Science and Engineering Ethics (2004) 10, 627-638

Towards the Conscientious Development of Ethical Nanotechnology Rosalyn W. Berne University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, USA

Keywords: nanoscaled science and technology, nanotechnology, ethics, imagination, meaning, belief

ABSTRACT: Nanotechnology, the emerging capability of human beings to observe and organize matter at the atomic level, has captured the attention of the federal government, science and engineering communities, and the general public. Some proponents are referring to nanotechnology as “the next technological revolution”. Applications projected for this new evolution in technology span a broad range from the design and fabrication of new membranes, to improved fuel cells, to sophisticated medical prosthesis techniques, to tiny intelligent machines whose impact on humankind is unknowable. As with the appropriation of technological innovation generally, nanotechnology is likely to eventually bring dramatic and unpredictable new capabilities to human material existence, along with resulting ethical challenges and social changes to be reconciled. But as of yet, aside from a few simple new consumer goods, such as paint, rackets and fabric coatings, nanotechnology is undeveloped. Its social and ethical dimensions are not apparent. Even still, given the stated goals of the various nanotechnology initiatives to rearrange matter with increasing atomic precision, the impact of nanotechnology on human life and society is likely be profound. It is very difficult, however, to make accurate predictions about the future impact of nanotechnology development on humanity. At this time, the most important role for ethics analysis is to contribute to a humanitarian, conscientious approach to its development. This paper suggests that such an approach requires that attention be given to the roles of imagination, meaning-making, metaphor, myth and belief.

Address for correspondence: Rosalyn W. Berne, Department of Science, Technology and Society, University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 351 McCormick Road, Thornton Hall A219, Charlottesville, VA 22904; email: : [email protected]. Paper received, 22 July 2003: revised, 1 May 2004: accepted, 22 September 2004. 1353-3452 © 2004 Opragen Publications, POB 54, Guildford GU1 2YF, UK. http://www.opragen.co.uk

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Introduction Nanoscaled science and technology, which involves the study, control, manipulation and assembly of multifarious nanoscale components into materials, systems and devices to serve human interests and needs, represents a rapidly developing progression in technological pursuit. Articulating the ambitions and excitement of many, one scientist said, “Nanotechnology has given us the tools…to play with the ultimate toy box of nature – atoms and molecules. Everything is made from it… the possibilities to create new things appear limitless”.1 (p.1) With similar enthusiasm, a report of the Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology states, “The emerging fields of nanoscience and nanoengineering are leading to unprecedented understanding and control over the fundamental building blocks of all physical things. This is likely to change the way almost everything – from vaccines to computers to automobile tires to objects not yet imagined – is designed and made.”1 (p.1) Similar to the birth of the nuclear age, the space program and the biotechnology boom of earlier decades, nanoscience and nanoengineering (hereafter referred to as nanotechnology) are spoken about as potentially revolutionary, new frontiers in engineering and science. This is a rhetorical claim of new technology “revolutions”, generally. The discovery of nuclear fission came with the hope and promise of humanity’s ability to tap into a tremendously powerful new source of energy. Claims about the space program were that it would take us to otherwise inaccessible worlds, where new life might be discovered, and human needs might be provided for in unimaginable and profound ways. Biotechnology proponents promised revolutionary ways of dealing with biological challenges to human limitations and vulnerabilities. And now, claims are that nanotechnology also will bring new knowledge and abilities, based on observation and replication of nanoscaled behaviors in nature, to open whole new dimensions of material possibilities. Scientists and engineers from various fields of study, public policy makers, and government and business leaders have articulated the hope and ambition that through the development of nanotechnology, previously unimaginable and inaccessible material possibilities, and great economic potentials can soon become a reality. Of course, humans have always sought to control and rearrange matter. Nanotechnology is likely to significantly raise the capacity to do so with intricacy. Through the tools now available (such as the atomic force and atomic probe microscopes), extensions of human hands and eyes allow more direct observation and manipulation of atoms, to move them, rearrange them, and reconfigure them at will. Where might such awesome abilities lead? And what will it mean if and when nanotechnology enables radical, powerful new developments in health care diagnosis, medical treatment and pharmaceuticals, electronics, military applications, entertainment, cosmetics, computing, artificial intelligence, surveillance and other areas of human life? The outcomes implicated with the development of nanotechnology suggest the possibility of radical, perhaps wonderful, maybe unalterable, unpredictable changes. What is done with the knowledge gained and what advantages are taken of this next phase of technological

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evolution may determine the changing substance of human material, social, cultural, economic, moral and perhaps even spiritual lives.

