As a physics researcher and aspiring scientist, I carry a latent belief that, when put under the microscope, proves to be more an article of faith than a well-reasoned principle. I am referring to my inclination to view science as an infallible source of progress. When compared to the rhetorical fog that passes for analytical rigor in some humanities departments, and especially when stacked against the anti-intellectual excesses of Darwin-denying religious fundamentalism, science can appear to be the sole human activity that even attempts to cast away our biases. In this glorified construal, science allows us to understand the world as it truly is rather than as we would like it to be, granting us access to realms of knowledge our ancestors never could have dreamed of, from quarks to galaxy clusters and everywhere in between. Yet this vision fails to acknowledge the fundamental fact that scientific and technological progress, though powerful, is amoral. Science grants us a sharpened understanding of the world, but the fruits of that understanding, like the apple plucked from Eden, are not guaranteed to be sweet.
Take, for example, one of the great technological innovations in human history: the rise of agriculture more than ten thousand years ago. At first glance, nothing could seem more beneficial to mankind. No longer did our ancestors have to gather and hunt to survive. Mobile bands of foragers could control the means of their subsistence rather than rely on the vagaries of nature for their next meal. But these vagaries are not nearly as cruel as you might think. As anthropologists in the last century have shown through field research on present-day foragers, bands of hunters and gatherers form stable, healthy and egalitarian communities. They are mobile enough to avoid serious outbreaks of disease and small enough to avoid the hardships that accompany large-scale political and economic organization. In contrast, mechanized agriculture has left us with a ballooning population and an intertwined and interdependent world economy that rewards specialization and enshrines inequality. This is not to say that the industrialized, agricultural world in which we live is not without its benefits. My point is that the innumerable and complicated consequences of agriculture, which have included enormous growth as well as enormous strife, could not have been predicted at its outset.
This is true of most great scientific discoveries. Quantum mechanics, a tremendously successful branch of physics developed by dozens of scientists in the first few decades of the 20th century, offered for the first time a detailed glimpse into the structure of matter at its smallest scales. This detailed understanding of the atom was then used in the 1940s to build a bomb that wiped out thousands of people in minutes. The proliferation of sophisticated electronics in recent decades is a testament to the depth of our knowledge of electricity, magnetism and matter. We have produced a museum of gadgets — televisions, laptops, iPods and smartphones, to name only a few — that have become staples of our modern lives. But our scientific and technological prowess has also given us increasingly refined instruments of death and destruction. Combat drones deployed by the U.S. alone, for instance, have killed thousands — including hundreds of children — with little more than a sole political leader’s go-ahead.
Scientific and technological progress is accelerating, and we are rapidly approaching a brave new world for which we are ethically unprepared. Artificial intelligence, driverless cars, quantum computers and genetic engineering are all on the horizon. Some might even exist within our lifetime. Considering the ethical implications of our advances is therefore more important than ever. While understanding the natural world is a worthy aim in itself, we must not lose sight of the ways in which we apply our understanding. Knowledge can be a blessing and a curse, both a tool for improving lives and a weapon for destroying them. To attain the right balance, our ethics must advance with our science.
