42 9 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



independent of national boundaries, and races, and creeds and can flourish 

 only where there is peace and intellectual freedom." This position is clearly 

 in conflict with the cyclical psychosis exhibited by Hojjio sapiens, in mass, 

 throughout the ages. But whether there is a conflict of science with the 

 primary interest and ultimate well-being of society is at least an open ques- 

 tion. Only last year an outstanding physicist declared: "Science makes man 

 human." I presume our colleague meant that science tends, or should tend, 

 to make man more human. The possible conflict between science and so- 

 ciety in this statement obviously depends on our conception of what are 

 the desirable human qualities, or behaviors, today and tomorrow. If de- 

 ceit, violence, and war are essential for survival and progress there is a con- 

 flict between science and society, for deceit, violence, and war are the very 

 antithesis of the scientific method. Two years ago a colleague uttered the 

 following dictum: "Here on this continent where science has achieved its 

 greatest application, science is in conflict with society. Science and tech- 

 nology have gone so far that the present social structure is facing its deba- 

 cle. Nowhere else in the world today is science in such militant conflict 

 with the social structure under which science survives." The same author 

 also speaks of the "prostitution of science for war." We have here, clearly, 

 a confusion of science and the scientific method with the uses, largely by 

 a non-scientific society, of the understandings and the gadgets developed 

 by the methods and the applications of science, for satisfactions of the an- 

 cient use of the hand, the teeth, the rock, the stick, and the club in similar 

 drives by our primitive ancestors. 



The services of science to society are, primarily, increased knowledge, 

 understanding, freedom, and power. That such increased knowledge, un- 

 derstanding, and control of the forces of nature are used, not by scientists, 

 but by society, with increasing effectiveness in the continuous and recur- 

 rent drives to satisfy greed, lust, hate, and vanity, will, in my judgment, 

 ultimately prove to be due, not to the inherent nature of the scientific 

 method or of knowledge per se, but to the failure of man, so far, to be ef- 

 fectively conditioned by science and the scientific method. 



It is sometimes asserted that science is amoral if not immoral. The latter 

 may be true, if it is immoral to challenge and destroy taboos and traditions 

 based on ignorance and misunderstanding. But to call the impartial, in- 

 dustrious, and earnest search for new knowledge amoral or immoral con- 

 flicts with my conception of immorality. As I understand it, there is no 

 conflict between the scientific method and our sense of justice, though I 

 admit that the latter stems from a much broader base than science. Indi- 

 vidual scientists may at times, in their ivory towers, express distrust of so- 

 ciety or the common man, as disclosed by the following recent statement 

 from an eminent surgeon: "Whether the public interest (in medical re- 

 search) is something deeper than curiosity, and whether it can be relied 

 on as a potent factor for the common good have not been demonstrated. 



