Can science treat human relationships and human personalities
adequately?  I've argued not, as a matter of course in discussing
legitimate domains of science.  When answering the question "is it
possible" I'm thinking ahead too.  So we know we have a long ways 
to go as it stands right now, but some people think eventually science
will conquer all.  It won't.  There's bounds to what it can do.  
I feel that these bounds are being reached.  Starting to be, at least.
A nice fictional book which describes a global and historical process, 
the cyclical process, describing the buildup of civilization and
technology and the fall, and the buildup again, is _A Canticle for
Leibowitz_.  James Joyce, too, saw history as the perpetual rise
and fall of man and deals with this in Finnegan's Wake. I think the
time is ripe now for recognition of this, and I think that's why we
have the appearance of a new book, _The End of Science_ by John Horgan,
which I haven't read, but anyone who does I'd love to hear what you
think. 
This touches a little on it:
"Modern man's extreme humility is strangely coupled with the greatest
pride of all times.  As we discover the unknown forces that shape our
destinies, they are supposed to come at least partly under our control.
Every new discovery gives us new manipulated powers over our 
environment and our fellow men.  We are constantly told, therefore, on
the one hand that we are absolute nonentities, and on the other that 
a world is being created that will be entirely dominated by human will.
One fact is always left out of account in these predictions, the fact
that there is no such thing as a unified human will.  Men are no more
able to dominate their relationships than they ever were.  The formidable
ambitions and realizations of modern man, thus, are extremely fragile; 
they are at the mercy not of nature or destiny but of those same
"impersonal forces" that turn all the characters in _Le Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme_ into puppets with no one to pull the strings.
In a sense, therefore, possibilities for comedy have never been 
greater.  The stakes, however, are so high, and the uncertainties so
great that our laughter cannot be as complacent and secure as it once
was.  Never before has the precarious, unstable, and "nervous" nature
of laughter been so much in evidence.  When we consider the type of
comic we have in our contemporary world, we may well think that this
age is adding, or rather revealing, a new dimension to Moliere's famous
words about laughter and the creation of comedy:
C'est une etrange entreprise que de faire rire les honnetes gens  "
[it's a strange enterprise that of making honest people laugh]
from Rene Girard's essay "Perilous Balance" (an essay on laughter)
in _To double business bound_
-michael
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]
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