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The Moral Un-Neutrality of Science
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# : |
11668 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1986 |
4,953 Words |
| Author
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C.P. Snow
Lord Charles P. Snow (1905-1980) was an eminent British
scientist and novelist who gained wide recognition for his now-
classic book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. |
Scientists are the most important occupational group in the world today. At this moment, what they do is of passionate concern to the whole of human society. At this moment, the scientists have little influence on the world effect of what they do. Yet potentially, they can have great influence. The rest of the world, transferring its fears, is frightened of the scientists themselves and tends to think of them as radically different from other men.
As an ex-scientist, if I may call myself so, I know that is nonsense. I have even tried to express in fiction some kinds of scientific temperament and scientific experience. I know well enough that scientists are much like other men. After all, we are all human, even if some of us don't give that appearance. I think I would be prepared to risk a generalization. The scientists I have known, and because of my official life I have known as many as anyone in the world, have been in certain respects just perceptibly more morally admirable than most other groups of intelligent men.
That is a sweeping statement, and I mean it only in a statistical sense. But I think there just a little in it. The moral qualities I admire in scientists are quite simple ones, but I am very suspicious of attempts to over subtilize moral qualities. It is nearly always a sign not of true sophistication but of a specific kind of triviality. So I admire in scientists very simple virtues like courage, truth-telling kindness - in which, judged by the low standards, which the rest of us manage to achieve, the scientists are not deficient. I think on the whole the scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it. I don't know the figures, and I should be curious to have them sorted out, but I am prepared to believe that the proportion of divorces among scientists is slightly but significantly less than that among other groups of similar education and income. I do no apologize for considering that a good thing.
A close friend of mine is a very distinguished scientist. He is also one of the few scientists I know who has lived what we used to call a bohemian life. When we are both younger, he thought he would undertake historical research to see how many great scientists had been as fond of women as he was. I think he would have felt mildly supported if he could have found a precedent. I remember his reporting to me that is researches hadn't had any luck. The really great scientists seemed to vary from a few neutral characters to a large number who were depressingly "normal." The only gleam of comfort was to be found independence the life of Jerome Cardan [a
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