Scientific Growth and Moral Enlightenment
For many who ponder the future, an increasingly critical question is: how can a society grow with science and technology without being devoured by them? Like most important questions it is far too complex to have a single all-embracing answer, and far too pervasive for cven partial answers to have a general or widespread applicability. Still, supplying even partial or local answers, and appreciating those that are suggested, requires an understanding of some of the basic issues involved in the growth process. There is no arguing the proposit'ion that science and technology havc improved the quality of life in the past and can be expected to offer many opportunities for improvement in the future. Clearly, the prudent use of ideas and products from scientific research and engineering have virtually ended the jungle struggle for existence in at least the developed countries of the world. Clearly also, improved health care, adequate supplies of safe water and food, of energy, clothing and materials for shelter, transportation and communication, as well as durable environmental safeguards are possible only if science continues to work toward these goals. Yet it is becoming apparent that we not only can but probably already have accepted more from science than we can wisely and safely use. And what is worse perhaps, that we may have become too dependent on science-even addicted to it. Addicted, that is, to accepting uncritically not only its work-saving and ease-giving new products, hut its solutions to many of our difficult problems. Solutions that in retrospect we often wish we had scmtinized more carefully. The problem of what and how much of the new knowledge and products from science and technology can and should he utilized by society is now being addressed by those who advocate technology assessment, hut their task is complicated by several drawbacks, most important of which is the fact that it is simply impossible to anticipate or to eliminate all of the new problems created by solving existing problems. We constantly see examples of this. Thus, better health care and more abundant food leads to larger populations; the pill creates danger for certain women; nuclear power reactors may help solve the energy crisis, hut they also may present new difficulties in heat dissipa, tion and public safety. It is important for all to realize that science seldom offersthe correct or ideal solution to a problem. In most cases it offersonly options, and the choice of one option over another can be justified only by the preponderance of good effects over bad. Many still have to be persuaded that there is no basically good science that can give us only happy solutions, no morally-just science that can make man's hard decisions for him; no messianic science that can save us from ourselves in the end. Yet, bccause developments in science have led to altentd moral codes in the past and can be expected to
Ieditorially do so in the future, man must learn to deal with a force that continuously compels him to reexamine and often to alter his values and his culture, but which seldom provides corresponding moral enlightenment. The moral enlightenment that science does provide most often is insufficient to resolve the moral dilemma i t creates in the process. For examplc, in showing that birth (and population) control are not only possible, but an ecological imperative, science has crcated a nasty moral dilemma for those whose moral code forbids birth control. Similar dilemmas are created by organ transplants, machines, and medication that can prolong life; by theories of evolution; by prospects for genetic control and mind and behavior manipulation; and by dozens of other new developments in the natural and social sciences. Somewhere, somehow man must find those wellsprings of moral enlightenment that will help him decide not only what he can safely accept from science and what he must leave alone, hut also how and when to modify his moral code to accommodate wisely to radical new knowledge and situations. It is unlikely that these wellsprings will be found by chance or tapped by ignorance. History, philosophy, and religion are the best hope, but even here the form too often is confused a i t h the substance. It is said that the only conclusion from history more profound than the necessity for moral codes is the universality of their substance; and that the only lesson of history more fundamental than the indomitability of man's spirit is the ruthlessness of his greed. Biology teaches and history verifies that life is competition and selection; men are judged and societies flourish by their ability to produce and to adapt. Freedom and equality are sworn and eternal enemies that compete in the souls of all good men, building character, defining justice, stimulating social improvement. Conscience follom the court order more often than it follom the heart's entreaty; yet there is no significant example in history, hefore our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without religion. No man and no society are molded once and for all at any time during their existence, and, despite the absence of evidence that human nature has improved, it is clear that throughout history the average man has continued to look for and find ways to increase his control over the conditions of his life. The quest for dignity prevails, ennobling as it liberates. Since these themes, and a few others, appear to emerge repeatedly from societies and civilizations where man has started anew, there is reason to hope that they may have as their source the very wellsprings we seek, and that from them a civilization that asnires to realize the highest potential in man can synthesize the viablc moral code needed to maintain its stability and to encourage and accommodate to its creativity. WTL Volume 49, Number 72, December 7 972
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