From time to time, Howard Lovy has posted brief items on his NanoBot blog about the relationship he sees between nanotechnology and Kabbalah. Now he's gone deep into the mystic for "Nanotech Angels," a Salon essay about how nano and Kabbalah are both "testament to the incomprehensible infinite."
"The mantra in the nanotech industry is to learn from the mistakes made in biotechnology and the public rejection of genetically modified organisms. Partly to blame was a "top-down" attitude taken by a scientific establishment that was much too self-important to bother with public attitudes and perceptions. So, consideration of "societal and ethical implications" is No. 1 on the nanotech industry's list. However, part of that process involves paying attention to the separate philosophical and religious societies in the world. Not the abstract "society" of a scientist's dream — one that will listen to scientific explanations and reach "correct" conclusions based on the strength and logic of their arguments — but the real society that's out there, the one that laughs at, or adores, Madonna and wears red strings, the one that crowds around old barns in rundown villages to gaze at a stain that they swear is the image of the original Madonna, the one that drops to its knees and faces Mecca five times a day, or faces toward Jerusalem every Friday night to welcome the bride of Shabbat."
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