On the Training of Scientists; D. Steward

ON THE TRAINING OF SCIENTISTS AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY tv ::DanielJ(' Stewart IN RECENT YEARS there has been much soul-searching among science people over the possible moral conse quences of their work. The scientist of today is genu inely concerned over the obligations that he-as a sci entist-has to his society, and the effect of his discoveries on his fellows. The term "obligations" necessarily implies a reference to some moral standard. And, up to now, moral stand ards, and their necessary implications, have not been one of the major concerns of empirical scientists. The status of moral values in the universe has been a central question in the thought of those who are in the main stream of our philosophical tradition from Plato on down. Moral values are nonphysical and thus cannot be subject to any quantitative tests, but for the typical scientists of the late nineteenth and early twen tieth centuries, whatever is not reducible to some physi calistic verification basis is unreal. Researchers who adDr. Stewart is an Instructor in the Department of Natural Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

117 118 DANIEL K. STEWART here to a basically materialistic philosophy are consid ered "real" scientists; all others are regarded as making weak-kneed concessions to mysticism. Within this frame of reference, what happens to the scientist who feels some sort of obligation to his society? Any consideration of an obligation necessarily implies the existence of some moral philosophy. But any view which permits moral propositions is, of necessity, in compatible with materialism. Plato makes this distinction unmistakably clear in the dialogue, "The Sophist."l The Eleatic Stranger describes the materialists as "dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, be cause they define being and body as one, and if anyone else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body."

As opposed to this, the idealists are described as "con tending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists" are taken to be "not essence, but generation and motion." The dilemma is quite apparent. The young scientist either accepts the materialistic philosophy of his group; or, sensing the inadequacy of materialism to fully ex plain. nature, he tries to pick up, in a most unscientific 1 Plato, The Dialogues, tr. by B. Jowett. New York: Random House, 1937. Vol. II, pp. 253-254.

TRAINING OF SCIENTISTS AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 119 way, what information he can concerning moral philoso phy. But, if the philosophical climate-of-opinion in sci ence is such as to embrace materialism to the exclusion of any philosophy which makes reference to spiritual realities, then what is the prognosis for those recalcitrant souls of the scientific brotherhood who dare to deviate from the unwritten code to the point of even being concerned about a· scientist's obligations to his society? Obligations, and the moral propositions which they necessarily entail, are defined as meaningless in terms of most present-day philosophies of science. It is thought that these propositions have nothing at all to do with genuine science. They belong instead to the realm of traditional philosophy, or worse yet, to religion, and are subject to all the alleged mysticisms of these pursuits. Pitfalls of Materialism Thus, it might reasonably be thought that those sci entists who accept materialism as the basis for their philosophy of nature would not concern themselves with the sociological implications of their activities. In their system man is just a curious sort of an animal. He has little sense of morality or beauty or justice or goodness.

Man, in this sense, is simply the product of his environ ment. He is but a minute part of a vast physical com plex, the forces of which interact upon each other and him, and he upon them. Holding this view of man, it would clearly be absurd to ask questions regarding good and evil, and we would 120 DANIEL K. STE~ART reasonably conclude that those scientists who accept ma terialism as the basis for their philosophy of nature could not logically be concerned with such things as obligations, morality, and free will. But some scientists of this persuasion have over~ stepped the logic of their position. Certain issues which started out to be merely simple physical accounts of purely biological phenomena, have been extended to cover social and political situations to which they were never intended to apply. One such example is the con cept of population theory as it applies to living organ isms, including man.

This theory boldly assumes. that organisms live in groups, they do not live alone. Plants and animals live together in colonies, flocks, and herds, all of which are mutually dependent upon each other and their environ ment, in such a way as to ultimately produce a relatively stable "ecosystem." Man, of course, is one of these ani mals, even though he might be, as G. G. Simpson con cedes, "among the higher animals." Now, if we consider man as a biological organism, and only that, it seems obvious that he does~ for the most part, live with other people. But this biological concept of population, as applied to humans, is notori ously vague and unscientific in that it fails to answer the questions of how many other people a person has to live with before he will not be living alone, and how much of the time this has to take place? This group theory concept is one of the basic assump tions of that point of view known as "life adjustment"

