Biology and the New Age: An Evolutionary and Ethical Assessment

BIOLOGY AND THE NEW AGE: AN EVOLUTIONARY AND ETHICAL ASSESSMENT CATHERINE ROBERTS* I.Ideas about Man's Development It should be noted at the outset that the evolutionary and ethical viewpoints to follow are not particularly original but represent an attempt to arrange ancient and modern ideas about man's development in what seems to be their true and proper sequence. For this particular sequence of thought has made it possible to envisage certain potentials of biology and medicine which, if realized, could lead to the emergence ofa new kind of science of life appropriate to the new age we are entering. Everyone is agreed that the life sciences have vast unrealized potentials , but not everyone agrees about those whose realization can best reveal the nature of evolving life and can best serve it. I suggest that, to reach the truth about the most important and desirable potentials of biology, it is necessary to keep constantly in mind that science is a human endeavor inseparable from the basic issues and goals of humanism. In other words, the correct assessment of biological and medical potentiality in terms of highest priorities means pondering such questions as, Who is man? Where is he going? What is human knowledge? What is the ultimate purpose of education? II.University Education, Now and Then One way of dealing with these questions is to contrast our present concepts of knowledge and education with those that prevailed earlier. Now, as then, of course, it is tacitly agreed that university education is a means of providing the individual with knowledge about various aspects This article is based on a lecture delivered, at the invitation of Professor Harry Rubin, at a special seminar held in the Department of Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, November 20, 1980. Some of the ideas discussed in this article have appeared, verbatim et literatim, in earlier publications. ?Address: 1215 Queens Road, Berkeley, California 94708. O 1982 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved 003 1 -5982/82/2502-0283$0 1 .00 176 I Catherine Roberts ¦ Biology and the New Age of reality he did not previously possess—and it has always been a fundamental educational assumption that thereby the individual, in varying degrees, is bettered. Yet the academic degrees that have been conferred at Berkeley, as elsewhere, on educated individuals during the last 50 years rest on a way of looking at knowledge and educational improvement that did not prevail in the nineteenth century. In this century, the tremendous strides made by the life sciences, as well as by physics, chemistry, and engineering , have resulted in vast technological applications of new scientific knowledge that have radically changed life-styles and mental climates all over the earth. In an age ofatom smashing, nuclear weapons and power, instant communication, computerization, planetary research, synthetic products, and the genetic, surgical, and pharmacological treatment and manipulation of living beings, belief in the supremacy of scientific knowledge is widespread. Such impressive achievements have also fostered the equally strong belief that scientific rationality, objectivity, and moral neutrality are the prime conditions of knowing. Accordingly, knowledge acquired scientifically is regarded as the most valid and the most correct apprehension of the nature of cosmic reality. The humanities and the arts, being other kinds of apprehension of the cosmos , do not lend themselves so well to scientific studies. Where the scientific method has encroached on these fields, the results attained have not been nearly so influential in changing the world as has science, and it is generally held that the humanities and the arts are far less educationally significant. While it is still possible to receive an excellent classical or humanistic education at the university, and while Nobel laureates in literature continue to arouse richly deserved enthusiasm, knowledge pertaining to the values and aesthetics of philosophy, theology , literature, music, and art is scarcely considered as valid revelations of the truth at all but rather as dispensable subjective expressions of opinions and feelings about beauty, virtue, and other educational irrelevancies . Today university education is for the most part synonymous with the objective acquisition of the expertise that is necessary to compete successfully in an age of science and technology. Let no one...