A Study Of Scientific And Technological Ethics In Aldous Huxley’s Fictions

As a part of social practice,scientific and technological activities have intimate relations with human practice,social interest and value assessment.With the growing influence on society,contradictions between scientific and technological developments and ethics became more and more catchy.Ethical orders and its standard issues involved in scientific and technological ethics so to be a hot topic in the fields of science,literature,philosophy and other subjects.Aldous Huxley(1894-1963),a famous novelist and critic of England,whose formation and developments of scientific and technological ethics indicated his experience and thoughts during different social periods.Based on Huxley’s biography,collected essays and letters,this dissertation chose Brave New World,Ape and Essence and Island as the breakthrough point,and tried to explore and summarize the specific manifestation of his thoughts about scientific and technological ethics in his creation.Besides,this dissertation also aimed at exploring a new reading level of his novels in the sense of social criticism,and finding a new perspective in the reading of his literary works.Firstly,this dissertation started with a brief exposition of the essence of Huxley’s scientific and technological ethics,and then made a further analysis on the causes of these ideas’ emergence and developments.Secondly,it mostly discussed Huxley’s thoughts about anti-totalitarianism,and his advice on liberating natural will and developing individual rationality.Thirdly,it emphatically elaborated Huxley’s ideas of humanism in his scientific and technological ethics,and had a discussion on his ultimate aims at improving human welfare and establishing a code of ethics for scientists.Fourthly,related with his attempt of combining Eastern religion and Western scientific and technological civilization,this dissertation proceeded from Huxley’s relations with Eastern religion(Vedanta in India)and psychedelic,made an analysis of his idea of seeking for the ethical supports from religious mysticism and his final turn to mysticism.Finally,based on the summary of the results of this dissertation,it made a profounddiscussion on the enlightenment and significance of Huxley’s scientific and technological ethics.All in all,Huxley’s imagine of scientific and technological developments tended to be prophetic.His thoughts about scientific and technological ethics represented the ideas on science and technology,political orientation and spiritual civilization of intellectuals in the twentieth century.The discussion on Huxley’s scientific and technological thoughts do have a great significance of the ideological research on him.