting them to himself. Man continues to try to break reality down into its smallest basic elements in order to reconstruct it according to his power structure.

This fundamental motive was already evident in the Fall, but only after the Renaissance, in the period of strong influence of modern humanism, was this tendency reinforced by the energy of natural sciences and modern technologies.

The Renaissance protagonists said goodbye to Christianity. They continued to use Christian terminology, but from an anthropocentric perspective. Creation was no longer considered the work of God, but rather the work of human hands.

The Fall, according to humanists, did not mean the denial of God, but the denial of self. Redemption does not consist in the restoration of fellowship with God through Jesus Christ, but in the affirmation that man can learn to stand on his own two feet.

Believing does not mean trusting in God or Christ, but rather believing in oneself. Finally, the future does not consist of what God wants to put in man's path, but of the organization of the world according to human ideas.

The spirit of the Renaissance has permeated the thinking of most modern philosophers and scientists—including the Enlightenment, modern philosophy, positivism, Marxism, and materialism.

The spirit of the Renaissance, with man's self-sufficiency and self-realization, dominates the evolution of economics, politics, science and technology.

Man has adopted himself as the standard of all things in most sectors of culture, and science is his instrument of control over reality.

Scientific rationalism drives technology to enormous proportions

At the same time, cultural development is retarded—a sad fact that few people notice. Most people, motivated by materialism, consider non-technological issues unimportant.

Other motives have arisen from the same root of man's desired autonomy and self-sufficiency to reinforce rationalism. Most importantly, there is the motive of "technology for technology's sake." Whatever can be done, should be done, and the bigger the better.

And so technical development spirals beyond human control. Man may pretend to be the master and lord of technology, but he becomes, in fact, its slave. People are imprisoned by their own labor when they refuse to think about the appropriate norms for technology.

Environmental problems and the dangers associated with nuclear energy, computers and biotechnology warn us that technology is becoming an absolute power that threatens nature and culture. Its growth seems to be out of control.

The second principle that plays a major role in technical development states that technology must serve economic power. Technological development is completely subordinated to profit. We pay little attention to other norms.

One of the painful results is widespread environmental pollution. The aberrations caused by an economically driven society pose serious problems. The potential blessing of technology has turned into a curse.

Technology, man's potential friend, has become his enemy.

We cannot blame only philosophers, scientists, engineers and economists. Many people indirectly associated with technology are also dominated by the materialistic spirit, so much so that they attribute to technology a messianic power.

Blinded by the insatiable desire for material prosperity, modern man idolizes technological development as a means of obtaining ever more consumer goods and material blessings — “his kind of happiness.”

Thus, both within and outside the process of scientific and technological development, we discover that today's problems and dangers are caused by people who develop and build without standards. The normativity of production results from their pretension—they, and not God, determine the development of science and technology.

As described earlier, modern man has been deceived and imprisoned by science's offers of power. Science, with its abstraction and reduction, offers knowledge of only part of reality, not the whole.

The unlimited application of science corresponds to a reduction of reality. Tremendous things can be achieved, but the reduction may well lead to the subsequent annihilation of reality.

If, in order to solve existing problems, technocrats turn to yet another field of science, the problems can be temporarily suspended.

However, they will reappear in a threatening form later. If all technology eventually results in the creation of a technocratic world dictatorship, then there will be no more room for human freedom and responsibility. Man will then become a prisoner in a universal concentration camp.