Abstract

CARVAJAL FREESE, Ingeborg. EFFICIENCY AND ASYMMETRY: THE CASE BIOETHICIS STEAM AND THE IDEA OF CARNOT. rev.latinoam.bioet. [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.2, pp.30-43. ISSN 1657-4702.

Without doubt, the steam machine represents a prototype of those technological initiatives which seemed to be assigned to fulfill the dream of endless progress, power and control. Sadi Carnot visualized steam energy like the universal motor and sensed that from then on the world would irrevocably fall apart into two pieces: on one side the primitive folks, those heat producers, will remain static and behind; on the other side the civilized humans, those who owns the new machine which produces work, will step forward rapidly. In our days, when the technological legend of endless progress is broken, the social divisions still remains invariably linked to those inventions translated as a form of energy redistribution. Bioethics has the task to make visible the spheres to get affected when technical efficiency transmutes into a value and the concomitant asymmetries spread and grow everywhere.

Keywords : Connective Bioethics; Steam machine; Thermodynamics; Efficiency; Asymmetries.

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