The Responsibility of the Scientist

Abstract

In the foregoing studies it has been shown from various points of view that freedom forms part of the very essence of science and knowledge. Freedom, however, does not mean arbitrariness. Freedom means that the way science is bound can never come from outside but that each science must itself determine to what it shall be bound. It can and may only bind itself to that which it has determined shall bind it, namely its object and its method. That is to say that whatever any branch of science considers true is on the one hand determined by the given facts and on the other by the way in which man can best encompass these facts in a homogeneous system of concepts.