The Unnatural Nature of Science Read online

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  Moral and Immoral Science

  Many people perceive the ethical and social implications of science as a major issue. This underpins much of the hostility that is felt towards science in some quarters. For example, nuclear weapons and genetic engineering arouse considerable anxiety and lead to questions about the wisdom of encouraging scientific investigation in all fields and about whether scientists take sufficient responsibility for their work. Scientists are seen as meddling with nature, and there is a widespread feeling that scientists are so blinkered by their research and so motivated to make new discoveries that any experiment that can be done will be done, no matter what its implications. The image of scientists as so many Dr Frankensteins looms large. Newspapers repeatedly print stories with headlines warning against the dangers of genetic engineering and the human genome project, coupled with the cliché of ‘scientists playing at God’. Of course these anxieties coexist with the hope that science will provide the solution to major illnesses such as cancer and heart disease and to genetic disabilities like cystic fibrosis.

  Some of these anxieties have an ancient history and are linked to the idea that knowledge is dangerous. