The Cultural Values of Science
The
Cultural Values of Science
Held in Vatican City, 8-11 November 2002
Proposal to
Devote the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Autumn
of the year 2002 to the subject: 'The Cultural Values of Science'.
Prof. Werner
Arber
Research
in the natural sciences has brought mankind many forms of enlightenment with regard to natural
laws. The knowledge which has been acquired through such research has been, and
is still, useful for numerous practical and technological applications which
help to facilitate the daily lives of human beings, including their health and
wealth. Acquired scientific knowledge also 'modulates' our world-view, our
deeper understanding of what nature (both the inanimate and the living world)
is and how it functions. The internalised world-view greatly influences man’s
multiple relations with his environment. This is true both of technological
development and the psychological and sociological aspects of human behaviour.
Indeed, the history of scientific discoveries and their impact on our
world-view and on technological progress is closely bound up with the history
of our civilisation. It could be the aim of the proposed debate at the Plenary
Session to collect case studies and to propose general conclusions on the
obvious cultural values of science in a broad context, both as regards the evolution of our
world-view and the evolution of the opportunities and possibilities of our
lives.
Many
of the contributions could be made by Academicians but the programme might be
complemented by papers and comments given by a few invited speakers who are
experts in the field.
This
debate could represent a contribution of the Academy to the follow-up to the
World Conference on Science held in Budapest in 1999 and more specifically to
the subject of the renewal of the
social contract between science and society. The Academy might possibly aim to
draw up an appropriate statement and a set of recommendations on the basis of the
conclusions reached during this Plenary Session.
____________ . ____________
A Contribution to the Preparations
for the Plenary Session on
'The Cultural Values of
Science',
Following the Discussions of the
Council Meetings
of 18 November 2001 and 17 February
2002.
H.E.
Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo
All anthropologists agree that culture should be seen as a
set of learned ways of behaving and
adapting as opposed to inherited patterns of behaviour or instincts. Aristotle
writes: ‘While the other animals live by impressions and memories, and have but
a small share of experience, the human race lives also by art and reasoning’ (Metaph. 980 b 21). Culture is a typical
characteristic of man who is not rigidly guided by determining laws which
establish him within a given horizon. On the contrary, he is a
self-interpreting animal, a self-made man. He never ceases to express himself
and to give himself a name, and this development, at the centre of which is to
be found man’s freedom, is called ‘culture’, which is different from nature.
When did culture experience the transition to science? If by science we mean
the sophisticated arts of mathematics, aesthetics, architecture, metallurgy,
and the written documents that describe such disciplines and their
philosophical significance, then it is possible to describe ancient Egypt,
China and Greece as the first homes of science. The wonders that Plato and
Aristotle perceived as the starting point for engaging in philosophical thought
are still applicable to the knowledge of children and adults, and to science
itself, only that science makes the subject of these wonders move from the
outside to the inside of things and is dedicated to the discovery of new laws,
at the same time answering old questions and raising new ones.
Perhaps the most important event in European culture during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which indeed gave rise to the modern age,
was the so-called ‘scientific revolution’. The wish to obtain in all the
sciences (astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology) the same kind of rigorous
demonstration that was to be found in mathematics, led the first modern
scientists to apply mathematics to the study of nature. They dedicated
attention to those aspects that could be measured. Given that mathematical
hypotheses did not in themselves ensure a direct correspondence with reality,
these modern scientists tried to verify such hypotheses not only by simple
observations which could at times be deceptive (e.g., the perception that the
earth is stationary) but also by more precise instruments (the telescope, the
microscope, and others, which were constantly being improved), and above all by
experiments, that is to say attempts to reproduce phenomena in more rigorous
and controlled conditions. The synthesis of these two procedures, i.e.
mathematical demonstration applied to nature on the one hand, and
experimentation on the other, was the experimental-mathematical method. Matter,
indeed, because of its quantity, could demonstrate its intelligibility through
mathematical calculations that expressed themselves in relationships of a
formal identity of reality in an abstract way. For example, two cells and two
elephants, because they were each two in number, were the same in their
‘twoness’. But in reality things do not exist equally, not even individuals of
the same species. Therefore, contemporary science affirms the plurality and
differences of physical forces (mass, energy, space, time, nuclear and
sub-nuclear electric charges) and the plurality of life energies (cells,
chromosomes, genes, the genetic code, the teleomatic structure) in living
things. Today, macrophysics and microbiology seem to be moving towards an
awareness that quality is in a dialectic relationship with quantity and vice
versa, although on the physical level they are co-existent.
