Robert D. Romanyshyn

Romanyshyn traces the rise of the modern worldview and then sketches a few signs of its probable demise. His central symbol for modernity is the linear perspective of Brunelleschi, which matured as Cartesian dualism. He also uses the astronaut. We are all astronauts. It's really true. What's with this fascination with colonizing Mars? Have y'all ever been to Wyoming? This book came out in 1989 so it doesn't address the most up-to-date facets of our world today but he sure does pick up on the key trends of that time. For sure we still live in the shadows of Reagan, Thatcher, etc.

I guess this study should be classified under the heading of cultural psychology. It's really a crucial angle though. All of our core issue, e.g. the covid-19 pandemic or climate change - they are not fundamentally problems with technology, medicine, energy production, etc. Whatever technology we need to resolve those problems, we have that technology. Of course it would be a fine thing to have better technological solutions. But even better technological solutions are not going to hit the target. E.g. if half the population thinks the vaccine is a communist plot, making the vaccine available isn't going to make the pandemic go away.

At the end of the book, Romanyshyn is rather hopeful about modern physics, e.g. quantum field theory, though Romanyshyn doesn't say that explicity, but he does name Capra and Zukov, for example... but he suggests that such advanced science can lead folks to a richer understanding of... I'll call it interdependence. Hmmm. He sort of hints that a shift in philosophy of science might be needed. I think that shift is where the real leading can happen. High Energy Physics etc., these folks are still far too caught up in the explanatory perspective rather than the participatory perspective.

That'd be a fun book... maybe it exists already... a survey of participatory trends in philosophy of science. Maybe Bruno Latour, Paul Feyerabend, Barbara Cartwright, etc.… (mer)