Meaning-Making and Belief in Nanotechnology Development As with any new technological development, the goals and intentions of nanotechnology research and development are loosely being determined by competing interests, random social forces, and conceptual negotiations about meaning. Personal and commonly shared beliefs about what it means to be human, individually and in community, and what it means to be alive in the body, are among those forces. Those beliefs and meanings are in flux, responsive and subject to environmental changes, especially as created by new technology appropriations. Struggles and negotiations over meaning and belief are inherent in the attempt to make meaning of both the anticipated and the sublime technological future. Likewise for the various values embedded in those beliefs about whether and how technology might or should be directed in human life, by and for whom. Meaning is also being made over perceptions of competitive opportunities, access to resources, power and control. Personal meaning-making and the social/cultural negotiation of those meanings arise from the fundamental and uniquely human quests to place self in the context of one’s sensing and perceiving, to assert and establish a sense of purpose, significance and control over one’s life. For the individual, where there is no meaning, there is an incomplete, inaccessible, pathological sense of self. The ideation and believing that meaning-making entails, and the incumbent need to adjust to radical and subtle changes that technology brings to material existence, require that meaning be made of both new perception and novel experience. As new technologies are introduced into human life, humans simultaneously change and adapt their senses of what those technologies mean for living and their beliefs about the world as it is experienced in relation to those technologies. Ongoing negotiations are made within society over the meanings ascribed to the new technology. Those meanings help determine how it is humans might live in connection to each other and to those technologies. For example, for many people computing technologies (especially the PC and internet) have radically altered the sense and meaning of work and home, as relations between those two fluctuate with redefined demarcations of physical work space and time. Separation of work and home are increasingly blurred with the availability of those technologies at both work and home. Langdon Winner writes, “…As technologies are being built and put to use, significant alterations in patterns of human activity and human institutions are already taking place. New worlds are being made.”2 (p.11) I would add that humans change and are changed by their externalized, material world, responding imaginatively, through symbolic ideations about relationships with self and other, to alterations of those worlds. This is especially true of responses to newly developing technology. Even now, as nanotechnology is being researched changes are occurring, with individuals and communities necessarily adapting to changes. Those adaptations may include reconstructed cultural values and material desires, alterations to the senses Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2004

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and bodily awareness, and adjustments to changing perceptions of relationship with other humans, sentient beings, and nature. Technological development is in great measure the externalization of internal symbolic processes of transformation. As such, they are interconnected. Searches for meaning, quests for survival, and human needs to establish a sense of self and purpose in life are expressed and transferred to technology. For example, the Internet may be an externalization of more internal desires such as interconnectivity and freedom from physical restraints. The nanotechnology “revolution” entails scientific research and development and it also involves visions and idealizations about such concepts as control, progress, improvement, nature and material abundance. It may also have roots in fear, ambiguity and power struggles over material wellbeing and security. There is moral significance in the imagined possibilities, in beliefs and visions, and especially in the searches for meaning reflected in conceptualizations of nanotechnology. The exponential increase in our ability to control matter which nanotechnology represents, points towards the increasing power of humans to experiment with and even alter the fundamental constitution of living organisms, matter and human material experience. Where does the desire and ambition for such awesome power come from? What kinds of beliefs are held about who we are as humans living in an increasingly technological world? How is meaning being made about the changes which are occurring within the human mind in response to that world?

