The Technocene

Hermínio Martins

Description

A selection of Hermínio Martins’s philosophical reflections on the contemporary world.

Hermínio Martins was one of the key pioneers of the sociology of science and technology. He published extensively in Portuguese and was recognized for his academic contributions with an honorary doctorate at Lisbon (2006) and two Portuguese Medals of Honour. Following his retirement from the University of Oxford, he wrote prolifically in English on a wide range of topics that examined the ethical and societal consequences of the commoditization of the human body and mind. These essays are deep philosophical reflections on our contemporary world, and draw extensively and eclectically upon a wide range of theoretical influences including continental philosophy, history and psychology, to name but a few disciplines. ‘The Technocene’ is a selection of some of these insightful essays, made available to a global audience for the first time.

Preface; Editor’s Introduction: Hermínio Martins and the Technocene; 1. The Technocene: On Bodies, Minds and Markets; 2. Technology Sublime: Paths to the Post-Human; 3. Perpetual Augmentation: From Eugenics to Human Genetic Capitalism; 4. The Body Vanishes! Momenta of Discarnation in Technoscience Today; 5. When Universities Become Body-Shops; Select Bibliography of Hermínio Martins’s Works; Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Utilitarianism

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781783088348
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Technocene
The Technocene
Reflections on Bodies, Minds and Markets
Hermínio Martins
Edited by S. Ravi Rajan
with
Danielle Crawford
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2018 S. Hermínio Martins and S. Ravi Rajan
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Martins, Hermínio, author. | Rajan, S. Ravi, editor. | Crawford, Danielle, editor.
Title: The technocene : reflections on bodies, minds, and markets / Bb Herminio Martins.
Description: New York: Anthem Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038541 | ISBN 9781783088324 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences – Philosophy. | Technology – Social aspects. | Science – Social aspects.
Classification: LCC H61.M29 2018 | DDC 300.1–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038541
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-832-4 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-832-X (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
To Margaret,
and all the decent, upright academics I have known.
Contents
Preface
Editor’s Introduction: Hermínio Martins and the Technocene
Chapter One
The Technocene: On Bodies, Minds and Markets
Chapter Two
Technology Sublime: Paths to the Post-Human
Chapter Three
Perpetual Augmentation: From Eugenics to Human Genetic Capitalism
Chapter Four
The Body Vanishes! Momenta of Discarnation in Technoscience Today
Chapter Five
When Universities Become Body-Shops
References
Index
Preface
Professor Hermínio Martins (1934–2015) was a leading light in British sociology and worked on a wide range of topics, including sociological theory, the philosophy of the social sciences, the sociology of science, the philosophy and sociology of technology and the historical sociology of Portugal and Brazil. He was widely feted and decorated. The Portuguese government conferred upon him the titles of Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique, Portugal (Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator), and Grande Oficial da Ordem de Santiago e Espada, Portugal (Grand Officer of the Order of St. James), in investitures presided by the presidents of the Portuguese Republic at that time. He also received the Medalha de Mérito Cultural da Câmara Municipal de Cascais (Cultural Merit Medal from the Municipality of Cascais), near Lisbon, and in 2006, the University of Lisbon awarded him an honorary doctorate.
During Hilary term, 1990, while a graduate student at Oxford, I was privileged to attend a lecture series taught by Professor Martins. It was entitled, ‘The Theme of Technology in Philosophical Sociology’. It was a survey course, but it encompassed texts, people and ideas that were then, and even now, largely unknown and untaught. The lectures were sparsely attended and, if memory serves me right, only one other student, besides me, came regularly. However, Martins came to every session of the class formally attired in subfusc and, in his thick Portuguese accent, lectured as though there were a roomful of students. The classes were simply an intellectual feast and, without doubt, they formed the highlight of my experience as a graduate student at Oxford.
In the years since, I repeatedly asked Professor Martins about those lectures, and whether he would make the notes available. He always replied that he was working on writing them up as a book. He retired in 2001. We kept in touch casually, and I presented a paper to one of the conferences that produced festschrifts in his honour. However, it was not until mid-2014 that I received, via e-mail, a set of bulky attachments, along with a list of works he had written during the past decade. These papers were not his Oxford lectures, but the contents were gripping. I asked him what he was going to do with them, and it became evident that he simply did not have the strength, in his later years, to see them through to publication as a book. I therefore volunteered to help, and the result is the present volume.
I met and interviewed Professor Martins three times from December 2014 to March 2015. The biographical introduction is a result of these interviews. In editing the manuscript, I made a set of changes after consulting with him. Chapter 1 is a radically altered version of a paper he wrote, exploring the technocene through the human life cycle chronologically. As for other changes, the editorial work has largely been in the nature of clarifying things and, for the most part, I did so in consultation with him. I should add here that this volume is by no means a comprehensive collection of all his works since retirement, or even all his unpublished works. There are other critical essays, in English and Portuguese, on a wide range of topics from art and science to religion. Professor Martins however approved of my selection and was looking forward to seeing the book in print when, without warning, he was taken away from us. Hopefully, in time, a way will be found to make his other writings available to the scholarly audience. 1
I did the substantial editorial work, but I am indebted to Danielle Crawford, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who carefully cross checked references and cleaned up the manuscript. I am also grateful to Helena Jerónimo and José Luís Garcia for their many insights and inputs. Last, but by no means the least, I am particularly indebted to Anthem Press for their patience and encouragement, and to three excellent anonymous reviewers. Although I did not agree with all their observations, I have incorporated many of their suggestions.
S. Ravi Rajan
Santa Cruz, California
April 2018

