운명과 선택의 이야기로서의 유전자 - ‘인간적 과학’을 위한 교양교육의 탐색 -

초록

Genes are raising new questions about human identity and making people think about how to accept scientific knowledge in General education. The Selfish Gene explains the evolution of altruism from a gene-centered view. Richard Dawkins’s argument is interpreted as genetic determinism, generating anxiety and moral criticism about the genes that make us. Determinism constricts new scientific knowledge into a framework of the past, and keeps knowledge from leading to meaning. The gene-centered view assumes that entities are survival “machines” for their genes through the geological time and space of evolution. However, the logic of explaining the time required for evolution is different from the logic of time for a specific entity. Biology has expanded the gap between genetic “information” and biological “meaning.” Life is not a causal output of genes but a complicated process in which the entire system is involved. Genes can convey the meaning of life only when we imagine the immense time of evolution and, based on this, think about the time of possibilities given to the entity. The process of linking genes to the classics and understanding it as a story of fate and choice is one way to connect existence to what should occur, and to actually practice imagination. Genes are the new face of fate given to us by the era of science. Genes are, like the sphinx, “monsters” guarding the doors to life and the determination of many things. However, the lives of entities have recently been constructed based on databases. The main characters of Oedipus Tyrannus read the scripts of fate in their own ways. The story of genes links the scientific knowledge of genes more specifically to the meaning of life. Genes let us face the paradox that, while we originate from substance, we are also special beings that form our own invidious history. Understanding this feeble balance is humane. General education must explore the field of humane science so that humans banished to the frontiers of the universe can reimagine the place to where they must return.

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