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Quote by Rene Dubos

“Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.”

Quote by Rene Dubos

Author

Rene Dubos, a microbiologist, was born on February 20, 1901, and passed away on the same day in 1982. He made significant contributions to the field of microbiology, particularly in the research and application of antibiotics. Dubos' work had a profound impact on medicine and public health. more

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“Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things.”

Men Humans Character Given Risk Conditions Danger Adventure Genius Unique Human Condition Living Things

Author:Rene Dubos

“... men as a rule are more preoccupied with the dangers that threaten their life than interested in the biological forces on which they depend for a constructive existence.”

Men Force Existence Risk Danger Depends Constructive

Author:Rene Dubos

“As long as mankind is made up of independent individuals with free will, there cannot be any social status quo. Men will develop new urges, and these will give rise to new problems, which will require ever new solutions. Human life implies adventure, and there is no adventure without struggles and dangers.”

Men Giving Humans Long Made Problem Individual Social Struggle Risk Mankind Danger Adventure Solutions Independent Human Life Urges Free Will Status Quo Social Status

Author:Rene Dubos

“High-consequence risks form one particular segment of the generalised 'climate of risk' characteristic of late modernity - one characterised by regular shifts in knowledge-claims as mediated by expert systems.”

Form Risk Particular Late Consequence Claims Climate Experts Characteristics Modernity

Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“The risk climate of modernity is thus unsettling for everyone: no one escapes.”

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Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“High-consequence risks have a distinctive quality. The more calamitous the hazards they involve, the less we have any real experience of what we risk: for if things 'go wrong', it is already too late.”

Ifs Real Quality Risk Late Consequence Too Late Hazards Distinctive

Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“Risk concerns future happenings - as related to present practices - and the colonising of the future therefore opens up new settings of risk, some of which are institutionally organised.”

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Book:Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

“[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. (...) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards.”

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Author:Anthony Giddens

“Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (...), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.”

“Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.”

Source: Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age