body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body."
As opposed to this, the idealists are described as "contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists" are taken to be "not essence, but generation and motion."
The Scientist’s Dilemma
The dilemma is quite apparent. The young scientist either accepts the materialistic philosophy of his group; or, sensing the inadequacy of materialism to fully explain nature, he tries to pick up, in a most unscientific way, what information he can concerning moral philosophy. But, if the philosophical climate-of-opinion in science is such as to embrace materialism to the exclusion of any philosophy which makes reference to spiritual realities, then what is the prognosis for those recalcitrant souls of the scientific brotherhood who dare to deviate from the unwritten code to the point of even being concerned about a scientist’s obligations to his society?
Obligations, and the moral propositions which they necessarily entail, are defined as meaningless in terms of most present-day philosophies of science. It is thought that these propositions have nothing at all to do with genuine science, They belong instead to the realm of traditional philosophy, or worse yet, to religion, and are subject to all the alleged mysticisms of these pursuits.
Thus, it might reasonably be thought that those scientists who accept materialism as the basis for their philosophy of nature would not concern themselves with the sociological implications of their activities. In their system man is just a curious sort of an animal. He has little sense of morality or beauty or justice or goodness. Man, in this sense, is simply the product of his environment. He is but a minute part of a vast physical complex, the forces of which interact upon each other and him, and he upon them.
Holding this view of man, it would clearly be absurd to ask questions regarding good and evil, and we would reasonably conclude that those scientists who accept materialism as the basis for their philosophy of nature could not logically be concerned with such things as obligations, morality, and free will.
But some scientists of this persuasion have overstepped the logic of their position. Certain issues which started out to be merely simple physical accounts of purely biological phenomena, have been extended to cover social and political situations to which they were never intended to apply. One such example is the concept of population theory as it applies to living organisms, including man.
This theory boldly assumes that organisms live in groups, they do not live alone. Plants and animals live together in colonies, flocks, and herds, all of which are mutually dependent upon each other and their environment, in such a way as to ultimately produce a relatively stable "ecosystem." Man, of course, is one of these animals, even though he might be, as G. G. Simpson concedes, "among the higher animals."
Now, if we consider man as a biological organism, and only that, it seems obvious that he does, for the most part, live with other people. But this biological concept of population, as applied to humans, is notoriously vague and unscientific in that it fails to answer the questions of how many other people a person has to live with before he will not be living alone, and how much of the time this has to take place?
This group theory concept is one of the basic assumptions of that point of view known as "life adjustment" education. Under magic clichés uttered by the progressive-minded teacher, the students are well indoctrinated with the slogans of "team efforts," "group projects," or "togetherness." Indeed, this may very well be the starting point for collectivist economic and political theory. In any case, the analysis shows the ambiguity in the position of those scientists who regard themselves as "tough-minded" materialists. Traditional values are ostentatiously booted out the front door while the current shibboleths are illicitly imported through a rear wi