Selfhood, Myth and the Sacred in Nanotechnology If nanotechnology does, in fact, bring radical and revolutionary changes to the material world in which humans live, then it will also, as a result, require that new meanings be made of that world. Meaning-making about that which is novel and strange relies upon engagement with a symbolic world. Nanotechnology quests, like all newly developing technological ambitions, are also quests for personal fulfillment. As such, they entail the search for selfhood. Desire for fulfillment leads humans to create new technologies but new technologies and devices cannot provide answers to the fundamental and perpetual question of humanity, “Who am I?” Technology driven worlds can thus become adversarial, captive but not fulfilling, when serving as a primary source of selfhood. The way out of this paradoxical problem is to possess the self, as Ricoeur would suggest, to mediate the ‘consciousness of freedom’ and the ‘brokenness of unfulfilled desire’.3 Ricoeur concerned himself with the wholeness of the human soul. To my thinking, that is the domain of ethics. Meaning-making, imagination and myth play a role in any technological development, nanotechnology included. However, because of the futuristic nature of nanotechnology ethics, analysis of the ‘why’ and ‘what’ nanotechnology development may mean to human life must include consideration of those less explicit elements of belief, as these may be as influential in the evolution of nanotechnology as the science and engineering itself.

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I am interested in what it means to different people to be human in an increasingly technological world. Individuals living in highly technological cultures and societies tend to function inside of a domain where answers to the question, “Who am I?” and “What ought we to do?” are more readily sought outside what is variously consider to be the sacred. Rather, technologies have surreptitiously come to be a primary source of human meaning and belief about self and other. Paul Ricoeur perceived the human to be estranged from himself.3 Though destined for fulfillment, in technological societies humans are inevitably captive to an “adversary” greater then themselves. What might be the “adversary” that captivates the human soul? What might be the sources of alienation from self? I want to suggest that for technological humans, the adversary can sometimes be relationships humans have with technologies themselves. Ricoeur locates the estranged human being of today in a world that is empty of meaning and hope, in contrast with early humans who held fast to belief through great symbolisms of the sacred.3 To my mind, what was once a sense of the sacred was and yet can still be an essential source of meaning and knowing for conceptualizations of self and purpose towards something greater and more sublime then the self, alone. In Ricoeur’s assessment, the individual person longs for the values and forces once felt by primordial people but lost to technological life. While I think the assessment is correct, I want to say that the condition he speaks of is not inevitable. Recovery of what has been lost to technological life (i.e. keen awareness of and sensitivity to the body and soul’s delicate yet vital connection to nature/earth/human other; awe of the sacred) is possible through engagement with the symbolic elements of belief which function in the process of meaning-making about being human in a nanotechnology driven world. Myth can serve that function. Myth, for Ricoeur, is traditional narration, relating to events that happened at the beginning of time. Its purpose is to provide grounds for ritual actions, and generally to establish forms of action and thought by which humans might understand themselves in the world.4 His treatise suggests that by elucidating the nature of the human being through the power of myth, humans can recover the sense of the sacred which has been irremediably lost. This assertion is significant for nanotechnology ethics in the following way: if current events of development continue on their present course, there will be a ubiquitous emergence and appropriation of nanotechnology into human societies. Development of nanotechnology is moving very quickly, and without any clear public guidance or leadership as to the moral tenor of its purposes, directions and outcomes. Nanotechnology initiatives of various forms are in place and continuing to emerge all over the world, with active and competitive involvement especially robust in countries that are highly developed technologically, such as Japan, the US, and Germany. Projections for the future of nanotechnology are varied and sometimes contested. No one can really say what it will mean to incorporate nanotechnology products, devices and processes into systems of national security and surveillance, warfare, medicine, food, electronics, and other consumer goods. Where nanotechnology is leading and what impact it might have on humanity is anyone’s guess. To my mind, the most pressing moral imperative at this time is for those involved with nanotechnology research, development, policy and funding to commit to Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2004

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conscientiously addressing questions of what nanotechnology might and ought to be, in terms of what it may mean to be human in a nanotechnology driven world. Of course, this suggestion is vexed on a number of counts. Not the least of which is that what it means to be human is a matter of constant, and evolving social negotiation, as well as a matter of private, personal investigation. Furthermore, conscientiousness is subjective, not easily obtained, and not of apparent value in the competitive race for nanotechnology development. It is a moral imperative, nonetheless. Nanotechnology may fundamentally be about the observation of nanoscaled functions and phenomena. But it also aims for the refined manipulation, recreation, experimentation and alteration of the physical world that is being observed. The development of nanotechnology reflects our escalating ambition to finesse control of our material world. This ambition alone warrants careful study of the meanings being ascribed to nanotechnology as it is developing, along with careful attention to any suggested notions of the sacred that may be contained within those meanings.

