Critique of The Sixth Day
I tend to stay away from the conundrum of American cinema; many
times it seems
that the movies either miss the point entirely, or do not even have one-just
being produced to rake in any sort of money from the American movie viewers.
Between the themes of meritocracy and revenge, the latter more often than not
a blockbuster hit in America, there rarely comes along a movie which dares to
question the social state of affairs, especially where cutting edge technology
is concerned. The movie, disguised in its standard American
``shoot-them-down'', ``blow-them-up'' one man killing machine manner,
is The Sixth Day.
- DVI Format (Device Independent File)
- PS Format (PostScript)
- PDF Format (Adobe Acrobat Reader)
- HTML Format
Social Construction of Scientific Research
Genetic research has been hailed as the milestone of humanity; the most
influential and important endeavour of modern science. Everything from
tone-deafness (the inability to register various audio frequencies and discern
one from the others) to breast cancer has so far been attributed to a
particular sequence of proteins in the nucleus of each of our cells. This,
however is not so surprising if one takes into consideration the fact that
modern science has been travelling along the path of biology to obtain simple
answers to complex questions. Beginning with race, to facial features, to head
features, to brain size and complexity, to cell research, to molecular biology
and now the gene, scientists have been looking for an answer by continually
delving deeper and deeper into the ``moving parts'' of the human body.
The aim of this essay is to make the reader aware of the endogenous and
exogenous factors involved in the natural sciences, to realise that science is
not a matter of objective truth, but is as dogmatic and self-sustaining as any
religion. Indeed, it is no surprise that religion has now been replaced by
science as scientific agents begin to explain the Truth `out there' as it
really exists, which for the common man suffices as magic.
The key concept in this discourse is the necessity of the postmodern
weltenshaung. Postmodernism has several seminal themes which will be briefly
explored to understand the thought process of science as paradigmatic.
- DVI Format (Device Independent File)
- PS Format (PostScript)
- PDF Format (Adobe Acrobat Reader)
- HTML Format
|