Modern Man in Techno-Scientific Progressivism and Nostalgic-Developmentalism Dilemma

This article interrogates the human crisis of the modern age with a comparative and synthesist approach. Indeed, in the hands of techno-scientific progressivism that has been accelerated since the industrial revolution and the nostalgic-developmentalism that is provoked by the progressivism, the central issue in crisis is not humanity; but man himself. Moreover, this crisis, which encircles daily life entirely, is not merely epistemological, also ontological. Perhaps the most valid question of the day for the modern individual who is torn between techno-scientific progressivism that glorifies speed, technique, method, invention and externality, and the doctrines of nostalgicaldevelopmentalism that prioritise the past, memory, mystical orientation and internality, is perhaps to remain human. While Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), one of the two philosophical films subject to analysis in the article, refers to such a progressivism; and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) visualises developmentalism. Beyond a science-fiction analysis, this study, which approaches both positions critically, aims to focus on the crucial questions that become evident in the films with the answers of significant thinkers such as Paul Chesterton, Gaston Bachelard, Gunther Anders, Ivan Illich, Lewis Mumford, Zygmunt Bauman and Y. Noah Harari. Besides, as a proposition, it can be stated that today sci-fi movies -even the most extraordinary ones- have ironically turned into one of the most authentic projectors in making sense of the fantastic world we live in.