The desire for order

Joanne Finkelstein

pp. 261-270

in: Nordal Åkerman (ed), The necessity of friction, Heidelberg, Physica, 1993

Abstract

The process of becoming modern has been the conquest of the mysterious and the unpredictable. We humans have declared ourselves to be the supremely rational animal capable of ordering knowledge, evaluating its significance and applying it in the most efficient way. From this manner of thinking, the modern era has come to associate the achievements of the rational scientific method with the measure of civilisation. As such, the future of the modern world is represented as a matter of technical application: a better world is depicted as a more controlled, less ambiguous, less confusing, less contested one. The end result is a world thought to be malleable enough to be perfected. A better world, according to this view, becomes merely a matter of technical virtuosity.