A recent reading of a book with the above title by the late Sir Peter Medawar has suggested certain reflections on the subject of science and how we are to conceive of its role in society. Since what is regarded as science is, in our society, possessed of an infallibility that would make certain popes of last century green with envy, every claim to scientific authority ought to withstand the most withering cross-examination or it is likely to assume a dangerous incontrovertibility.
The great suffering and mental anguish caused in this century by reorganizations of whole societies along allegedly scientific lines ought to suffice as reasons for considering the degree of sovereignty science should be allowed to claim over the ordering of society.
To take a trivial example of that which on a more important scale becomes harmful, the publication of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care ought to make us ask, not only whether his conclusions are right, but whether it is a productive endeavour to "scientize" the raising of one's children at all.
Or consider those people who adopt a narrowly scientific approach to their physical state. Many of us at Dartmouth will recognize a category of persons who have taken to a regimen or diet grimly; who will sacrifice all the good things of the pantry and larder for those few years they hope to tack on to their lives; or those who take no real pleasure in exercise, yet will pursue the most tedious activities faithfully for their hour or two daily, and nightly lay conscientious cheek on pillow, certain that they have discharged a vital duty.
They may be sorely afflicted with ennui, but always in the back of their minds that awful scientific imperative reassures them that the "opportunity cost," in economic terms, has been worth it. There seems something a little crabbed and a little withered and not a little sordid about the tenor of these peoples' lives, at least respecting their preoccupation with corpus sanus.
One wonders whether such persons have reflected carefully on what science actually "tells us" concerning human health. Science can only report; it cannot recommend. The difference is comparable to that distinguishing diagnosis from prescription. It cannot tell us, for instance, whether it might be preferable to live fivescore years in the manner of Walter Mitty or three-and-thirty as did Alexander the Great. Many would choose the latter's mode of life hands down, and be quite willing to sacrifice a few miserable centenarian years to enjoy the world and its attendant pleasures fully while young. To these, science can say nothing, because it measures achievement only in years lived, and cares nothing as to their quality. There have been a great many other areas of society which have fallen prey to the urge to treat "objectively," and "scientifically," where a sustained defense of this approach has not been thought necessary.
The most important example in this century, of course, is the Freudian world-view, one could almost say mythos, which has been able to wreak such havoc in the thought patterns of Western society in large part because Freud's doctrines were long assigned the ponderous weight of scientific authority.
Similarly, regarding fleshly morals, there has arisen recently a vague sentiment that the better understanding of human physiology attained in this century makes necessary a change in moral tenets. It does not, in fact, for the questions to be answered are moral, not scientific, and therefore until the human race's nature alters fundamentally its mores need not be susceptible to modification over time. But still, we have managed to convince ourselves that science requires the "New Morality" (or as Lord Shawcross called it, the old immorality).
If we concede that medical science is an area which really has been one of constant and incontestable progress, it will be understood that Medawar, with his background in immunology, rejects the above negative conclusions. But of the rest of science one might say, to coin an epigram, it proceeds; it does not progress. Some will exclaim that medical progress is inseparable from progress in other fields; the development of von Roentgen's X-ray, say, was impossible before an advanced physics.
It can only be answered that occasional exceptions do not render the generalization false. Most scientific developments in this century have been employed for as many crimes against humanity as beneficial activities. They are utterly amoral, as the use of chemical or nuclear weapons has demonstrated. A smoothly functioning society must learn to combine the blessings of science with an appreciation of its limits.
The void left by those limits should be filled with a permeating sense of morality and rectitude -- a sense which must, in the final analysis, be ever-so-slightly irrational, and make miniature leaps of faith now and again, but is in those respects appropriately and beautifully human.
