After the introduction Bloch begins with the dreams and ideals of the adolescent. The seventeen years old lad who fantasizes about a date with the most beautiful girl in town.

Somehow it nicely fits with Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow (1922) and his main figure Denis, twenty three years and desperately trying to be a (successful) writer…

However, Aristotle himself did not know the word. He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle’s death, an editor of his works entitled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”. 

Throughout the centuries the meaning of metaphysics has been developed and today we consider the following sections as parts of the concept:   

Abstract objects and mathematics;

Cosmology and cosmogony;

Determinism and free will;

Identity and change;

Mind and matter;

Necessity and possibility;

Objects and their properties;

Religion and spirituality;

Space and time

in the interactions between scientists in the pursuit of their goals,

this book by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar is a real eye-opener.

Much of the mistakes that are made behind the screens is unknown to the public.

Scientists do blunder from time to time, sometimes good results happen purely accidental…

Philosophy of science shows it all.

Is the sublime a fact about nature or art, or both? Is the sublime a property of the work… or is it less in the work than in the soul or character of the genius who produces the work?

Or could we say that the sublime is an extraordinary experience brought about the power of the perceiver, and thus a testimony not to the work or to the author but to something in the reader?

Moon is a 2009 science fiction/psychological thriller film about a solitary lunar employee who experiences a personal crisis as the end of his three-year stint nears. 

Sam Bell is an employee contracted by the company Lunar Industries to extract helium-3 from lunar soil for much-needed clean energy back on Earth. He is stationed for three years at a lunar base with only a robotic assistant named GERTY for company. During a routine rover excursion Sam crashes the rover into the harvester, losing internal atmosphere and switching in a hurry to the suit life support. Next  Sam awakens in the infirmary and GERTY tells him that he is recovering from injuries sustained in an accident. Sam’s suspicion is aroused when he eavesdrops on a live communication between GERTY and Lunar Industries headquarters, and learns that GERTY will not allow him outside the base. Sam sabotages a base gas pipe to convince GERTY to allow him outside to repair the fault. Once outside the base, Sam finds someone barely alive in the crashed rover: another Sam Bell, identical to himself. He brings the second Sam back to base.

The two Sams struggle to come to grips with the existence of each other, each believing the other to be a clone of himself, with the first Sam’s physical and mental state beginning to rapidly deteriorate. The second Sam reflects himself at the beginning of his contract; sharp, headstrong and short-tempered. Together they  venture outside the base’s perimeter. There they find a series of antennas jamming direct live communication with Earth. The first Sam starts feeling pain and becoming ill, and returns to base where their suspicions of cloning are confirmed when, with the aid of GERTY, he discovers video logs of previous Sam Bell clones: working, becoming ill, getting into the “hibernation” pod to return home, and being incinerated. The three-year “contract” is actually the clone’s life-span as GERTY insinuates.

Proponents  of cloning claim that human reproductive cloning would produce benefits. Some scientists hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring. They also suggest that human cloning might obviate the human aging process.

Opponents of human cloning argue that because of the difficulty of cloning any living animal, it is likely that there would be a great number of failures in the creation of a living human clone, such as clones without viable immune systems or other gross genetic failures.

And how about the ethical consequences? Are we fully aware of what it means to be a human clone? How can we protect ourselves against those people with bad intentions… Some of our fellow men would like to abuse the process. Human clones are not comparable with robots. Maybe we are talkng about one  of the crimes against humanity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)

By Adam Smith 1723-1790,  Scottish philosopher and economist

 Essays on Philosophical Subjects (1795) ‘The History of Astronomy’ sect.3, para.3