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No more speculative NanoEthics
In this month’s issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology , Alfred Nordmann and Arie Rip revisit a 2003 publication entitled ‘Mind the gap’: science and ethics in nanotechnology’ . Authored by Anisa Mnyusiwalla, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer of the University of Toronto, the 2003 tutorial claimed that the only way to avoid a moratorium nanotechnologies, was to ‘immediately close the gap between the science and ethics of nanotechnology’.
Six years on, there are dedicated journals on ‘NanoEthics’, and diligent philosophers and ethicists have made away with the shortage of publications on the ethical, legal and societal impact that the authors of the 2003 paper criticised.
Nordmann and Rip introduce their commentary in this month’s Nature Nanotechnology journal by noting that there is ‘now a market for ethics of nanoscience and technology’, causing philosophers and ethicists to respond with an over-supply in the form of speculative ethics.
Related Links:
The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars has released a report entitled ‘Nanotechnology: The Social and Ethical Issues’. (27th January 2009)
The European Commission today released a new working paper entitled From the Ethics of Technology toward an Ethics of Knowledge Policy and Knowledge Assessment. The paper explores the argument that 'contemporary ethical theories cannot capture adequately the ethical and social challenges of scientific and technological development'. (9th February 2007)
The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) at the Illinois Institute of Technology has launched a searchable database on nanoethics conceived as a resource for researchers, scholars, students, and the general public who are interested in the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. (1st May 2007)
Springer is has issued a call for papers to go into its new journal of NanoEthics, a publication that promises to shed light onto the ethical issues of all technologies converging on the nanoscale. For more information, visit Springer’s NanoEthics webpage. (1st January 2007)