DOI: 10.5176/2382-5677_PYTT16.6
Authors: Javier Pérez-Jara
Abstract:
Abstract—The deep changes that modern planetary technology has made upon the Earth even have a geological impact. As a consequence of this, many authors currently hold that we are now in a new Era, the Anthropocene. But the impact of technology runs further and deeper. Modern technology has broadened our world beyond hitherto imaginable limits. This is particularly visible in the modern physical sciences. Radio telescopes and particle accelerators have unfolded dimensions of matter that were previously hidden to us. This has come to strengthen the classical ontological division of reality into two parts: the “phenomenological world” and the “intelligible world”, along with the exploration of emergentist and reductionist methodologies to explain their mutual involvement. In this paper I argue that the common neglect of the organoleptic and corporeal “filters” through which we manipulate, perceive and interpret data coming from the machines and devices used by modern natural scientists, is in part responsible of the hybris with which some modern ideologies approach cosmology and quantum physics. The theoretical and practical dangers of this modern hybris will take me to a new interpretation of the classical Delphic maxim “Nosce te ipsum”.
Keywords: phenomenology, ontology, technology, myths, anthropos, gaia, cosmos, natural sciences.
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