Metaphor, Imagination and Belief in Conceptualizations of Nanotechnology The explicitly expressed motivations, ambitions and dreams of nanotechnology are robust, with an intriguing array of metaphoric descriptions and imaginative applications ascribed to it. Those potential applications are as endless and as inexhaustible as are human motivations for greater control over material life. The National Science Foundation’s Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology5 describes nanotechnology as leading to “dramatic changes in the ways materials, devices, and systems are understood and created”5 (p.1) and lists among the envisioned breakthroughs “orders-of-magnitude increases in computer efficiency, human organ restoration using engineered tissue, ‘designer’ materials created from direct assembly of atoms and molecules, and the emergence of entirely new phenomena in chemistry and physics.”5(p.1) Endorsements of the National Nanotechnology Initiative refer to the possibilities of miniaturized drug delivery systems and diagnostic techniques, positive environmental impacts through drastic reductions in energy use, extending and repairing deficits in the human senses, and security systems smaller than a piece of dust. Senator Barbara Mikulski says, “We are poised to take the next major leap into the future where the possibilities are endless.”6(p.349) In Unbounding the Future: the Nanotechnology Revolution,7 Drexler describes how molecular assemblers could make possible low cost solar power; cures for cancer and the common cold; cleanup of the environment; inexpensive pocket supercomputers; accessible space flight; limitless acquisition and exchange of information through hypertext. Some people dismiss such claims as ‘hype’ and argue that as such; these claims are not representative of scientifically grounded reality. Scientists such as Richard Smalley and Eric Drexler dispute what will actually be the likely result of the ability to build devices and enact various technological processes at such miniscule length scales. Smalley disputes the reality of self-replicating devices, while Eric Drexler presents 632

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molecular nanotechnology as a likely outcome of nanoscaled science research.8 There is a great deal of speculation and debate over outcomes and applications, but no one seems to really know for a fact if the machines created will be able to do such things as “scavenge molecules from their environment to reproduce themselves, creating an unlimited number of molecular robots that can perform feats of engineering that defy our imagination.”9 (p.3) Disagreements over which projections of the nanotechnology future are mythical and which are realistic, such as the debate over whether it will truly ever be possible to develop self-assembling devices, have their validity. But for the purposes of this paper, imaginative, mythological and other symbolic representations of what are both feared and aspired to, are even more significant to the formulation of an ethics of nanotechnology. As nanotechnology researchers are busy in their labs, and nanotechnology proponents are active in its politics, the meaning of nanotechnology to human identity and life is also being constructed, irrevocably intertwined with conceptualizations of what humans are in relation to perceived material reality. Human beings construct technology variously as an expression of human nature and towards the distinctively human search for meaning. As with other technological endeavors, nanotechnology developments will express human beliefs, ambitions and ideals, both symbolically and materially. For example, our televisions project images of ourselves, mirroring human activity and offering a sense of companionship and security. Humans construct buildings reflective of our own bodies, with outer layers (walls) that function like skin and hidden, interior systems that mimic neural and vascular mechanisms; interior plumbing, Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) and electrical systems are held just below the exterior, skin-like walls. Waste pipes, which leave the building from down below and vents, which carry airborne wastes up and out, represent elimination systems in the human body. Similarly, humans tend to design robots with humanoid attributes such as upright positioning, moving arms and expressive faces with “seeing” eyes, and automobiles with headlights placed in a position which mimics illuminated eyes on a face. Likewise, human imagination contributes to framing the blueprint of nanotechnology’s construction. For example, a number of people have expressed both intrigue and fear over imagined notions of selfreplication of nanoscale robotic devices. What underlying beliefs stimulate those emotions? And which values, fears, impulses and desires serve to attract and repel the pursuit of such phenomena? “Technology, or the making and using of artifacts, is a largely unthinking activity. It emerges from unattended to ideas and motives, while it produces and engages with unreflected-upon objects...Yet, the need to think about technology is never the less increasingly manifest.”10 (p.1) The unattended to ideas and motives referred to in Carl Mitcham’s statement have roots inside of a largely symbolic process. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson speak about the cognitive unconscious;11 a system that functions like a “hidden hand” that shapes how we conceptualize all aspects of our experience, and how we automatically and unconsciously comprehend what we experience. This hidden hand shapes everyday commonsense reasoning as well as philosophical concepts including time, events, causation, essence, the mind and morality, with Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2004

