 than just a mechanistic, physical-chemical machine. He is more than just a highly complex, integrated glob of protoplasm. Man also has a spiritual self. This consists of a sense of beauty, of goodness, and moral responsibility. And it is this whole man that scientists must take into consideration on those occasions when they concern themselves with any obligations they might have to their society.
This makes it clear why the first horn of the dilemma—stated at the beginning of this paper—ought to be our primary concern. The young scientist, more often than not, accepts the prevailing materialistic philosophy of his group, and therefore regards moral questions as irrelevant to "real" science. With this we would have little quarrel provided that this sort of philosophy was explicitly restricted to questions regarding biological phenomena. But, unfortunately, this has not been the case. We have shown, in one instance of several, how this philosophy has been extended to cover social and political phenomena to which it was never intended to apply, and cannot, significantly, be applied.
The implication is before us, then, that the nature of life, in all of its various forms and aspects, cannot be adequately explained solely in terms of chemistry and physics. There is, in fact, a certain vital, directive aspect to all forms of living matter—a certain organizational wholeness.
In humans this psychical or spiritual aspect of living substance reaches its highest fruition in what is called mind and personality.
Our suggestion is that, before science is able to consider such things as obligations and other moral problems, a theory of reality is needed that will explain both this nonmaterialistic aspect of all living matter as well as those features explicable by chemistry and physics. And it seems almost anticlimactic to point out that before such a synthesis of the moral and material could be made, it would be necessary to know something about moral philosophy. For it may very well be that, in the final analysis, moral philosophy and science are mutually implicative endeavors.
What this means, in terms of actual practice, is that the young scientist must conscientiously and critically study that very philosophy which he has been indoctrinated against and to which his group is metaphysically opposed. It goes without saying that these are terrific hurdles. But the fact still remains that knowledge of moral philosophy is a necessary prerequisite to any significant synthesis of purely biological substance with those things that this substance is asserted as having, namely, obligations.
Materialism, alone, has proven to be inadequate—because of its very nature—to handle such questions as morality. But yet, scientists are coming more and more to concern themselves with moral consequences of their behavior. The conclusion of our dilemma would seem to be, therefore, for scientists either to restrict their explanations to purely physicalistic phenomena, or to openly and frankly, and even perhaps as a part of their academic training, make room for some preparation in traditional philosophy. For it is among the traditional philosophers, such as Plato, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Spinoza, that knowledge concerning morality will most likely be learned. And the only suggestion that one might make is that the prospective scientist approach the study of these men with the same intensity for the truth that he exhibits in his analysis of the facts of empirical science.
‘Plato, The Dialogues, tr. by B. Jowett.