The Abolition of Man

In this essay Lewis discusses things that he thinks might be contributing to the abolition of man. From what I picked up from this essay Lewis is concerned with the conditioners and the “norm” that they follow which is Toa. The main struggle that I saw was that between the natural law and this Toa that the conditioners are regulating.

The conditioners are the people that are deciding what the Tao entails and what they are going to teach others to follow. The problem with the conditioners is that who are they to decide what is important to be included in the Tao. They could completely neglect the natural law in their interpretation of what the rules for mankind should be.

One thing that I though Lewis emphasized that I don’t agree with is that science is becoming to much of a dominating force in how we view the world and deciding what we think is right and wrong. I think there is some truth when he says that “the stars lost their divinity as astronomy developed, and the dying God has no place in agriculture.” But when he says (in reference to nature, and what I think he meant as science) that “what looked to us lie hand held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us forever.” I don’t think that nature has taken us over like this, I think that instead of enfolding and shadowing us science is holding us up so that we can see a wider range of landscape. We just have to be careful in which direction we look while we are sitting in its palm.