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The Moral Psychology of Science

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The Roots of Ethics

Part of the book series: The Hastings Center Series in Ethics ((HCSE))

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Abstract

In recent years, one significant component of earlier philosophical discussion—what used to be called “moral psychology”—has fallen into unjustified neglect. Yet, to the extent that motives are of crucial importance to ethics, the philosophical analysis of talk about “motivation” can play a helpful part in showing how values achieve practical expression in actual conduct; and this remains true even where, on the face of it, the activities in question are as “purely intellectual” as those of the natural sciences. So, in the present chapter, I shall be raising questions about the personal engagement in sciences of scientists as human individuals.

“The Reason is, and ought to be, The Slave of the Passions” David Hume

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Notes

  1. The image of “scientific objectivity” of the cutting edge of discovery is used by writers whose views of science may differ quite substantially in other respects, although the general tone of their arguments is inclined to be positivistic. For a useful historical treatment, see Charles C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960).

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  2. This is the burden of the argument in, e.g., Theodore Roszak’s book, Where the Wasteland Ends (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972). See also my discussion of the antiscience movement in the CIBA Symposium, Civilization and Science (Amsterdam and New York: Associated Scientific Publishers, 1972).

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  3. Frank Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), assembles a remarkable body of argument about Newton’s deeper motivation: specifically about the Divine “calling” he felt to decipher the cosmic handiwork.

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  4. For a fuller discussion of this point see my book, Knowing and Acting (New York: Macmillan, 1975), esp. Part II.

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  5. The immediate fate of Mendel’s ideas has been frequently discussed in recent years. For a useful analysis, see E.B. Gasking, “Why Was Mendel’s Work Ignored?”, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20, pp. 60–84, 1959.

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  6. See Alasdair MacIntyre, “Objectivity in Morality and Objectivity in Science,” in this volume.

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  7. Jacques Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1912; reprinted, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964).

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  8. For a fuller discussion, see T. Mischel, Academic Press, ed., Cognitive Psychology and Epistemology (New York: 1969); and C.F. Feldman and S.E. Toulmin “Logic and the Theory of Mind,” Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1975 (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1977).

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  9. See William Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life (New York: Knopf, 1970).

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  10. Compare Lionel Trilling’s interesting series of essays, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).

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  11. For relevant discussions of narcissism, grandiosity, infallibility and associated phenomena in the development of emotional life, see H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1971) and The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977).

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  12. See Gerald Holton, “Scientific Optimism and Societal Concerns,” Hastings Center Report, vol. 5, no. 6, December 1975, pp. 39–47.

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  13. John Ziman, Public Knowledge (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

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© 1981 The Hastings Center

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Toulmin, S. (1981). The Moral Psychology of Science. In: Callahan, D., Engelhardt, H.T. (eds) The Roots of Ethics. The Hastings Center Series in Ethics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3303-6_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3303-6_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-3305-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-3303-6

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