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Our Exploitation and Subjugation of Nature
The first chapter of Genesis seems to indicate that God gave the control of the earth to humans. It reads:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1: 27–28)
Much of human civilization is advanced through science and technology. One very puzzling fact of history is that although the Chinese people have invented many things, they never came up with science. The British scientist and researcher, Joseph Needham, documented a long list of Chinese inventions, starting with the “Great Four” — paper-making, printing, gunpowder and the compass. Yet, science did not emerge from China or Asia. It is a product of the Western mind. Needham asked, “Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilization or Indian civilization?” This is sometimes referred to as Needham’s Grand Question. So far, no definitive answer has been found. But it is an interesting and productive…
