----- Original Message -----
From: "domfox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 12 January 2002 18:33
Subject: Re: A Responsibility to Awe
| Scientists are not personally outside of morality, but no moral precept
can
| establish in advance what the outcome of a process of scientific enquiry
| should be or is going to be.
I am not so sure on the first. It may be that I am making a more doomy
interpretation of _scientific enquiry_ than I should
When I am king of the world I shall decree that no process of scientific
enquiry shall result in announcements of new weapons possibilities - and
certainly not their development - and that no process of scientific enquiry
shall be conducted for the purposes of evaluating such possibilities.
Anyone ignoring that shall be put to silence.
I shall seek a scientific curriculum which would encourage scientists to be
extremely coy about pursuing any lines of enquiry which could lead to new
weapons systems (and I amusing that as an example) without doing their best
to warn of the dangers and to obviate those dangers
| Science was under the regime of what is good for us when the people who
got
| to decide what is good for us were the authorities of the catholic church
| and scientists the outcomes of whose investigations were not in
conformance
| with church doctrine were imprisoned and tortured until they recanted.
I thought that's what you might be referring to, but there is a deep
difference between what is good for us and what someone in power says is
good for us.
Science never has been subject to any control for good
| I don't see why it's inevitable that scientific outcomes should be social
| outcomes.
Oh well
L
|