Hi Group:
Here’s an op-ed piece for today’s NY Times that dramatically
illustrates the moral issues raised by Pirsig in Lila. It seems the
author hasn’t the slightest idea of either the source of the moral
problem or its solution, thus making the last line of his essay not only
true but truly sad.
Platt
The Responsibility of the Scientist
By LEON M. LEDERMAN
In early May, I sat with six other Nobel laureates on the stage of the
magnificent Philadelphia Music Hall, responding to a group of more
than 1,100 finalists in the Intel International Science and
Engineering Fair. Whereas we were well prepared to be asked
about quarks, black holes and organ transplants, we were all
surprised by the students' intense questioning about issues of ethics
and morality: How did scientists feel when they worked on nuclear
weapons? Would our knowledge of genes lead to unethical and
possibly immoral applications like cloning?
I would like to believe that the qualities and conditions that make for
good scientific research would be reflected in scientists' behavior.
Scientists must be curious and free to pursue their curiosity; they
must be skeptical of all authority and function in a democratic
environment where all opinions are received with respect but subject
to experimental test. They must search for truth and endeavor to
embrace it however disagreeable or disappointing it may appear.
They must be passionate in their love and reverence of nature and
of humankind's place in nature.
All of this would seem to select for saintliness, and I believe, without
data, that many scientists do tend toward that end of the human
spectrum. But a depressing number are greedy, unethical, selfish,
egocentric, intolerant, racist, narrow-minded -- all the way to evil.
Scientists cheat, plagiarize, work on poison gases or for tobacco
companies, advise and support tyrants and dictators.
Having acknowledged this, however, I would defend the scientific
community within the context of the more complex issues raised at
the science fair, issues that arise because science is a two-edged
sword.
The Internet, an exemplar of information, education and
entertainment, has a dark side dramatically illustrated in the tragedy
of Littleton, Colo. Advances in inexpensive transportation have given
us automobile exhaust. The progress in our understanding of human
genetics threatens privacy. The explosion of information technology
worsens the gap between rich and poor by favoring those who have
access to it. So it's the scientists who did all this. They prolonged
life, created wealth and turned night into day, but they made nuclear
weapons, drab cities, environmental threats. The late George Brown,
former chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and
Technology and one of science's staunchest friends, once asked
how it was that billions of dollars invested in science had not
ameliorated familiar scourges like poverty, disease, bad schools,
racism, crime and drugs.
Our lame but perhaps time-honored response is that scientific
knowledge is not good or evil; it is enabling. Modern science,
however abstract, is never safe. It can be used to raise mankind to
new heights or literally to destroy the planet. As democratic
government spreads, it is the people and their representatives who
must use the power provided by science. We give you a powerful
engine. You steer the ship.
Scientists do have a responsibility. We must learn to educate for
wisdom and moral quality as we teach science. We must be involved
in clarifying the role of science -- what it can do and what it cannot
do. We must certainly speak out when we spot the unethical or
dangerous application of science. We must transmit a belief in what
I. I. Rabi, one of the wiser of us, has taught: "Wisdom is the
application of knowledge to the benefit of mankind."
I am not at all sure the young science fair participants were
convinced.
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