Being and nothingness.Daniel Oliver For other persons named Daniel Oliver, see Daniel Oliver (disambiguation). Daniel Oliver (6 February 1830 - 21 December 1916) was a British botanist. He was Librarian of the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1860–1890 and Keeper there from argues that in deciding the morality of abortion we are faced with "the need to make a choice while not knowing whether the fetus fetus, term used to describe the unborn offspring in the uterus of vertebrate animals after the embryonic stage (see embryo). In humans, the fetal stage begins seven to eight weeks after fertilization of the egg, when the embryo assumes the basic shape of the newborn is a human being" ("Deciding Abortion," May 9). He asks "how we should decide how to behave in the absence of certain knowledge about the humanity of the fetus." But elsewhere in the same essay Oliver provides the certain answer he says we lack. "[S]cience agrees [that the embryo] is alive and that it has the DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. of the human species, and DNA distinct from its mother's." We know the embryo exists. It is a being. What other kind of living being can it be, if not a human being? The difficulty in Oliver's essay is the conflation (database) conflation - Combining or blending of two or more versions of a text; confusion or mixing up. Conflation algorithms are used in databases. of the terms "being" and "person." "Being" has a metaphysically precise meaning. "Person" is defined in several different ways. Francis M. McLaughlin West Roxbury, Mass. |
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