On Training Of Scientists And Moral Responsibility
NOVEMBER 01, 1959 by DANIEL STEWART
Dr. Stewart is an Instructor in the Department of Natural Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing,
In recent years there has been much soul-searching among science people over the possible moral consequences of their work. The scientist of today is genuinely concerned over the obligations that he—as a scientist—has to his society, and the effect of his discoveries on his fellows.
The term " obligations" necessarily implies a reference to some moral standard. And, up to now, moral standards, and their necessary implications, have not been one of the major concerns of empirical scientists.
The status of moral values in the universe has been a central question in the thought of those who are in the main stream of our philosophical tradition from Plato on down. Moral values are nonphysical and thus cannot be subject to any quantitative tests, but for the typical scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whatever is not reducible to some physicalistic verification basis is unreal. Researchers who adhere to a basically materialistic philosophy are considered "real" scientists; all others are regarded as making weak-kneed concessions to mysticism.
Within this frame of reference, what happens to the scientist who feels some sort of obligation to his society? Any consideration of an obligation necessarily implies the existence of some moral philosophy. But any view which permits moral propositions is, of necessity, incompatible with materialism.
Plato makes this distinction unmistakably clear in the dialogue, "The Sophist."¹ The Eleatic Stranger describes the materialists as "dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if anyone else says that what is not a 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 scienti