By Heresies Distressed (Pt II)

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

Some days ago I asked the questions - "Is there any area of the human condition which science should not explore and report upon with complete impartiality? Should social considerations have a role in determining what areas science is allowed to investigate, and how the results should be disseminated/used?"

After watching the NOVA special on Darwin, I got to thinking about the impact of Darwin's work. Darwin was portrayed as being worried about a very specific implication of his work. His work brought man and animal into the same sphere (those creatures subject to certain types of natural law), and struck a blow to the idea that Man was created in God's image and therefore fundamentally superior to animals. And while the NOVA special didn't portray this aspect of Darwin's thinking in great detail, it did convey that this was an important concern for Darwin. Perhaps his concerns were more for himself - as he undoubtedly knew that he would be vilified for suggesting something so abhorrent - or perhaps he did spend some time thinking about how the broader social consequences that would come with a wider acceptance of this idea.

Perhaps Darwin was also motivated to share the beauty he found in understand new laws of the universe - "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (q) Perhaps he keenly felt the obligation of a scientist - to measure and report. And he was pressured by the need to publish for priority.

The purpose of this post isn't to pass judgment on Darwin, but rather to get at answers to the questions I was asking. Darwin simply provides a compelling case study with which to attempt to answer those questions. After a week of ruminating on what I had watched, I find myself stuck on this thought... While Darwin gave the world valuable evidence for a valid new scientific perspective, what he (arguably) didn't do was to give man anything that alleviated any form of suffering. (One could even argue (although I won't attempt to) that Darwin's ideas have thus far proved to be a cause of additional suffering.) 'That is not the purpose of science,' you exclaim, and of course you're right. But where does the scientist's responsibility to add to the common knowledge of mankind meet his/her responsibility to enhance the collective good of mankind?

Do scientists simply have an obligation to discover and report? Or should they be asking themselves critical questions, such as... Are people suffering needlessly for lack of this knowledge? Would I want my children to have this knowledge, and why?

Assuming Darwin were free from any perceived need to publish for priority, how would he have argued the answers to these questions with respect to his ideas?

We cannot say that there are no other fundamental challenges awaiting us with respect to what it means to be human. The science journalist quoted in the previous post recently posted about free will. He chooses to reject a common scientific perspective - the idea that free will is an illusion - for the following reasons... "Free will works better than any other single criterion for gauging the vitality of a life, or a society. To me, choices, freely made, are what make life meaningful. Moreover, our faith in free will has social value. It provides us with the metaphysical justification for ethics and morality. It forces us to take responsibility for ourselves rather than consigning our fate to our genes or God." I'm sympathetic to the last point, as I've found acceptance of responsibility for one's own actions to be an important criterion for happiness. Does this mean I think that scientists should not persist in challenging the notion of 'free will'?

It's more accurate to say that I hope that scientists who are working with ideas that challenge fundamental notions about what it means to be human will stop to consider the broader social implications of their research, and perhaps even to answer the questions posed above, before proceeding to publish for a lay audience. Not because they are not correct to enhance our collective knowledge, but because we have collectively done such a poor job of receiving that knowledge. (More on that point in a future post.)