Science and Value

PERSPECTIVES IM BIOLOGT AND MEDICINE Volume 18 · Number 3 · Spring 1975 SCIENCE AND VALUE* MAURICE B. VISSCHERÎ "Science is ignorant ofvalues,"said Jacques Monod, Nobel laureate, in his leçon inaugurale as professor in the Collège de France in 1967 [1, p. 21]. Monod entitled his lecture "From Biology to Ethics," and it is obvious that his humanistic philosophy caused him to be troubled by the implications of his own clear logic. He sees in the scientific research enterprise a form of asceticism which he calls an "ethic of knowledge," with its intellectual rigorousness and insatiable curiosity constituting a kind of morality in itself. But he goes on to say, "We are faced, then, with the following contradiction: modern societies dwell within, affirm, still teach—without for that matter believing in them—value-systems whose bases are in ruins; and at the same time these societies, whose fabric is being woven by science, owe their emergence to the adoption (most often implicit and by a very few men) of this ethic of knowledge they know nothing of. There is the very root of contemporary alienation." There is indeed a philosophic problem involved in recognizing what validity there may be in the oft-quoted truism that science is amoral while still admitting the obvious fact that the results of the scientific enterprise are of enormous importance, either positive or negative, to the welfare of humanity. The further important point is not that science in the abstract is amoral, but rather that the scientist in the flesh cannot escape from the problem of valuejudgments in his or her own behavior. To do Monod justice, it should be said that, although he ended his discourse with the modest and self-deprecating conclusion "To the men of today what ideal is there to propose, what ideal above and beyond themselves, if not the reconquest, through knowledge of the nullity of which they themselves have been the first discoverers?" he nevertheless sees for the scientist and for all men, as men, a moral imperative to»Supported in part by the Louis VV. and Maud Hill Family Foundation. tRegents' and Distinguished Service Professor of Physiology Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55414. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1975 I 299 accept and promote an ethic of "scorn for violence" and of support for personal and political liberty. He cannot be faulted as to his zeal for a humanistic code of practical ethics. However, I think that there are important elements missing in his treatment of the role of science in the problem of values in human society. The use to which knowledge is put immediately involves moral issues. Furthermore, a rational value judgment concerning any kind of action requires that there be sound factual knowledge of the immediate and remote consequences of any particular courses of action as compared with other possible courses. A pioneer in thought about the scientific study of values, the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn said categorically, "We can bring scientific method and outlook to bear upon value problems" [2, p. 233]. The behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner [3] has written extensively on the theme that the future of human society may well depend upon learning the survival value of various cultural practices through scientific study. He and many others believe that the culture most likely to survive is that in which the methods ofscience are most effectively applied to the problems of human behavior. Philosophically, one can distinguish between ultimate goals, or intrinsic values, and instrumental values, which deal with ways to achieve ultimate goals. Without much doubt, ultimate goals often involve presuppositions in which premises are clouded in childhood experiences and in which logic from factual knowledge plays a submerged role, if any. However, even in such visceral questions as those related to racial equality, personal dignity, and opportunity for all men, in other words, civil rights and civil liberties, there is a place for scientific information in the judgmental process. Even in the most basic of presuppositions, prejudice need not be the sole support of a position. It is granted that deep-seated psychological needs do' frequently determine basic value judgments, but it can certainly be argued that the...