IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001567618

Land-Grant Ideology, the Wisconsin Idea, and the Foundations of Van Rensselaer Potter's Bioethics (2014)

Wegter-McNelly, KIrk
Jacobsen, David
Hill, Robert
Boston University
Jacobsen, David
Hill, Robert
Sheppard, Phillis
Sheppard, Phillis

ISBN: 9781303973109

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Wegter-McNelly, KIrk; Committee Members: Jacobsen, David, Hill, Robert, Sheppard, Phillis.
Physical Details: 534 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Science education and teaching Universities and colleges Biology and ethics; bioethics Agriculture Land grant universities 20th century, early 20th century, late Potter, Van Rensselaer

In this dissertation I argue that properly situating Van Rensselaer Potter's bioethics makes it newly available to those seeking an alternative conceptual framework for global bioethics discourse. Locating Potter in the heretofore unappreciated context of the land-grant college ideology (evinced by those institutions established by the 1862 federal Morrill Act with a charge to democratize higher education and apply knowledge in the best interests of the public) and the Wisconsin Idea (a still-extant Progressive-era policy of applying university research to social legislation) not only illuminates its distinctive features but renders transparent its previously opaque epistemic culture. I outline how American bioethics as it is commonly understood took form at Georgetown University in the early 1970s with a mandate to consider the impact of new medical technologies on society, particularly in relation to reproductive and human fetal tissue research. This work yielded a vision that became known as principlism, the now-dominant form of Western bioethical discourse. I look at the various criticisms of principlism, as well as the inability of its critics to discard the principles framework. I then contrast principlism with the distinctly different understanding of bioethics that was offered in 1970 by Van Rensselaer Potter when he coined the word "bioethics." I discuss how, when Potter first began to speak of bioethics, he envisioned a "bridge to the future, " a union of science and the humanities that would foster cross-disciplinary thinking in anticipation of, and in the hope of averting, a worsening ecological crisis and its resultant negative impact on human health and well-being. The response to threats posed by technology - "dangerous knowledge " - was not to limit knowledge, but to respond with more knowledge, with the kind of contextual and moral vision that only transdisciplinary knowledge could provide. While Potter originally envisioned this work as a specific obligation of scientists, he gradually came to understand it as a social activity, a shift in communal perceptions and obligations. Finally, I suggest that Potter's bioethics has tremendous potential for redeeming bioethics and offers an alternative vision that is truly redemptive.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/10(E), Apr 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1552973128.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567618/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Glenna, Leland L.; Gollnick, Margaret A.; Jones, Stephen S.; (2007)
Eugenic Opportunity Structures: Teaching Genetic Engineering at US Land-Grant Universities since 1911 (/isis/citation/CBB000780229/)

Book Roger L. Williams; (2018)
Evan Pugh’s Penn State: America’s Model Agricultural College (/isis/citation/CBB694195957/)

Article Stephen J. Weininger; (2013)
Chemistry for the "Industrial Classes:" Laboratory Instruction, Mass Education and Women's Experience in Mid-Western Land-Grant Colleges, 1870-1914 (/isis/citation/CBB671862583/)

Article Martino Lorenzo Fagnani; (2019)
Agricultural Science in Napoleonic Universities: Didactic and Research in Pavia, Bologna and Padua (/isis/citation/CBB316361233/)

Article Robert W. Seidel; (2013)
Catalyst or Synthesis? Chemical Engineering in the Land-Grant College (/isis/citation/CBB766512814/)

Book Schulz, Tobias; (2010)
“Sozialistische Wissenschaft”: Die Berliner Humboldt-Universität (1960--1975) (/isis/citation/CBB001220496/)

Article Minker, Jack; (2007)
Forming a Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland (/isis/citation/CBB000850209/)

Book Helmes-Hayes, Richard C.; (2003)
Forty Years, 1963--2003: Department of Sociology, University of Toronto (/isis/citation/CBB000741307/)

Article Villani, Alberto; Pacca, Jesuina Lopes de Almeida; Freitas, Denise de; (2009)
Science Teacher Education in Brazil: 1950--2000 (/isis/citation/CBB001032860/)

Article Siemsen, Hayo; (2011)
Ernst Mach and the Epistemological Ideas Specific for Finnish Science Education (/isis/citation/CBB001032750/)

Book Collins, David J.; Williams, Nicola H.; Nunn, Ernest K.; (2005)
Chemistry at Monash University 1986--2003 (/isis/citation/CBB000610106/)

Book Helvoort, Ton van; (2008)
De chemie van de universitaire wetenschapsbeoefening: Een halve eeuw scheikunde in Groningen, 1945--1995 (/isis/citation/CBB001232406/)

Article Bernhardt, Hannelore; (2002)
Jubiläum im Schatten des Kalten Krieges: der Beitrag der Mathematischen Institute zur 150-Jahrfeier der Humboldt-Universität im Jahre 1960 (/isis/citation/CBB000500934/)

Book Harwood, Jonathan; (2005)
Technology's Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Science and Practice in Germany, 1860--1934 (/isis/citation/CBB000651481/)

Article Rebecca Kaplan; (2023)
Teaching US History through Land-Grant Universities and Agriculture Education (/isis/citation/CBB360787680/)

Article Collins, Sibrina N.; (2011)
Celebrating Our Diversity: The Education of Some Pioneering African American Chemists in Ohio (/isis/citation/CBB001232504/)

Article Maryna Gutnyk; Elena Tverytnykova; Volodymyr Sklyar; (2019)
Commercialization of Scientific Activity at a Higher Technical School of East Ukraine in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century (/isis/citation/CBB227277234/)

Article Melo, Lúcio Esmeraldo Honório de; Magalhães, Francisco de Oliveira; Almeida, Argus Vasconcelos de; Câmara, Cláudio Augusto Gomes da; (2010)
De alveitares a veterinários: notas históricas sobre a medicina animal e a Escola Superior de Medicina Veterinária São Bento de Olinda, Pernambuco (1912--1926) (/isis/citation/CBB001420445/)

Article Reisman, Arnold; (2007)
Jewish Refugees from Nazism, Albert Einstein, and the Modernization of Higher Education in Turkey (1933--1945) (/isis/citation/CBB000773083/)

Article Bennett, Brett M.; (2013)
The Rise and Demise of South Africa's First School of Forestry (/isis/citation/CBB001213131/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}