Science: A Balanced View
YES, science has brought great benefits to humanity. Despite this, though, we should view these provisions of science in a balanced way. Science is a human effort, and humans are imperfect. Hence, scientific progress has not always been an unmixed blessing.
For example, the automobile has provided fast, convenient transportation. But it has also killed hundreds of thousands in fatal accidents each year, as well as caused pollution and a dangerous depletion of the world’s energy reserves. Similarly, television brings news and entertainment right into our homes. But family members often become addicted to it, and the entertainment presented can be mindless and corrupting.
New chemicals have revolutionized many industries, but they also pollute the water we drink and the air we breathe. Insecticides have greatly increased the crop yield of our farms. They have also killed wildlife and endangered human health. The bad results, as well as the good ones, are the fruit of scientific progress. Should we blame scientists for this?
Who Is to Blame?
It is not always the scientists. Scientific research has made automobiles relatively safe, yet human error, criminal folly and drunkenness continue to cause road accidents. Scientists can reduce pollution, but economic reality often prevents them from doing so. Scientific discoveries made the television set possible, but scientists do not provide the programs that are so often marred by sex, violence and corrupt ideas. Neither is it their fault that people fail to control their viewing habits.
However, we cannot absolve scientists of all the blame for the problems their progress has caused. For example, science has made modern warfare extremely dangerous. Who is to blame? Certainly, those scientists must at least share the blame who spend their time developing more destructive nuclear bombs or better delivery systems for these weapons, or who use their intelligence and training to develop poison gases or materials for horrifying germ warfare.
True, scientists do not start wars. Politicians do. But, as was asked in the London newspaper The Guardian: “With more than half the world’s best scientists and engineers employed in the arms race, how can disarmament begin and a nuclear holocaust be averted?”
The Theories of Science
Balance is also needed when we consider the theories of science. Scientists have formulated some impressive ideas to explain such things as the makeup of matter and the origin of the universe. But it should not be lost sight of that these ideas are truly theories—in some cases backed up by impressive evidence but, nevertheless, always open to revision. No scientific theory is viewed by scientists as the last word on anything.
Professor Pascual Jordan said: “Since my studies I have come to recognize natural science and particularly physics as being, not a finished and closed system of thought, but rather something alive, in the process of continual change.” Another scientist admitted that what science presents “is at best relative truth.” Science essayist Dr. Lewis Thomas said: “I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially ourselves, the stranger life becomes.”
Besides, while examining the history of scientific progress, the researcher is constantly reminded that scientists are human. He will find evidence of bias. The New York Daily News reported that “in the saccharin controversy, for example, it was remarked that all the studies sponsored by the sugar industry found that the artificial sweetener was unsafe, while all the studies sponsored by the diet food industry found nothing wrong with saccharin.”
He will find prejudice, as in the case reported by science writer Isaac Asimov: “The German geologist Alfred Wegener suggested in 1912 that the continents had been drifting slowly for millions of years. He was laughed out of court and died before his idea finally won recognition.” (Science Digest, July 1981) Now Wegener’s idea is accepted doctrine in geology.
The student will also find examples of fraud. An English science magazine ran a survey after a respected scientist was found guilty of deliberate manipulations. Of the 204 scientists who participated, 92 claimed that during their careers they had met up with at least one example of what they called IB (intentional bias), which is a somewhat more polite expression than falsification but means the same.
One example of IB occurred in 1976. German newspapers hailed a fossil find unearthed then as “sensational.” It was thought to be a missing link in a chain of Cephalopoda, and thus a proof of evolution. In 1979 “intentional bias” was exposed, and the fossil was found to be a fake. “But,” sighed a newspaper reporter, “paleontology [the study of fossils] looks back upon a colorful history of falsified fossils.”
Hence, while we should not detract from the great contributions of science to mankind, we should also remember the limitations of science. This is particularly important when we compare it with that other great source of information, the Bible.
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How can an educated man, perhaps with a wife and children, work at designing weapons that kill literally millions of people?
Dr. Helen Caldicott, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, described in a magazine interview how she asked a scientist that same question: “I said, ‘Joe, why do people design these weapons capable of mass destruction?’ He said, ‘Do you know why? It’s terrific fun. You have an insoluble problem—how to put ten warheads on one missile, put a computer in its nose, and have them each land independently on a different city. It’s just terrific fun.’”—U.S. Catholic.
But even if scientists revel in the intellectual challenge and achievement, they deserve a large share of the blame for the tensions and dangers that their expensive “fun” results in for the rest of us.