Incorporating Moral Responsibility into Science

The remarkable feats of science and technology have uplifted the scientific community to a divine status. Even the grave ecological consequences of unrestrained scientific development could not undermine the sanctity of scientific freedom. Under the conditions of undisputed license the scientific progress increasingly manifests its threatening prospects, such as the ominous potential of genetic manipulation.

Yet, despite the large-scale ecological deterioration and the biotechnological menace of genetic manipulation, the re-evaluation of scientific freedom remains within the insignificant confines of impractical academic debates and fringe opinion articles. It appears that science itself is not immune to the human propensity for dogmatism. The scientific establishment, which is so naturally identified with open-mindedness, paradoxically refuses to consider the mandatory adoption of moral values related to recognition and elimination of malignant potentials enfolded in scientific ventures. The dogmatic manifestations of the scientific establishment arise from a sense of power that rests on the predominance of science and its unparalleled achievements. But history unmistakably demonstrates that every human discipline intoxicated by the sense of power and dedicated to the structure of establishment is bound to degenerate.

A more modest outlook on science is advisable. Science is currently evaluated in terms of the amenities associated with scientific development. But the existential complications and ecological damages incurred by the scientifically induced comforts pose a grave question mark over the durability of such scientific virtues. The most important role of science has proven to be moral rather than technological. Science introduced humankind to the deeper nature of humanity. The scientific age, which provided humanity with unprecedentedly powerful tools, has disclosed that given enough power humankind becomes a menace to itself and its environment.

The scientific mainstream prefers to underrate the adverse effects of scientific development on the quality and viability of human life. Such attitude is responsible for the cataclysmic scale of the international terror threat, which is deploying to resort to all sorts of weaponry developed by technological applications of science. It follows that scientific bigotry ends up as an inevitable collaborator of theocratic fundamentalism through the common link of mass destruction technology.
 

The surge of international terrorism, the deepening ecological maladies and the rise of social and economical violence indicate that humanity may well be past the point of resolution and reform. Nevertheless, following the model of the International Court of Justice, the constitution of an International Commission for Scientific Responsibility is worthwhile. Such non-political commission should mount an educational campaign within the scientific community, which would hopefully assimilate the major role of science in shaping human life and environment. The decline of human society to the current point of emergency as a direct outcome of scientific activity should not be camouflaged any longer.

The moral message ought to make it clear that each individual scientist bears a personal responsibility for the consequences of his/her separate or shared scientific work. The immediate hazards should be urgently tackled by the entire scientific community. However, years of neglect, which allowed the abuse of science, left the scientific ground to the growth of ingrained opposition against any attempt to reform the fossilized conventions of science.

The extensive cooperation among scientists across the globe may constitute a firm foundation for an international forum of scientific responsibility, but the current state of world affairs evokes a moot question as regards the moral depth of such global scientific cooperation. The feasibility that an international forum for scientific responsibility may effectively operate can be regarded as a probe for the human perception of science. It might prove that the scientific common denominator fails to overarch the diversity of political persuasions, cultural backgrounds and personal ambitions.

The course of scientific development is determined by the orthodox guardians of scientific freedom as well as the external pressures exerted by non-scientific interest-driven factors. Under such adverse conditions a shallow attitude within the scientific community towards the overarching value of science and a failure to recognize the moral imperatives of science are prescriptions for the transformation of science into a perilous quest within the realm of the unpredictable.

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Published in Frontier Perspectives, Center for Frontier Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, September 2002.