Blindness and insight dissected at Nature Nanotechnology
Chris Toumey of the University of South Carolina asks, in a Thesis article in the January issue of Nature Nanotechnology (4, 5-6; 2009) "where does nanotechnology fit into arguments about the two cultures? Much has changed since 1959, and now we have bright and sincere people from both the sciences and the humanities who want good science and good values in nanotechnology. My favourite example is an eminent scientist at my university who says repeatedly that scientists will have the first word on the future of nanotechnology, but non-scientists will have the last word. Thus does he invite — even dare — non-scientists to claim a place in nanotechnology policy."
The author goes on to discuss some of the ideas espoused in the book Nanovision, by Colin Milburn of the English department of the University of California, Davis. Rather than dismissing some of the book's ideas about the "transcendent" world that may result from the synthesis of new and powerful technologies, Toumey argues that scientists need to address the issues raised about their professional disciplines by those outside the profession, even if this does mean getting to grips with science fiction as well as the terminology of literary theory. He concludes: "It is unlikely C. P. Snow could have imagined that the humanities and social sciences could do to science what science does to nature. But sometimes they can. And when they can, they subvert the divide between the two cultures. Aren't these new cultures preferable to the "two cultures"?"