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metaphor as the primary means of operation for this “hidden hand”.11 Human ingenuity, especially in unfamiliar domains of inquiry such as nanotechnology, is complex, unpredictable, and largely metaphoric. Mark Johnson writes, “Since our experience is never static, and since evolution and technological change introduce new entities into our lives, we are faced with novel situations that simply were not envisioned in the historical periods that gave rise to our current understanding of certain moral concepts. Metaphor is our chief device for extensions from prototypes to novel cases.”12 (p.195)

Nanotechnology Ethics Individually and collectively, research scientists and engineers, public officials, and consumers of nanotechnology are all subject to the evolving, human search for meaning. It is underway right now, along with the development of nanotechnology itself. It would be prudent to acknowledge and consider the significance of that search in analysis of nanotechnology ethics. I predict that otherwise, only after appropriation, when radical changes and unintended consequences result from nanotechnology product and process usages, will individual members of society begin to become conscious of the social and personal negotiations which had to be made in exchange for nanotechnology developments. My concern with nanotechnology ethics is how to direct it, conscientiously, towards the nourishment and support of humanity, the wholeness of the human soul. Ricoeur’s approach to the task of wholeness is to use metaphorical imagination as an ally for understanding and articulating faith. He saw the imagination as generating new metaphors for “synthesizing disparate aspects of reality that burst conventional assumptions about the nature of things.”3(p.23) One of the exciting features nanotechnology research for its investigators and investors has been the exploitation of novel properties of matter. The imagination is titillated by the prospects. Beliefs about matter, and the human potential to alter and control it, reinforce the ambition. This is why formulations of nanotechnology ethics need to consider how imagination and belief are engaged symbolically in the processes of making and negotiating meaning about the material world in which humans live. And, to recognize the fungible nature of the meaning of being human in a newly emerging, rapidly changing technological world where the atoms of life are manipulated and controlled by humans, with precision. Conscientious social, moral and humanitarian awareness is possible in the pursuit of nanotechnology. But such commitment requires an honest, initial appraisal of why nanotechnology is being pursued so robustly. At first pass, this may seem an absurd inquiry; isn’t nanotechnology research simply another morally neutral quest for scientific understanding? The pursuit of knowledge is commonly held to be a moral good. Most nanotechnology researchers would categorize their work as basic science, a fundamental pursuit of the acquisition of new knowledge. At the same time, the research itself is embedded in a perpetual search for meaning, as expressed through 634

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projections, ambitions, hopes and dreams. That search comes from human will and desires about human destiny, and from human beliefs about human purpose and existence. Elements of that search will be embedded in nanotechnology developments. For various reasons, those of us who live in affluent, technologically sophisticated Western society, generally fail to pursue a conscious and conscientious relationship with the technologies we create and absorb. Technology tends to emerge from unreflective social acceptance and passivity as fueled by the influences of free market economies, competition, and perceived needs for more and new material possessions. Commonly, members of these societies become eager for the elusive but compelling promise of improved quality of life. The widespread tendency is to be unconsciously driven by, changed by, and given over to novel technological development. However, technological development is not an inevitable process of evolution for the human species. Rather, it is a choice. Its direction can be willed and determined by conscientious focus on that which is believed and understood about humanity and its relationship to the technologies that are developed. The problem is that as long as symbolic understandings and beliefs about it remain obscure, nanotechnology will be free to evolve in very quiet and tacit ways; behind what Herbert Marcuse called the technological veil,13 and Bruno Latour referred to as the black box.14 Winner asserts: “When scholars open the black box of technological innovation, they find social, cultural and political choices through and through. If one looks closely enough, the creation of hardware, software and large-scale technical systems is never simply a matter of invention and application, but of complex negotiations and sometimes fierce, conflicts among competing groups. Choices that affect the distribution of wealth and power in society are intricately woven into the very substance of technical design, right down to the last pipe fitting, circuit breaker and computer chip.”15 I largely agree with Winner, and think further that there are intrinsic elements of belief entailed in nanotechnology development, which thrive without open review. Those processes are connected to qualities of mind that guide and ground the human search for meaning. Current social/ethical deliberation about nanotechnology is importantly focused on such considerations as what is or is not scientifically feasible; what is or is not safe; when and how privacy might be compromised; what will be the effect of powerful new military applications; which codes and guidelines should be agreed upon by whom to assure fair access and democratic adoption of nanotechnologies; education of the general public and training of a requisite workforce; and debates over the precautionary principle and whether nanotechnology research should be halted until health, environmental and safety matters have been resolved. For example, when Bill Joy proposed that we: “limit the development of technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge,”16 he included nanotechnology in his call for scientists and engineers to adopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocratic oath, and to have the courage to enforce this code upon Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2004