The
Impact of Modern Science
For this reason, modern science has been one of the most important
factors in the evolution of our civilized world for at least three centuries.
Indeed, it cannot be doubted that scientific knowledge has led to remarkable
innovations that have been of great benefit to humankind. Life expectancy has
increased strikingly, and cures have been discovered for many diseases;
agricultural output has risen significantly in many parts of the world to meet
growing population needs; technological developments and the use of new energy
sources have created the opportunity to free humankind from manual labour; and
technologies based on new methods of communication, information handling and
computation have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges for the
scientific endeavour as well as for society as a whole.
The question whether the values by which ‘improvement’ is measured
should come from outside or inside science (or a combination of both), that is
to say whether they are purely scientific or philosophical, ethical, political,
religious, etc. (or a mixture of the first and some or all of the rest), is a
subject of primary importance in the contemporary debate. The determination of
the character of an action with reference to the predicates of ‘good’, ‘values’
and ‘obligatory’, which represented a radical break with everything that had
gone before, began for the first time in history with the tradition of thought
generated by David Hume. For this tradition, one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from
an ‘is’ and there can be no direct step from one to the other. Put in more contemporary
terminology, no set of descriptive statements can entail an evaluative
statement. Thus Bertrand Russell concluded ‘that, while it is true that science
cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually
decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever
knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what
science cannot discover, mankind cannot know’ (Religion and Science, OUP, 1961, p. 243).
The rejection of ethical neutrality and the problem of the
justifiability and objectivity of value judgements began to manifest
themselves, under the impact of the circumstances of the time, after the end of
the Second World War, when it appeared clear, as Russell was to write, that it
was no longer possible to place on the same level a discussion of the goodness
or otherwise of oysters and a discussion of the rightness or otherwise of
torturing Jews. After what has been termed the capital sin of science, the
atomic bomb, and the arrival of the greenhouse effect (which scientists are the
first to recognise and strongly condemn) the most serious problem to emerge
today is the relationship between the science of nature, in itself perhaps
neutral in relation to values (in Max Weber’s view ‘without values’,
value-neutral and ethically neutral), and its freedom to engage in research,
with all that this implies for the morally and socially relevant responsibility
of science itself. This responsibility, which in the first instance concerns
the technical and economic application of scientific results, also regards the
planning and implementation, linked to both technical and economic assumptions,
of research programmes.
There thus emerges first of all the strictly theoretical question of the
relationship between what is and what ought to be, and the question of the
relationship between ontology, deontology and teleology, or between scientific
rationality and ethical rationality; and secondly, the question of how to
compensate for the powerlessness of the responsibility attributable to
individuals who become effective only within the context of institutions which
themselves should be transformed so that science may do good. As is often
observed, science is one of the very few human activities where errors are
systematically criticised and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we
can say that in science we frequently learn from our mistakes, and why we can
speak clearly and sensibly about making progress. Naturally enough, the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which has studied this subject on many other
previous occasions, cannot but take part in this debate, and this plenary
session seeks to make a contribution to its positive development. The new
horizons generated by globalisation, a process which has acted to reduce the
distances of time and space (in part because of the impact of science itself),
cannot neglect the question of the sustainable development of the whole world
but in particular of developing countries. Let us not tolerate the existence of
a knowledge divide, in addition to an unacceptable economic divide which also
includes a ‘digital divide’. For, unlike the possession of material goods,
knowledge, science, and values, when shared, grow and develop. Aristotle argued
that it was a principal task of the wise man to expound what he knows to others
(Metaph. 982 a 14). Today, in a world
which is increasingly globalised and where communication travels almost at the
speed of light, it is the task, more than ever before, of wise men not only to
engage in research but also to teach, to advise, and to orientate.
The Aims
of the Deliberations of the Plenary Session:
To provide examples of the progress of knowledge acquired by scientists
during the course of the twentieth century in the various scientific
disciplines;
to observe that an expansion in knowledge in itself has an incontestable
value for humankind: universality; an increase in life opportunities; and a
strengthening of the bases of human dignity;
to uphold the wish to share these cultural values with all our fellow
citizens and with all the peoples of the world;
to secure democratic agreement about the principles and values to be
applied to experiments required by research and to the critical assessment of
the consequences of research.
BM&L-May 2003