ABSTRACT
We live in an age in which new levels of technical achievement impose new requirements of responsibility, corresponding to the ever-broadening scope of man’s power. But the advances in technology do not only give rise to questions involving the prevention of destruction, in its various forms, or such issues as the limitation of pollution and the production of waste. The two principal disciplines being drawn upon are those of sociology and moral philosophy. Moral philosophy may be broadly divided into its analytic and normative components, the former being concerned with the analysis of moral reasoning and moral theories, whilst the latter is concerned with the construction and application of such theories. It is rarely the case, then, that a social group under study can fully articulate its moral ‘theory’. Max Weber was perhaps most influential in establishing a perspective on society as a network of meanings.
