The Role of Ethics in Biomedical and Biotechnology

While we may think of phones and laptops when we hear the word “technology,” it can also be thought of as a way of viewing the world: the belief that knowledge of reality means the ability to predict, experiment, and transform it, and that nature is completely open to that process. But while this approach to the world and how we understand it makes us very good at solving problems, it also blinds us to an entire realm of thought. Science and technology can neither ask nor answer the “big” questions: what is a human being? What is a good life? Michael Hanby—professor, writer, and postliberal thinker—joins Grant to dig into some of those questions. Does technology as ontology serve human persons as a tool, or act upon them as objects? Can a Christian political order coexist with this worldview? In a time when technology has made it possible to change our very bodies in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations, are we less human than before?