Date: October 21, 2008 (Tue.) 16:30-18:00PM → Time Change 14:00～15:50PM
Venue: E207, 2nd floor of East Building,CSEAS → Venue Change AA401, Research Building No.2, Yoshida Campus, Kyoto University
Presentation:
Naoki Shinohara (Associate Professor, Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere)
This presentation, starting from the issue of the role of the outer space development for building a sustainable humanosphere, analyzed the relationship between Malthusian fatalism and science and technology.
Malthus’s theory of population (that poverty is the inevitable result of overpopulation and that epidemics and wars are the solutions) is said to have been historically overcome by technological progress. From this, some adopt the position that the theory articulated in The Limits to Growth in the 1970s and recent concerns on environmental crisis can be solved by technological progress, including the development of outer space. This belief in solution by science and technology seems, in the final analysis, to be a view of human beings as “naked apes,” or as beings fraught with excessive desires due to our weakness as living things.
On the other hand, human beings are social beings. Therefore, one can adopt the position that human beings can control their desires through cooperation and discipline and thus secure the humanosphere. When comparing these positions, it is difficult to put complete faith in the position that everything can be solved by ethics. On the other hand, however, the belief that problems can be solved by science and technology alone seems to be, in reality, an implicit acceptance of Malthusian fatalism. In order to secure the humanosphere, it is necessary, while proceeding with outer space development as a means to deal with human desires, to simultaneously consider social ethics or norms.
After the presentation, the following discussion took place. First, considering that this presentation was premised on the framework of an expansion of individual desires, one participant argued that since people’s desires are not necessarily oriented toward quantitative expansion and that there are social desires such as “satisfaction” and “trust,” arguments must be formulated based on consideration for the qualitative transformation of the desires themselves. Concerning the ideal form of society and the desires of people living within it, there was a comment that, instead of premising discussion on a single development path based on the Malthusian historical view, there is a need to think about multiple development paths, taking into consideration the values embedded in the condition of the period and society.
(Makoto Nishi and Naoto Kasezawa)