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Biological Medicine and the Survival of the Person

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Henri Atlan
Henri Atlan
Affiliation:
School of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hôpital de l'Hôtel-Dieu, Paris
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Abstract

The status of the person is analyzed as represented by the life sciences under the influence of modern physico–chemical and molecular biology.

At the same time the linguistic structure of reality as seen through formalized scientific discourse is not that of a language, but rather that of operational symbolisms, so that the judeo–Greek tradition of Verb as creating and Logos as procreating — which is probably at the origin of the surprising confidence in the possibility of dominating nature through words and formulae — could be suc–cessful only through the depersonalization of language.

Notwithstanding appearances, the phenomena of structural and functional self–organization do not really change this situation.

In this context the question of the status of the person and of the intentional subject has to be dealt with pragmatically, giving up the notion of a unified scientific theory that would take into consideration at the same time the experi–mental sciences (physics, chemistry, biology and “objective” human) and the human sciences as linking subjectivity and intentionality.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 265 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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