{"author":"Nicholas Gane","author_id":"Nicholas+Gane","total_quotes":21,"quotes":[{"text":"Science, while of value in so far as it can be used to address and even answer logical or technical questions, cannot and thus should not be used to create new (ultimate) values or provide a final judgement on the legitimacy of values themselves. Weber argues that it is the duty of the vocational scientist to recognize this, and to avoid at all costs presenting academic prophecies in the guise of value-free science. This calls not simply for the vocation of science to be imbued with a sense of ethical responsibility, but for science itself to be a self-reflective practice, one that identifies and calls into question its own presuppositions. In this respect, Weber, like Nietzsche, argues that 'science requires superintendence and supervision', for it is to proceed within strictly defined limits, and beyond this is to remain accountable for its own presuppositions or values. And it is on this basis that science may assume an objective form, and with this become, paradoxically, a practice that is valuable, if not necessarily meaningful, in its own right... It is, in general, to serve life and not vice versa...","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["belief","ethics","meaning","science","truth"],"id":68129,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"... The form of leadership must be the focus of constant reappraisal. Weber states, for example: 'Each new fact may necessitate the re-adjustment of the relations between end and indispensable means, between desired goals and unavoidable subsidiary consequences.' This process of re-adjustment is ultimately without resolution, for the political and ethical value-spheres are not only in constant opposition but also in permanent flux. It is the task of the politician to negotiate this value conflict and to be decisive as to the value to be pursued and the means to be employed.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["leadership","politics"],"id":95826,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"... Weber insists that one should not give up or lose faith in the face of this struggle. Indeed, he calls for us to engage in, rather than withdraw from, the problems of this world. He reminds us, for example, that while 'successful political action is always the 'art of the possible' ... The possible is often reached only by striving to attain the impossible that lies beyond it'.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["belief","change","impossibilities","strength"],"id":115295,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"In The Inhuman... Lyotard, like Weber, reminds us of the distinction between technological development and 'human' progress. He argues, in particular, that the development of technology, or 'techno-science', is driven by the quest for maximum efficiency and performance, and as such leads to the emergence of new 'inhuman' (technological) forms of control rather than to the emancipation of 'humanity'. Lyotard reasserts the instrumental nature of the modern system, arguing that 'All technology ... Is an artefact allowing its users to stock more information, to improve their competence and optimize their performances'. In this view, techno-science may be seen to stand against all instances of the unknown, including the aporia of the future anterior, and thus to have little respect for forms which are different or other to itself. This is compounded by the fact that technological development is intimately connected to the drive for profit. Lyotard proposes that this directs the production of knowledge and conditions the nature of knowledge itself, for information, itself a commodity, is increasingly produced in differentiated, digestible forms ('bits') for ease of mass exchange, transmission and consumption, and with the aim of enabling the optimal performance of the global system.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["automation","belief-vs-knowledge","ethics","inhumanity","morals","science"],"id":119844,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"... The political leader must constantly appraise and reappraise the means through which 'he can hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him' while at the same time pursuing political values with conviction.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["leadership","politics","power"],"id":125086,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"... The individual is still obliged to confer the legitimacy of mutually antagonistic values, for even though the array of ultimate values may contract with the rationalization of the world, one is never relieved from the existential burden of choice ('taking a stand').","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["choice","unpopular-views","voting"],"id":149116,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"[Art] acts as 'an instrument allowing us to see through the gaps of dominant ideologies, and the source from which new methods could be drawn in the struggle against the system(s)'.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["art","beliefs","innovation","science"],"id":160167,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"...With the failure of the imagination to present form the mind discovers that it has the capacity to conceive of the infinite, and thus has the power to transcend everything that sense can measure and thus present. The sublime feeling in this case arises from the play between the finite nature of the senses and the infinite capacity of reason.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["beauty","deity","sublime","subliminal"],"id":160168,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"... Weber insists that the value of science is always to be questioned and not simply presupposed... He is... Critical of the presupposition which underlies Strauss' position, namely that scientific reason is necessarily of value.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["science","scientific-method"],"id":169219,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"},{"text":"[Concerning postmodernism:] The aim of this experimental history is to disturb the ontological security of modern identity and hence to provoke the possibility of otherness through exposition of the cultural difference concealed by, and within, the order of modern rationalism.","author":"Nicholas Gane","tags":["change","innovation","postmodernism"],"id":211549,"author_id":"Nicholas+Gane"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":21,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}