After boundaries, dichotomies, and such: some contemporary bioethical perspectives on the history and Philosophy of science.

AFTER BOUNDARIES, DICHOTOMIES, AND SUCH: SOME CONTEMPORARY BIOETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. Connie C. Price, Department of Philosophy and Bioethics, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088.

Bioethical perspectives on the history and philosophy of science can be helpful for the future of science, and also of the society. The postmodern writers want to challenge the very distinction between "science" and "society," and to question the validity of many comparable dichotomies, as well. The insights of Donna Haraway and Roberto Esposito, to name two of many contemporary writers on the topic, are good examples. Haraway argues that the ethical issues are involved in the doings of science itself, rather than in sociological or theological projections of possible demographic outcomes of specific technologies or procedures. Esposito continues the path of exploring biopolitics, based on the insights of Foucault and Agamben. In particular, Esposito, like his forebears but with greater emphasis, discusses immunity. With immunity as a guiding conceptual base, the producers of the "power knowledge" (again, a term from Foucault's lexicon) have managed to reduce community to bare or meaningless proportions in actual civic life. The culminating thanatopolics is Nazism, and far from having been defeated and ended, it perseveres, somewhat in keeping with Haraway's views, at establishing itself in the immunizing mentalities of biomedicine in the present day. New communities must be forged, as the context for inventive sciences "of life," i.e. originating in and re-problematizing life.