Nanotechnology promises to be the next great human technological revolution, but such change often comes at the price of unforeseen consequences. Nanotechnology: Ethics and Society explores several of the practical and ethical dilemmas presented by this technological leap. This book provides a framework for deciding how to best take advantage of nanotechnology opportunities while minimizing potential negative effects. After an overview of the nanotechnology revolution, this text illustrates key concepts in the assessment model and then applies this model to a case study related to human enhancement technologies. A final chapter offers an ethical agenda for addressing the challenges of nanotechnology.

This course addresses some of the eternal questions that man has grappled with since the beginning of time. What is good? What is bad? Why is justice important? Why is it better to be good and just than it is to be bad and unjust? Most human beings have the faculty to discern between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, and to make judgments over what is just and what is unjust. But why are ethics important to us? This course looks at our history as ethical beings. We’ll travel into the very heart of mankind’s greatest philosophical dilemmas—to the origins of our moral values and the problem of ethics.