200 SCIENTIST 



that this is a better sort of world than one which is com- 

 pletely filled with people all Uving in multistoried buildings 

 and eating synthetic food. He feels very strongly, however, 

 that science should be listened to as it tries to describe 

 what the world will be like if birth rates remain high while 

 death rates continue to drop. Once he is convinced that 

 people understand what the issues are, he should be con- 

 tent to let society decide the value questions involved. But 

 he cannot agree that devotion to a traditional moral value 

 excuses modem men from considering the facts. He finds 

 it particularly difficult to decide value questions on the 

 basis of Aristotle's or anybody else's views as to what nature 

 intends. As we found in Chapter 2, the idea of intent or 

 final cause has proved very unhelpful in understanding the 

 movements of falling bodies and the dynamics of the solar 

 system, and there seems little hope that it will be any better 

 in understanding the reproductive instinct. 



Finally, we come to what may be the most surprising 

 aspect of the relationship between science and moral values. 

 Far from being uninterested in and detached from such 

 matters, science has called attention to the need for en- 

 larging the scope of morals. In a sense, science has in- 

 vented new sins to worry about. It turns out that, for a 

 considerable period of time, people have been doing a 

 number of things that contribute to the discomfort and 

 sometimes to the death of other people without being 

 very clearly aware of it. The growth of modern statistical 

 methods has made it possible to describe the results of 

 such acts with considerable accuracy. 



Professor C. H. Waddington, writing as early as 1941, 

 put the matter in this way: "The adoption of methods of 

 thought which are commonplaces in science would bring 

 before the bar of ethical judgment whole groups of phe- 

 nomena which do not appear there now. For instance. 



