Rescuing Humanity

Transcending the Limits of Mathematics, Science, and Technology

Willem H. Vanderburg (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

384 Seiten

2023
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-5110-0 (ISBN)

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Rescuing Humanity examines the possible roots of most planetary crises and reveals how we might instead create a livable and sustainable future.

In Rescuing Humanity, Willem H. Vanderburg reminds us that we have relied on discipline-based approaches for human knowing, doing, and organizing for less than a century. During this brief period, these approaches have become responsible for both our spectacular successes and most of our social and environmental crises. At their roots is a cultural mutation that includes secular religious attitudes that veil the limits of these approaches, leading to their overvaluation. Because their use, especially in science and technology, is primarily built up with mathematics, living entities and systems can be dealt with only as if their "architecture" or "design" is based on the principle of non-contradiction, which is true only for non-living entities. This distortion explains our many crises.

Vanderburg begins to explore the limits of discipline-based approaches, which guides the way toward developing complementary ones capable of transcending these limits. It is no different from a carpenter going beyond the limits of his hammer by reaching for other tools. As we grapple with everything from the impacts of social media, the ongoing climate crisis, and divisive political ideologies, Rescuing Humanity reveals that our civilization must learn to do the equivalent if humans and other living things are to continue making earth a home.

Willem H. Vanderburg has taught preventive engineering, sociology, and environmental studies at the Centre for Technology and Social Development at the University of Toronto.

Preface

Introduction
Suspended in Language and Culture
Attempts at Escaping Our Suspension in Language and Culture
Foundationalism and the Architecture of Non-Life
The Technical Division of Labour and the Architecture of Non-Life
Technique and the Architecture of Non-Life
Technique, the State, and the Law
Growing Up and Living with Technique

1. Our Physical Embodiment within the Relativity of Life and the World
Can We Escape Our Embodiment?
The Great Cultural Divide in the Relativity of Human Life
The Relativity of Our Lives before Screen-Based Devices
The General Relativity of Human Life and the World before Screen-based Devices

2. Our Social and Cultural Embodiment in the Relativity of Human Life in the World
A Hidden Discontinuity
The Artificiality of a Culture
Screens as Magic Portals
Growing Up with Symbolization and Desymbolization
Two Streams of Experiences
Language Acquisition in Anti-Societies with Three Frames of Reference

3. Living with a Dual Relativity beyond Cultural Embodiment
A General Interpretation of Our Dual Relativity
Living and Constructed Entities
The Emergence of Cultural Mediation in a General Relativity
From Cultural to Technical Mediation
The Economy, Art, and the Order of Non-Sense
Making Sense of Non-Sense

4. Mathematics as the Non-Language of Science and Technique
Mathematical Foundations and Truths
The Emergence of a Secular Religious Daily-Life World
Science and Mathematics
Disciplines, Games, and the General Relativity of Human Life
Mathematics as a Discipline
Mathematics, Languages, and Games
Mathematics and Time
Mathematics and Daily Life
Mathematics and Education
Is Mathematics the Secular Religion of Technique?

5. Human Knowing and Discipline-Based Science
Is Our Science Unlike All Others?
Disciplines and Daily-Life Knowing
The Known and the Unknown
Culture and Discipline-Based Science
Science, Reality, and Our Life-Milieu
Physics as a Mathematical Game?
Our Metaphors for Space, Time, Matter, and Numbers
Science, Religion, and Christianity

6. Human Doing, Technique, and the Living of Our Lives
Naming What We Have Lost
Recognizing the Symptoms of What We Have Lost
Absolute and Relative Efficiency
Economics as Technique
Our Daily Lives and the Professions of Technique
Technique and Non-Life
Technique as Response to Relativism, Nihilism, and Anomie

Epilogue: Possessed by Secular Myths
Endangered by Secular Religious Attitudes
Is Humanity Truly against Enslavement?

Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	22.12.2022
Zusatzinfo	1 b&w table
Verlagsort	Toronto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	159 x 235 mm
Gewicht	680 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4875-5110-X / 148755110X
ISBN-13	978-1-4875-5110-0 / 9781487551100
Zustand	Neuware