Stockholm Reflections

STOCKHOLM REFLECTIONS* DONALD S. FREDRICKSOm We all went to Stockholm for the meeting.1 The impressive auspices—the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a Nobel Symposium—along with seductive images of Scandinavia in summer —birches along the Baltic and reflections of the night sun from golden towers—conspired to draw us there. Mild shock marked our arrival as dreams of comforts and the Grand Hotel were snuffed abruptly. Amenities of a simpler sort, we learned, were offered at Södergarn, a seminary-dormitory-reformatory at safe remove from urban distractions and designed for intensive contemplation . The object of this was not left to our imagination. Spelled out across the classroom slate was our assignment: ETHICS FOR DECISION-MAKING IN SCIENCE. Here the moral essence of science was to be distilled again, and our hosts had carefully mixed the starting brew.2 My fellow contemplatives were scientists, but so great was the diversity among us that we did not even seem to have a common profession. By and large we were mainly strangers, although here and there was a friend or acquaintance. The Philosophers came first, their priority resting on a parent's illusion that he best understands his own child. They had the grace to spare us the more depressing parts of the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy. They left out the cycle of Polybius—his gloomy view that no human institution is capable of lasting improvement. There was no mention of "moral terrorism," Kant's term for the awful Protestant doctrine that we not only fail to improve but steadily regress.3 ?Address delivered at the University of North Carolina Convocation in recognition of the Medical School's Centennial, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, February 10, 1979. fDirector, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20014. 1 In constructing a short allegory for purposes ofthe convocation honoring the centenary of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina, I have taken liberties with even my own perceptions of a Nobel Symposium held August 21-25, 1978. The proceedings are to be published. 2Our hosts may have had private motives in seeking participants who did not resemble the cast of a previous Nobel Symposium. After participating in that one, Arthur Koestler wrote an unflattering description of international scientific conferences [I]. 3For further insight into the debate on moral destiny, I recommend Frank E. Manuel's Shapes ofPhilosophical History [2]. Copyright is not claimed for this article. 204 I Donald S. Fredrickson ¦ Stockholm Reflections As scientists tend to be, we were more at home among the eighteenth -century French with optimists like Condorcet and SaintSimon and their fellow "philosophers of perfectability," In order to ride the crest of its potential, implied the Philosophers, science must be propelled by faith that man's salvation and survival are tied more tightly to reason than to any other human quality. But we were next to hear from some of our coreligionists, who believed that science itselfis badly in need ofsalvation and, as they saw it, partly from sins of its own. Affirmative Action struck early. In bitter tones she complained wearily that in her native France half of the people, but only a quarter of the scientists, are women. I wondered what she would say if she knew that among the professionals in American laboratories her sex numbered less than one in five. I rose to express sympathy with her cause ifnot with her proposed solutions. "I believe there are slights and harassments," I said, "of which we males often lack awareness. There is also dismal scarcity of some ethnics among the ranks of scientists. Worst ofall is the length oftime it will take before these faults can be corrected." With a gesture saying she had heard all this before, Affirmative Action exclaimed impatiently, "You are patronizing me!" At that, Third World spoke up. "I think he's innocent of condescension . As a woman and a black, I have some feeling for this sort of thing." This act of rescue done, Third World went on speaking. Perhaps the thought of being patronized, now aroused, would not lie down again. "In a developing country," she mused, "we sometimes wonder if we...