Risks and Regulation of New Technologies

How should we proceed with advanced research of humanities and social sciences in collaboration? What are the pressing issues of this new trend in a cataclysmic time for civilization? This book, originated with a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Topic-Setting Program, addresses these challenging questions in four parts for innovating twenty-first-century humanities and social sciences. It broadens the horizon for reviewing multi-disciplinary landscapes of risks and regulation of new technologies by focusing on paradigmatic cases from the fields of life and environment. Here, genome editing for reproductive treatment and renewable energy under the constraint of climate change in Japanese and global contexts are involved. The volume comprises a combination of topics and aspects such as public policy and philosophy of science, medicine and law, climate ethics, and the economics of electricity. This edited collection will thus motivate forward-thinking readers across the diverse spectrum of social sciences and humanities to survey themes of their own interests in multi-disciplinary studies. In so doing, they can explore the evolving frontiers of those disciplines and the depths of individual contributions by experts in philosophy, ethics, law, economics, and science, technology, and society (STS), including bioscience.

Part 1 Socio-humane Sciences of New Technology.- Chapter 1 Risk and the Regulation of New Technology.- Chapter 2 The Gradation of the Causation and the Responsibility focusing on "Omission".- Chapter 3 Ockham's Proportionality: A Model Selection Criterion for Levels of Explanation.- Part 2 Reproductive Technology and Life.- Chapter 4 Enforcing legislation on reproductive medicine with uncertainty via a broad social consensus.- Chapter 5 Gene Editing Baby in China: From the Perspective of Responsible Research and Innovation.- Chapter 6 Posthumously Conceived Children and Succession from Perspective of Law.- Chapter 7 Aristotle and Bioethics.- Chapter 8 Reinterpreting Motherhood: Separating Being a "Mother" from Giving Birth.- Part 3 Environmental Technology.- Chapter 9 Domains of Climate Ethics.- Chapter 10 Electricity Market Reform in Japan: Fair Competition and Renewable Energy.- Chapter 11 Renewable Energy Development in Japan.- Chapter 12 Adverse effects of pesticides on regional biodiversity and their mechanisms.- Chapter 13 Reconsidering Precautionary Attitudes and Sin of Omission for Emerging Technologies: Geoengineering and Gene Drive.- Part 4 Science and Society.- Chapter 14 Exploring the contexts of ELSI and RRI in Japan: Case studies in dual-use, regenerative medicine, and nanotechnology.- Chapter 15 Global climate change and uncertainty: An examination from the history of science