ASU capstone essay
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This capstone essay is meant to supply a synthesis of time spent at ASU West focusing on study of biology and society. We begin with the synthesis of an academic major that links biology with society, or, to put it another way, that links the impersonality of science with the highly personal human component. My choice has informed my intellectual development to date.
A greater tolerance of ambiguity and paradox is obviously one outcome of my academic choices. Paradox and ambiguity are embedded, for example, in the discourse of mind and body, especially the distinction between mind and brain. It may be true that what are seen as purely mental processes are an illusion that is the product of brain chemistry and neural function, but most minds resist reconciling that with their most immediate experience of their selfhood. Another example: We know from the study of biology that the use of drugs, while in many ways miraculous, has embedded into it a risk-reward ratio that begins but by no means ends in the research lab. Consequences of drug therapy must be monitored for side effects that could make a "cure" worse than the disease.
Not unrelated to the presence of paradox and ambiguity in scientific contexts is the presence of ethical dimensions of scientific and other issues. Ethics comes into play regarding biological research on human beings and the consequences of more or less purely biological research...