TRAINING OF SCIENTISTS AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 121 education. Under magic cliches uttered by the progres sive-minded teacher, the students are well indoctrinated with the slogans of "team efforts," "group projects," or "togetherness." Indeed, this may very well be the start ing point for collectivist economic and political theory. In any case, the analysis shows the ambiguity in the po sition of those. scientists who regard themselves as "tough-minded" materialists. Traditional values are os tentatiously booted out the front door while the current shibboleths are illicitly imported through a rear window. An Inadequate Philosophy This leads to a brief consideration of the second horn of our dilemma. The concern is now for those young scientists who have arrived at the conclusion that ma terialism is inadequate Jo fully explain nature. And it would not be hard to identify these people. With spe cific reference to the example above, these would be the John Does who unconsciously feel, or even truly under stand, that the concept of "living in a group," when taken in a strictly biological sense, is contradictory to the concept of the distinctiveness of the individual, his independence, his individual initiative, his moral self.

For John Doe may recognize this contradiction to be directly tied up with the freedom of any individual to choose one goal rather than another. Now this ability to make a choice between two dis tinct alternatives is generally spoken of as "free will." Free will is identified as that which provides man with 122 DANIEL K.. STEWART a feeling of freedom, of giving him a sense of author ship and responsibility, a sense of guilt and ethics, and a sense of knowing that there are norms and standards to be maintained in every human endeavor. This means that the notion of "free will" is opposed to the concept of people existing only as a part of some group. In the collective, the individual no longer counts; his mind must fit in with the group mind; his every thought and action is determined for him in terms of what the group thinks and does. If he deviates from this, he is made to feel ashamed, selfish, and a misfit. And, if this be the "choice" he has, it is clear that, in practice, it amounts to having no choice at all.

A purely materialistic philosophy is, by its very na ture, metaphysically contradictory to, and hence un able to cope with, questions regarding the morality of man, and therefore the obligations of scientists to their society. One implication from this fact is that man, the human being, must be considered in terms of his totality. This "totality" we shall call the whole man. The point is that man is more than just a mechanistic, physical-chemical machine. He is more than just a highly complex, integrated glob of protoplasm. Man also has a spiritual self. This consists of a sense of beauty, of good ness, and moral responsibility. And it is this whole man that scientists must take into consideration on those oc casions when they concern themselves with any obliga tions they might have to their society. This makes it clear why the first horn of the dilemma -stated at the beginning of this paper-ought to be our TRAINING OF SCIENTISTS AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 123 primary concern. The young scientist, more often than not, accepts the prevailing materialistic philosophy of his group, and therefore regards moral questions as ir relevant to "real" science. With this we would have little quarrel provided that this sort of philosophy was explicitly restricted to questions regarding biological phenomena. But, unfortunately, this has not been the case. We have shown, in one instance of several, how this philosophy has been extended to cover social and political phenomena to which it was never intended to apply, and cannot, significantly, be applied.

The implication is before us, then, that the nature of life, in all of its various forms and aspects, cannot be adequately explained solely in terms of chemistry and physics. There is, in fact, a certain vital, directive aspect to all forms of living matter-a certain organiza tional wholeness. In humans this psychical or spiritual aspect of living substance reaches its highest fruition in what is called mind and personality. Need for Moral Philosophy Our suggestion is that, before science is able to con sider such things as obligations and other moral prob lems, a theory of reality is needed that will explain both this nonmaterialistic aspect of all living matter as well as those features explicable by chemistry and physics. And it seems almost anticlimactic to point out that be fore such a synthesis of the moral and material could be made, it would be ne~essary to know something 124 DANIEL K. STEWART about moral philosophy. For it may very well be that, in the final analysis, moral philosophy and science are mutually implicative endeavors.

What this means, in terms of actual practice, is that the young scientist must conscientiously and critically study that very philosophy which he has been indoctri nated against and to which his group is metaphysically opposed. It goes without saying that these are terrific hurdles. But the fact still remains that knowledge of moral philosophy is a necessary prerequisite to any sig nificant synthesis of purely biological substance with those things that this substance is asserted as having, namely, obligations. Materialism, alone, has proven to be inadequate-be cause of its very nature-to handle such questions as morality. But yet, scientists are coming more and more to concern themselves with moral consequences of their behavior. The conclusion of our dilemma would seem to be, therefore, for scientists either to restrict their ex planations to purely physicalistic phenomena, or to openly and frankly, and even perhaps as a part of their academic training, make room for some preparation in traditional philosophy. For it is among the traditional philosophers, such as Plato, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Spinoza, that knowledge concerning morality will most likely be learned. And the only suggestion that one might make is that the prospective scientist approach the study of these men with the same intensity for the truth that he exhibits in his analysis of the facts of empirical science.