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others.16 He was correct that strong codes are necessary to avert dangerous situations from inadvertently arising from nanotechnology pursuits. Ethics guidelines can be critical for shaping and defining commonly held, publicly acknowledged agreements about goods and harms, and about which developments of nanotechnology might be permissible, and which should be forbidden. Other matters also need to be taken up in assessments of ethical issues associated with nanotechnology. For example, how is it that society has come to agree that precise human control over material existence is necessarily a moral good? Or, has it? One approach to such questions is to understand meaning-making about nanotechnology as an imaginatively and symbolically engaged process through which ideas about nature, matter, and control express beliefs about where this new evolution of technology might lead, how it may be used, and what purposes it may serve. Some indications of how that process is working might be found by studying metaphors used in discourse about nanotechnology. In an attempt to guide the development of nanotechnology ethically, it is important to move beyond reactionary precautions, questions of immediacy, and debates over who will receive the benefits of material control, toward recovery of the wholeness of soul and sacredness of life. I believe these values have been sacrificed to unexamined technological development. In other words, nanotechnology development can be directed and guided ethically, with clear, humanitarian intentions for its course and purpose. But this requires careful attention to symbolic and imaginative sources of meaning, and to core values, myth, personal beliefs and institutional intentions. One can begin to get a sense of the ethics, purposes and motivations embedded in nanotechnology by looking for patterns of metaphor used in various rhetorical forms. For example, the metaphor of a competitive race, much like with the arms “race” and the “race” to the moon, is prominent in the official public rhetoric of nanotechnology. This is especially evident in government hearings. Through study of the imagination, other frameworks of meaning become apparent, allowing a grasp on the moral and symbolic meanings of human actions, and in turn, more profound and meaningful inquiries over the purpose and direction of nanotechnology as it develops. Analysis of the ethics of nanotechnology development might also include critical study of the images that are used to reflect imagined visions of the futures that are possible through the pursuit of nanotechnology. Freeman Dyson said, “Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.”17 (p.9) Science fiction is born in the imaginative process. While it may not be an accurate source of prediction, it too offers to the ethical analysis of nanotechnology a way to identify the various and diverse symbolic representations which are engaging nanotechnology development towards understanding what is feared, by whom, believed, hoped for and desired. As a source reflection, science fiction written about nanotechnology can provide access to symbolic images of alternative constructions of society and human life. Irrespective of their scientific basis in reality, or the lack thereof, science fiction books about nanotechnology, such as Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age18 for example, Michael Crichton’s Prey,19 or any of Kathleen Ann Goonan’s accounts on the future with nanotechnology are externalized expressions of internal processes in the search for 636

