Science: Unlovable Sculptor of Culture
To understand modern civilization is to come to mius with certain stern realities. Three of these are: the extentto which the societv is fashioned and sustained hv science and technology; the alienation horn of an unreconciled union of a soulless, pragmatic technology with a shamelessly romanticized humanism; and the hitter irony in finding science-our most powerful and creative cultural force-remote, unsocialized, unloved, and so intent on pursuing its own ends and its own perception of truth that it has become an enigma in the very civilization it made possible. The foundation of modern civilization is the scientifictechnical revolution that began in earnest in 1870. This led to large scale coordination of science and technology or to what has been called an imnerfect but unvrecedentedlv nowerful marriage of knowledge and control. Out of this has come a way of life in which adantation to chanee has renlaced adiustment to stable institutions as the norm. In this society, science has become far more than a source of intellectual insieht into nature and a calling for urhnnr ad!,enrurers u,ho wish t o cxd o r r the frontiers of knt,u,ledec. Scitmrr and trrhnolow have moved far beyond their roles as suppliers of material L&efits for society. Together they have provided a model and an ideology of modernization, and they have fostered new attitudes and patterns of t h o n ~ h tabout realitv and about knowledge. In addition, they have given us a rational basis for the organization of our work, our everyday lives and our eovernance; through research and development they offer some rational choices for the future. Despite their profound influence and usefulness, hoth have tarnished public images. Both stand accused of sins against spirit and flesh-with draining the warmth and beauty from the world, with darkening man's imagination and fouling his nest. But there are differences. Althoueh technoloev -* is everywhere present to ease or aggravate our physical and biological - burdens. to offend the aesthetic and to confound the poet within us, science, for most, exists in a world apart, untouchable and mysterious, imposing its immutable conclusions without favor or mercy, allowing no appeal and offering no com~assion.While claimine to he dealine with thines. - . not people, it sometimes appears to he dealing with people as things. On balance, the misunderstandines between science and society are the more profound; their orygins lie deep in the social matrices of hoth institutions. Yet, science is above all else a humanistic quest-a search by humans using human powers and devices for an understanding of the natural world that will he useful and meaningful to the humans who inhabit that world. How ironic that the expressions of science come in forms from which virtually all the human content has been removed! Why is this so? Is it that the search for whatever truths there are in science requires such detached objectivity that the search itself drains the warmth and beauty from the personality of the scientist? Is it rather that obligation to ohjectivitv comoels the scientist to write so as not onlv to conceal but often &tually to misrepresent the reasoning, imagination, and creativitv that have eone into the work? A hrief look at ~~~~~-~~ a philosophical model of science and a t beliefs and attitudes that come from it mieht be enliehtenine. " The most generally held view of science, known as logical empiricism was developed to full flower by the Vienna Circle,
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a school of positivist philosophers during the 1930s and '40s. This model describes science as a strictlv loeical nrocess in which theories are proposed on the basis ofind;ctivelogic, and are then confirmed or refuted by experimental tests of predictions derived deductively from the theory. When theories fail, new theories-usually with greater explanatory power-are proposed, tested, and adopted or discarded. In this way science proceeds inexorably closer to the truth. Highest value is assigned to detached objectivity in investigating and reporting, but excluded are psvcholo~icaland other humnni\tir factor;. surh ns intuition, im:~yin:~tic.n,a ~ t d ulwnness to n e w idws that clearly are cwnponents of davby-day activity in science. Logical empiricism has fashioned the perceptions of science held by the public and by a great many scientists. One of these is the notion, popular with the public a t large, and evidently among a small group of scientists, that science is the product of a succession of geniuses uninfluenced by their social environment. Another is that science is an automatic nrocess generated by mechanical adherence to a "scientific method." Perhaps the most controversial and intractable is a preception deeply ingrained by training and experience in the psyches of scientists and reinforced hv logical em~iricism.This is the idea that the scientist's ultimate allegiance is to a methodological ethic alone-that there is something immutable or "God-given" in the scientist's detached search for truth. Recently, the logical empiricism view of science has been challenged by several groups of scholars who place major emphasis on human as well as logical processes, and less emphasis on the "scientific method" as a rule that factors out humanistic values and other perceptions of reality. Hopefully this means that in time the uuhlic will recoenize science (and ,~~~~~~ the reluctant scientists will themselves celebrate it) for the deeply human activity it is. Meanwhile, all must recognize that traditions in science and the very nature of many of the systems it studies mitieate aeainst anv maior chanee in the detached objectivity & investigating andSreporti& that have served science and-when viewed in nersnective-societv so well for a t least two centuries. What can be modified are'the scientist's using the methodoloeical ethic as a shield to avoid facing tougherkthical problems a t the science-society interface, and the public's perception that science, and by implication, civilization itself, is a subhuman, uncontrollable, and inexorable life-diminishing force. For hetter or worse, science will remain the dominant cultural force in modern civilization. Yet it is so poorly understood-even among many who profess it-that civilization faces unnecessary perils as a consequence. Misunderstanding and misuse of the methodological ethic have led, for example, to a serious loss in public confidence in science, and to wider and wider acceptance of amorality as a basis for conducting national and personal affairs. We have erred in helieving that values and ethical priorities anoronriate .. . in isolated scientific activity and in scientific modes of thought are equally appropriate in real world humanistic activitv and in humanistic modes of thought. Still, it is not sufficient that science and society merely coexist in a fitful state of amoral tension. A marriage based on mutual understanding and respect must he arranged. For teachers of science, the opportunity here would appear an imperative. WTL ~
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Volume 55, Number 6, June 1978 1 343
