Abstract
Among philosophers of science nearly a century ago the dominant attitude was that (in Carnap’s words) philosophy of science was, “like science itself, neutral with respect to practical aims, whether they are moral aims for the individual, or political aims for a society.” The dominant attitude today is not much different: our aim is still to articulate scientific rationality, and our understanding of that rationality still excludes the moral and political. I contrast this with the growing entanglements within the sciences of the ethical and the epistemic and I suggest ways in which philosophers of science can usefully respond.
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Notes
- 1.
Global warming formed a particularly painful example. During the last decade of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first the U.S. spent upwards of $25 billion on global climate system research as a basis for creating appropriate climate policy, but it has yet to take any meaningful action on such policy (Sarewitz, 2006). The problem, meanwhile, keeps getting worse.
- 2.
For example, the American Psychological Association’s “Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct” has been revised nine times since 1953. See American Psychological Association (2002).
- 3.
Against the charge – cf., e.g., Franzen et al. (2007) – that everyone already knows what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate scientific conduct it must be noted that everyone is learning this neither from the generally vague ethics codes now available nor from professors and mentors and coworkers who, according to the Acadia study previously mentioned (Swazey et al., 1993) as well as more recent studies (e.g., Martinson et al., 2005), are frequently poor models of appropriate scientific conduct. Note, also, that the category systems of misconduct used by these studies are themselves contested (see, e.g., Wadman, 2005). And when we remember that “appropriate scientific conduct” covers much more than non-fraudulent scientific conduct – covers, e.g., research activities genuinely beneficial to society – the need for adequate ethics codes to counteract what everyone learns from prevailing practices becomes even more apparent. Small wonder that “The Toronto Resolution” (see Faucett, 1993) calls for adequate ethics codes to be “widely disseminated through the school and university curricula, to educate rising generations, as well as practicing scientists and scholars, about their emerging responsibilities.”
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- 5.
The human case cropped up, however. Thus, for example, when Hermann Muller called attention to “the fascist race and class implications of Lamarckism, since if true it would imply the genetic inferiority, at present, of peoples and classes that had lived under conditions giving less opportunity for mental and physical development,” Yakovlev replied that “the genes of man had been changed by the environment of civilization and therefore primitive races existing today have inferior genes. But … about three generations of socialism will so change the genes as to make all races equal. Just better the conditions and you better the genes” (Hermann Muller, in a letter to Julian Huxley, as quoted by Roll-Hansen, 2005, 203, 214).
- 6.
Even Roll-Hansen, 2005, who takes Graham as well as other historians to task for at times insufficiently recognizing “the strength of valid scientific support for parts of Lysenko’s work” (293) and aims, instead, to give a more balanced perspective on Lysenko, clearly acknowledges in the end Lysenko’s “unscientific methods of experimenting and arguing” (295). Lewontin and Levins also provide an especially open-minded and sympathetic portrayal of Lysenko though they still conclude that
In the end, the Lysenkoist revolution was a failure. It did not result in a radical breakthrough in agricultural productivity. Far from overthrowing traditional genetics and creating a new science, it cut short the pioneering work of Soviet genetics and set it back a generation. Its own contribution to contemporary biology was negligible. (Lewontin and Levins, 1976, 33)
- 7.
True, scientists were removed from their positions in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but they tended to be removed because of the nature of their scientific work in the Soviet Union whereas they were removed because of their “race,” irrespective of their scientific work (which was, however, racially characterized – as “Jewish science,” for example), in Nazi Germany. And true, many of the scientists in the Soviet Union were sympathetic to the political directions in which science was being taken by Stalin. But when these scientists became openly critical of the epistemic weaknesses of Lysenko’s science they were imprisoned or executed nonetheless, despite their political sympathies.
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Kourany, J.A. (2011). Integrating the Ethical into Scientific Rationality. In: Carrier, M., Nordmann, A. (eds) Science in the Context of Application. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 274. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_22
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