Tension: The Ethics of Choice

Abstract

I recall that on the wall of the Botanical Garden in Oxford there stands a simple stone plaque with this inscription: Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest. This translates as ‘Without trial or experiment nothing can be sufficiently known’. There may be some here who know the source of the quotation: I will keep my guess for later. I begin with it because the ethics are rooted, as medical practice is rooted, in scientific research. There is no need here to defend scientific research as an ethical pursuit, though there is often need to do so outside. The duty of research stands on the concept of man as rational, social and benevolent, a proposition not overthrown by the all too frequently evident action and behaviour to the contrary. Aristotle wrote in the first sentence of Metaphysics ‘All men by nature desire to know’. These propositions came alive again in western Europe in the 13th century when translators from the Arabic brought knowledge of Greek science, and Aristotle’s natural philosophy, back into Europe after a thousand years or more of absence.