¶ Nature
Index Entry
Nature:
"I am very eager to have humanists participate with me in my feelings about the phenomenon of technology-- a word that is bandied about constantly and often thought of as the cause of our troubles and pain. I do not see technology as something that is foreign to man. I hear the word ‘natural’ and I hear the word ‘artificial’ and I am convinced that those words are words of ignorance.
“I am convinced that whatever nature permits is natural, and that which nature does not permit, you cannot do. And if nature has this as a generalized principle, it has in it the option that man can employ to alter the environment to the advantage of his fellow man. There are ways in which you can alter the environment to decrease the freedoms of your fellow man. But you can also go very far in increasing his degrees of freedom and accelerating the rate at which he can comprehend, communicate, and be effective. That is what we are doing.”
¶ Citations
- COMMITMENT TO HUMANITY, p. 32, May’70
