Ethics and Science Need to Shake Hands
Introduction
- Ethics rules all spheres of life, and when it comes to science, there has been a perpetual debate on whether science and ethics should be kept apart or are they inseparable. Many proponents of science such as Giordano Bruno have faced death at the hands of moral proponents in the society due to conflict between these two spheres.
- Ethics are a set of moral principles or a sense of right and wrong that govern a person’s or organization’s behaviour (how a person or organization acts ordinarily), especially during instances of moral dilemmas.
- For the purpose of this essay, science can be understood as a procedure of scientific enquiry, application of scientific discoveries, and overall attitude towards the field of science by those who are practitioners of scientific enquiry.
- Main argument of the essay: As science plays an increasingly active role in the society and our way of life, it cannot remain neutral to ethical considerations and has to face the questions posed by ethics.
Body
Why should science and ethics shake hands?
- Science, and technology in turn, have infiltrated all spheres of our life and therefore it is difficult to ignore ethics.
- As a human society, we need to find ethical ways of using destructive weapons and technology such as the hydrogen bomb, genetic modification, cloning, and drones, which are developed using the principles of science.
- If a scientist does not have moral principles guiding him or her, they can use their scientific knowledge for harming others. Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer has been accused of stealing knowledge of nuclear technology and passing it to the wrong people.
- As science attempts to solve social questions such as infertility, food availability, and water scarcity, it is important to consider ethics. For instance, testing medicines on animals and poor people is questioned by many.
Why science and ethics should be kept separate?
- People have faced life threats and even lost lives when those who claimed monopoly over ethics dictated how scientific enquiry should be carried out. Galileo had to denounce his support to Copernicus’ heliocentric theory under pressure.
- Scientific enquiry and practice can get obstructed due to ethical considerations. Certain religious ethics, for instance, do not allow women to abort or couples to adopt safe sex practices.
- Ethics is itself restricted to time and space, but science is not. The basic principles of science do not change, bur moral principles vary according to cultures and over rime. In such cases, it does not seem logical to bind science by ethics.
- Some may argue that ethics is a personal matter and should not be applied to science and scientific knowledge, which is universal and belongs to the public domain.
- If science is freed altogether from following ethics, it would become difficult for practitioners of science to survive in the society. One of the solutions can be to adopt some universal moral values such as the harm principle, that is, to not do anything that will cause more harm than the benefit it gives.
- Another way out for science can be to develop its own ethical code, which can be followed by the scientific community, instead of letting dynamic ethics control its steady development.
Conclusion
- Ethics and science cannot be totally separated due to the destructive potential of some scientific innovations and the ability of its practitioners to use it against others. There are many instances of researchers and scientists carrying out inhuman experiments.
- At the same time, science cannot be allowed to fall prey to religious fanatics and conservative elements that thwart its progress unnecessarily. History is witness to many such instances wherein the voices of reason were suppressed because of prevailing ethical standards.
- Science is present in every sphere of modern human life; as a result, it is not possible to separate it entirely from ethics. Like every other field in life, science also needs ethics. We can thus bring ethics and science together either by applying some universal principles to scientific enquiry and practice or by creating a global ethical code for the scientific community.
Notes
- Keywords: ethics, science
- This is an age-old debate with barely any new points to be made, but creativity lies in presenting analytical arguments and relevant innovative examples.
- Do not hesitate to refer to sci-fi movies or novels. Though they are not real, they are a hypothetical window into the course of actions humans may take in the future.