102 COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 



dation, Copernican astronomy. Some two and one-half centuries later, 

 horror of the cosmologic overtones of an ethically blind natural selec- 

 tion produces the furious attack on Darwin's biology. In our own day 

 the ethical factor prompted the So\iet regime to suppress one genetic 

 theory ( and to extirpate its supporters ) in favor of another that was 

 felt to be more readily compatible with the demands imposed by the 

 state philosophy. 



The scientist is not simply the passive victim of external pressures. 

 Ethical considerations enter into the construction of his own cosmol- 

 ogy—and thence into his science. To be sure, he is taught to do his 

 science without regard to such considerations, but this is a counsel 

 of perfection. \A^ill a mechanism of natural selection first commend 

 itself to a scientist who believes that natural phenomena express the 

 development of some mighty ethical purpose? Was the judgment of 

 Russian geneticists wholly unaffected by their acknowledgement of 

 the official philosophy of the state? Einstein's passionate refusal to 

 accept as final the statistical description, furnished by modern quan- 

 tum mechanics, cries an anguished protest against the conception of 

 nature governed by "a god who plays at dice." We smile condescend- 

 ingly at Einstein's attempt to inject into scientific discussion what is 

 transparently an ethical argument. Can we afford the condescension? 

 Is not acceptance of amorality itself an ethical decision? When the 

 quantum physicist most vigorously denies all cosmologic commit- 

 ments and pretensions, has he not already given tacit assent to the 

 Lucretian cosmology— with its blind, purposeless, random tumbling 

 of particles in the void? 



The moral factor. Only rather arbitrarily distinguished from the 

 ethical factor, some moral elements in the climate of opinion act 

 powerfully on science. Consider for example the effect of Calvinist 

 emphasis not on God's love but on God's ivill: the doctrine of pre- 

 destination is perhaps necessarily associated with a cosmologic con- 

 ception of immutable late. A faith in the lawfulness of the universe 

 is surely essential to science, and Needham well inquires: 



Was the state of mind in which an egg-laying cock could be prose- 

 cuted at law necessary in a culture which should later have the prop- 

 erty of producing a Kepler? 



One cannot progress, or even think of progressing, in scientific under- 

 standing if he considers nature ruled by one or more capricious or 



