![]() The titles of the essays, Haldane using Daedalus and Russell Icarus, support the common idea that Haldane writes as an advocate of progress and Russell as a skeptic. There is also little question that Haldane’s work influenced two of the greatest British critics of scientific and technological progress: Julian Huxley and C. Russell, already a famous philosopher, answered him as part of a speakers series sponsored by the Fabian Society under the general title, “Is Civilization Decaying?” The published version of Haldane’s remarks created no little controversy even Albert Einstein had a copy in his library. Haldane, who would go on to an extremely distinguished career as a biochemist and geneticist, spoke under the auspices of the Cambridge Heretics discussion club. The ambiguity in the meaning of moral progress is at the heart of a 1923 debate between biochemist J. B. S. Haldane and logician Bertrand Russell, two of the greatest and most argumentative public intellectuals of twentieth-century Britain. Genuinely novel ethics are not always genuine improvements, while many anciently articulated ethical goals remain elusive. Either meaning poses very serious challenges. ![]() But progress in ethics might also mean what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when describing the principles of the Declaration of Independence as “a standard maxim for free society … constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated.” Dyson’s idea suggests new ideals replacing old ones as history moves technologically forward Lincoln’s idea suggests more permanent human aspirations that serve as the measure of different ages. The physicist Freeman Dyson offers one common - and very modern - way of describing our predicament: “Progress of science is destined to bring enormous confusion and misery to mankind unless it is accompanied by progress in ethics.” In other words, we need some novel ethic to match our technological ingenuity. ![]() Icarus teaches you have power over what you do with your gifts, and to what heights and destinations they take you.Doubts about the goodness of scientific and technological progress are hardly new, and fears about the dangers of human knowledge existed long before it became plausible to worry that the fate of the entire world might be in peril. To make the most of your gifts, you don’t need to make yourself into more than you are, you don’t need to fly higher than you can and burn yourself, but you also don’t need to stay down on earth, denying your own wings to fly. If you don’t fly-or you try to fly too high like Icarus, the myth teaches you’ll find yourself falling into the depths of emotional despair, drowning in your egoic feelings (as represented by the sea Icarus drowned in). Do we not use them and never take flight? Do we accept them as they are and fly proudly on them to new destinations? Or do we misuse them, flying too high, too close to the Sun, destroying our gift and ourselves in the process? ![]() We all have, and are given, wings to fly on and it is our choice what we do with them. Instead, he chose to push it further, to a place where his gift was destroyed, and he destroyed himself in the process. It was Icarus’ choice not accept his gift as it was and to see it as enough. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.Īs I see it, this myth is a lesson about balance, about finding balance with your ego and with your gifts. But Icarus became enthralled with his ability to fly and forgot his father’s warning. His father cautioned him that flying too near the Sun would cause the wax to melt. Do you know the Greek myth of Icarus? Icarus is the son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax.
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