Volume 13, Numbers 4 • September-October 1995

Science and Ethics

By Jack Greer

Call them left brain, right brain. Detail people versus big picture people. Verbal or visual. Whatever you call them, those in the sciences and those in the humanities often see the world -- come at the world -- in different ways.

Professor Ken Tenore, Director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL), one of the laboratories of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, is trying very hard to bridge that gap, and he is doing so with a sense of mission.

"So many science students have the most minimal training in the humanities," Tenore says, noting that the kind of well-rounded training that scientists received just decades ago has been missing in the high-tech, narrow focus of current science curriculum. "We have lost a generation," he says.

Concerned that a generation of scientists have now been trained without the benefit of a study of ethics, of values, Tenore is determined to do something about this -- and he has. Since 1993, with.support from the National Science Foundation, Tenore has overseen the development of a program named "The Solomon's House Project."

That project helped to bring Chris McClellan, a graduate student from Notre Dame University, to CBL this summer to learn more about the day-to-day endeavors of working environmental scientists, and to teach a course to science graduate students in the theories and values of science. "Solomon's House," explains McClellan, refers to more than the location of the laboratory. (CBL is in Solomons Island, Maryland.) It recalls the community of scientists described by the English philosopher Francis Bacon, a community that supplied uncorrupted truth to the inhabitants of Bacon's Utopia, New Atlantis.

Truth, especially of the uncorrupted variety, is hard to come by, notes McClellan, referring to the increasing complexity of the relationship between science and society. "Bacon envisioned a world where" science would not be corrupted by the influences of society," McClellan says, "but now we understand that this division [between science and society] is a false one."

"There is still a 'Solomon's House,"' says Tenore, in the goals, values and ethics of the scientific community, though the relationship between science and society is interwoven and complex.

Truth, Science and Ethics

"The life of a good truth," the playwright Ibsen once said, "is about ten years."

The conscientious science student may argue that some truths have held out much longer than that, though scientists also know that this year's unpopular hypothesis may turn out to be next year's accepted truth. In a recent article about science and the Chesapeake Bay, Don Boesch, President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, referred to a "history of heresies," scientific findings that went against the grain of generally accepted principles, until they were finally incorporated into the public mind. He cites the recognition of nitrogen's importance in the Bay's nutrient budget -- once questioned but now accepted -- as an example.

How long does it take for such a truth to find its way into the public consciousness? According to Boesch, about ten years.

At the University of Notre Dame, Chris Hamlin and Philip Sloan study the history and philosophy of science, and Hamlin heads an undergraduate program in Science, Technology and Values. They both traveled to CBL during the summer to work with Ken Tenore on expanding the "Solomons House Project" to other environmental laboratories.

"We have been fortunate to have this connection," Sloan says, noting that the connection between those who study the philosophy of science and those who practice the craft of science is not always strong. Sloan notes that the "integration" of scientists and philosophers "will not be easy."

"For one thing," Sloan says, "science is not a reflective discipline." While philosophers may spend endless hours questioning basic principles, scientists tend to focus on observations -- and collecting data.

Grant Gross, head of the Chesapeake Research Consortium, feels that much of the current approach to the ocean sciences grew out of funding patterns during and following the World Wars, the majority of which came from military sources with particular needs -- such as mapping the ocean floor.

In fact, according to Grant Gross, scientists probably spend too much time gathering data, and not enough time thinking about what they mean. "The universities have failed us in this regard as well," he says. Both Tenore and Gross agree that most funding agencies want to see the gathering of new data, not the processing of old data. Says Gross, "We tend to fund 'exploration' rather than 'science.'"

The Notre Dame Connection

Ken Tenore's interest in ethics and science led him to spend his sabbatical at Notre Dame as a visiting scholar in the Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values, where he pursued further study in the philosophy of science. "Many of the terms we scientists use to describe such concepts as hypotheses come from the tradition of logical positivism -- about which we scientists know very little," he says.

Tenore points out that there are elements of science -- so-called "cognitive values," such as elegance, simplicity and grace -- that are just as central to how science works as the scientific method. He feels that marine laboratories, with their transdisciplinary approaches to problems, provide a natural place for an academic melding of science and philosophy to blossom.

At the same time, Philip Sloan cautions against superficial integrations. "A number of years ago we decided as a society that we had to 'humanize' doctors," he says. The result was not always meaningful -- at times required courses in the humanities only presented prospective doctors with what he calls a "veneer of humanism." The course at CBL taught last summer by Chris McClellan works hard at going beyond the veneer of humanism. Students studied not only the logical underpinnings of science, but also science's social context and the issue of ethics, including fraud and plagiarism. They ended with an examination of environmental ethics.

"We plan to continue this effort into the future," says Tenore. If courses like these are successful, the next generation of researchers should know much more about ethics and philosophy -- and according to Tenore they should make much better scientists.

Top of Page

		Contents of this issue	Other Issues