Note
1 As things stand there are efforts by Professor Martins’s colleagues and students in Portugal to collect them in a website dedicated to his works. See footnote 1, on page xvi, for details.
Editor’s Introduction: Hermínio Martins and the Technocene
Hermínio Martins was born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique in 1934. He was a second-generation Mozambican, in that both his parents were born there as well. Hermínio attended the Liceu Nacional in Maputo, which was then a small city of about 20,000, with blacks, Chinese, Indians, Italians and Germans in a multiracial pot. For a small city, it had a lively intellectual life, with several visiting scientists and artists from around the world giving lectures and concerts. Martins grew up in a household with books. His aunt and uncle, with whom he lived after the passing of his mother, were voracious readers and imported books in Portuguese from Portugal and Brazil, in French from the Continent and in English from a bookshop in Johannesburg, South Africa.
When Hermínio completed secondary school, his family hoped he would attend college somewhere nearby. Geography dictated South Africa, but the young 17-year-old disapproved of the aparthied system there and decided to travel to England, where he knew nobody. He subsequently studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) where, in 1957, he earned a BSc (Econ.), an interdisciplinary degree akin to Oxford’s PPE, before doing graduate research under the supervision of Ernest Gellner during 1957 to 1959. 2 Amongst the many highlights of his career at LSE were classes in the philosophy of science with Karl Popper and a deep friendship with Imre Lakatos who apparently claimed that Martins was ‘the only sane sociologist he knew!’ 3 Martins’s time at LSE were the golden years of the discipline of philosophy of science, and these influences were to prompt him to write a classic essay on Thomas Kuhn (Martins 1972).
Martins’s first job was at the University of Leeds, where he worked from 1959 to 1964. He taught in the social studies department, with colleagues from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and political science and, worked, amongst others, with John Rex and Bryan Wilson. 4 Martins recalls several seminars that influenced him while at Leeds. These included what became Piyo Rattansi and James E. McGuire’s classic paper on Newton (Rattansi and McGuire 2007) and lectures given by the effervescent genius, Jerome Ravetz. Martins then moved to the University of Essex (1964–71), where he co-founded the Department of Sociology and the School of Comparative Studies. In 1971, Martins moved to the University of Oxford, where he was lecturer of sociology and fellow of St. Antony’s College until 2001, when he retired. He was selected especially to teach the sociology of Latin America and remained there before retiring in 2001, when he was elected emeritus fellow of St Antony’s College. It might also be worth mentioning here that for a consi