Maryland Marine Notes: March-April 2000 Sidebar

Volume 18, Number 2 • March-April 2000

Science and Human Choices

By Jack Greer

Philosophers like Mark Sagoff of the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs point out that tough environmental decisions require more than scientific knowledge. They also require an understanding of the historical, the ethical, the aesthetic. Sagoff, for example, argues that science is often not helpful in determining how we should understand the importance of a place. In a debate such as the one surrounding the dis posal of dredged material in the Chesapeake Bay, Sagoff holds that the final decision will be made by "those who care."

While researchers such as Walter Boynton and Tom Miller of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are not likely to go as far as Sagoff, they do agree that science alone cannot shape decisionmaking, nor do they feel that science should be used to avoid tough societal choices.

Consider, for example, a simple allegory. Imagine that visitors to Walden Pond received a questionnaire asking whether or not they supported the dumping of some unknown substance into the pond. Suppose, further, that the questionnaire included a paragraph assuring that the material in question had been tested by a panel of distinguished scientists and that it was proven to be perfectly safe.

Chances are that many of these hypothetical visitors would say, "No" to the dumping.

Why? Because they mistrust the science? Or because other forces are at play? Walden Pond was, of course, the residence of Henry David Thoreau. It evokes a sense of American history and literature. Perhaps these imaginary visitors would oppose dumping anything into Walden Pond because the place means something to them, because it stands for something they care about. Perhaps the answers they give are not based on science at all because they do not see the question as a scientific one.

Although this simple analogy cannot compare with the complexity of the dredging issue facing the Chesapeake Bay, could there be similar forces at play? If so, public criticisms of scientific input may be misplaced, and challenges to scientific accuracy misdirected. It may not be the science that concerns those who have vehemently opposed the open water dumping of dredge material, for example, but rather some judgment based on aesthetics or even ethics. Perhaps they feel an estuary that has already received so many environmental insults, so many tons of sediment and nutrients, should be kept free of any additional dumping, and that sediments removed and placed on land are simply being returned to their place of origin – where the clearing of the landscape likely encouraged their eroding into the Bay in the first place. Of course upland disposal has its own problems, and may be more costly. The societal question then would be, "Who pays?"

Regardless of the motivations that guide public perception, ignorance will be no excuse for poor decisionmaking. Intelligent choices will continue to require the best science and most probing analyses we can bring to bear. As E. O. Wilson writes in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, biology must be joined with ethics if we are to shape wise environmental policies. This does not mean a softening of the sciences. Wilson reminds us that "no intellectual vision is more important and daunting than that of objective truth based on scientific understanding."

But while we work hard to gather objective truth, we must take account of other social, ethic and aesthetic truths as well. Wise environmental policy may ultimately depend not so much on an "us versus them" debate as on our ability to have a conversation with all these voices at the table.

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