The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention

I finished chewing through "The Religion of Technology" today, a surprisingly meaty book written by historian David F. Noble.  I don't normally spend this much time enjoying a book, but I felt that Noble's research deserved a slow, methodical read.  His thesis - that scientific enterprises have gained authority and increased dominion through the use of religious mythology - is not a new one.  Yet his thorough study of the history of science and technology, shows a surprisingly apocalyptic tone that has pervaded leading scientists' rhetoric within 1000 years scientific advance.  The myth that we will return "mankind" to a prelapsarian state of perfection, immortality, and dominion through practical science betrays the masculine and monastic roots of the technological arts.  As a student of both the humanities and history of religion, I found the book enlightening in both its thesis and cursory introduction to many fields, but I have read a few reviews that felt as if Noble was wholly critical of the scientific enterprise.  My take is that Noble was criticizing the wedding of science and religion (specifically apocalyptic christianity) that was evident in the work of a many of history's great scientists and explorers, a practice that we could do with a bit less in science and technology.  Much of the modern technological enterprises still betray their Cartesian glorification of the mind at the expense of the body, yet we must remind ourselves that we live in a physical world that offers a potentially holistic existence if we can perhaps sacrifice some of our religious desire for transcendence.  The idea that our technology promises redemption from being human is an idea which smacks of both intellectual hubris and a desire to make prescriptive the objectively descriptive job of scientists.  An friend recently pointed out to me that the peer-reviewed methodology within the sciences tends to limit the amount of storytelling and myth-making that can happen, and Noble likewise cautions us with what has happened when the scientific community has not operated in this manner by buying the stories that they were selling.  Noble is a bit dated (revising last in 1999), and it seems to me that changes in light of the new scientific intelligentsia would probably be warranted.  It seems to this author, that in our current climate (read both weather and culture)it is not the scientists that need to change, but the wider society.  We tend to ignore the sciences unless they can be sensationalized, mythologized and then commodified for our consumption, and all too often it is reason and accountability that suffer.  Explanations like "you can't explain that," despite their hilarity, win out because they are delivered with pageantry, instead of objectivity.  There's more to say, but I'd like to let a few thought simmer for a while.