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meaning about the coming of nanotechnology. The fact that these novels represent vastly contrasting, conflicting visions of that future is not important. What is useful for thinking about the formulation of nanotechnology ethics is that they each contain elements of a more collective consciousness about human relationships to technology, and to self. Fueled by the imagination, they also reflect externalized forms of otherwise elusive ideas and images made into concrete conceptualizations of material changes that may come with the development of nanotechnology. Another source for study of the symbolic world of nanotechnology is dialogue with scientists and engineers whose work takes place at the nanoscale. Ricoeur saw insight into unforeseen possibilities emerging from the opening of conversation between newly formed dialogue partners.3 As the conceptual and technical architects of the nanotechnology initiative, research scientists and engineers are a primary source of the imaginative processes of cognition that are nourishing nanotechnology development. What do they imagine? What is it that they believe they are doing? What do they imagine is possible as a result of their work? What personal hopes, aspirations, beliefs and fears do they have? What metaphors do they use to express their technological dreams and formulate answers to questions of who they are as human beings? What motivates their work, and what kinds of studies might they reject from their own labs? My own study of researchers suggests that most scientists and engineers who are working at the nanoscale actively engage perceptions and beliefs imaginatively. They do so in their labs, in their personal reading, and in their conversations about what may be the social and cultural changes coming as a result of their work.

Conclusion: Towards the Conscientious Development of Nanotechnology In an effort to avoid potential injustice and harm, and to quell any public alarm, many efforts are now being funded to determine and prepare for the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. This is also a good time to conscientiously direct its intentions and outcomes. Those who are interested in the ethical development of nanotechnology, and in leading it towards humanitarian aims, will more likely achieve critical conscientiousness about this incredible and perhaps revolutionary enterprise, in identifying and exploring the roles of meaning-making, imagination, myth, metaphor and belief in nanotechnology development. Proponents, advocates, opponents, researchers, and policy makers are currently engaged in meaning-making about nanotechnology. Eventually consumers will also participate in the evolution and imbibing of meaning about living with the products and effects of nanotechnologies in our world. Included in these formulations of meaning is the largely symbolic quest to answer the fundamental questions, “Who am I?” and “What ought we to do?” Ricoeur saw that critical consciousness needs a mature openness to the symbolic world.3 Indeed, that world (the symbolic one which functions quietly but persistently to support human living) is very much a part of the quest to control and manipulate matter with precision. Openness to it is the key to the consciousness development of ethical nanotechnology. Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 4, 2004

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R. W. Berne Acknowledgement: The material in this paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0134839. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

REFERENCES 1. Nanotechnology: Shaping the World Atom by Atom. (1999) National Science and Technology Council; Committee on Technology, (NSTC) . Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology (IWGN). 2. Winner, L. (1986) The Whale and the Reactor: a Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, xiv, 200 p. 3. Ricoeur, P. (1995) Figuring the Sacred; Religious, Narrative and Imagination, ed. M.I. Wallace, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, MN. 4. Ricoeur, P. (1967) Symbolism of Evil, Beacon Press, Boston, MA. 5. Roco, M.C., Bainbridge, W.S. and National Science and Technology Council (U.S.). Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science Engineering and Technology (2001) Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology: NSET workshop report. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Germany and Boston, MA. 6. Mikulski, B. (2001) Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology: NSET Workshop Report, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Germany and Boston, MA. 7. Drexler, K.E., Peterson, C. and Pergamit, G. (1991) Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution. 1st Quill ed., Quill, New York: 304 p. 8. Baum, R. (2003) Nanotechnology: Drexler and Smalley Make the Case For and Against ‘Molecular Assemblers’, in Chemical and Engineering News 81(48). 9. Drexler, K.E. (1986) Engines of Creation. 1st ed. Anchor Press/Doubleday. Garden City, N.Y., xii, 298 p. 10. Mitcham, C. (1994) Thinking through Technology: The Path Between Engineering and Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. xi, 397 p. 11. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western thought, Basic Books, New York, xiv, 624. 12. Johnson, M. (1994) Moral Imagination; Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 13. Marcuse, H. (1964) One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Beacon Press, Boston. 14. Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 15. Winner, L. (1997) Technomania is Overtaking the Millenium; see http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/How%How 20Technomania.html.. 16. Joy, B. (2000) Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, in Wired; see www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. 17. Dyson, F.J. (1997) Imagined Worlds. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 216 p. 18. Stephenson, N. (1995) The Diamond Age, or, Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, Bantam Books, New York, 455 p. 19. Crichton, M. (2002) Prey, 1st ed., Harper Collins Publishers, New York, xiii, 367 p.

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