FOCUS

B R

t's not that Jeremy Rifkin is evasive.
Far from it. But he does have an
almost compulsive need to chew his
way through each answer until every
once of meaning has been squeezed
out, every implication digested.
And his words do have a kind of lighter-
than-air quality to them. A driven, highly
articulate man in his early 40s, Rifkin deals
in broad visions, in the lofty regions where
philosophy collides with more mundane
things such as science, politics and
sociology. His answers tend to run on into
discourses. They quickly veer away from
the immediate and toward the cosmic.
Rifkin covets new ideas the way some peo-
ple covet new cars.
Rifkin, a native of Chicago and a former
student of economics at the Wharton
Business School, is the author of such
popular social-philosophical treatises as
Entropy, Who Should Play God? and The
Emerging Order. He is also the nation's
leading opponent of the new science of
genetic engineering. Through his group,
the Washington-based Foundation on Eco-
nomic Trends, Rifkin has led the legal bat-
tle against cloning, the commercial use of
DNA techniques and the patenting of life
forms created in the laboratory.
Almost single-handedly, Rifkin has
forced the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Agriculture Department
to rein in corporations anxious to test
" these new ideas in the biggest laboratory
of all — the fragile ecosystem of the earth.
Despite his endless battle against what he
sees as the dominant "faith" of our era,
Rifkin attributes much of his complex
philosophy to the Reform Judaism of his
youth.
Although he has been a persistent pain
in the neck to the high-tech community, he
insists that he is no modern-day Luddite.
"I'm not opposed to science and tech-
nology," Rifkin said. "What I'm saying is
that the kind of science and technology we
pursue involves a very narrow view of pro-

46

FRIDAY, AUG. 14, 1987

Philosopher-author
Jeremy Rifkin is a thorn
in the side of modern
science. His goal?
To humanize science
and give it a new
consciousness, to save
the planet from
runaway technology.

JAMES DAVID BESSER

Special to The Jewish News

gress. I'm not denying that science has
produced some very real benefits for us
and for our children. But look at some of
the costs. Look at the constant danger of
annihilation under which the human race
has lived for 40 years."

Francis Bacon Was Wrong

Rifkin sees his crusade as nothing less
than a battle for a whole new way of look-
ing at science. The real nub of the problem,
he said, is that the philosophy of science
that has guided our thinking since the
Enlightenment is dangerously wrong.
"It goes all the way back to Francis
Bacon's idea that science is power," he said,
heading for the broadest philosophical
plane the way a politician heads for an
outstretched hand. "The idea is that by
amassing power over nature and controll-

ing it, we can secure our well being. In-
herent in this approach are several goals
for scientific thinking: Detachment, quan-
tifiability, utilitarianism, and efficiency. If
you imprint those qualities onto science
and technology, they will become the val-
ues that shape society?'
Generally, he said, science and
technology are perceived as neutral.
"That's absurd?' he said, "There has never
been a neutral technology. Any technology
is a projection of the values of the society
that creates it."
In other words, what is studied in the
laboratory — and the way the results are
applied — are shaped by cultural factors
just as surely as skirt lengths are dictated
by cultural factors.
Science's emphasis on detachment,
utilitarianism and efficiency, said Rifkin,
erodes the traditional moral code of our
society and it makes it harder for us to
humanely use scientific developments.
The result, according to Rifkin, is predic-
table: More weapons of mass extermina-
tion, more high-tech ways for us to acciden-
tally do ourselves in.
As an example, Rifkin pointed to the
development of nuclear technology. The
results of the quest which unlocked the
secrets of the atom, he said, were predeter-
mined by our values; So we ended up with
such things as nuclear waste and melt-
downs and enough warheads to destroy the
world three or four times over. The same
kind of ominous promise, said Rifkin, is in-
herent in the new technologies coming out
of biology and genetics labs.
Not surprisingly, the scientific communi-
ty has generally been cool to Rifkin
demands for a new philosophy of science.
An especially active critic has been Dr.
John C. Fletcher, chief of the bioethics pro-
gram at the National Institute of Health.
Fletcher contends that Rifkin's fears
about the dangers of the new technology
are vastly exaggerated. "There is no data
to show that anyone has ever been hurt by

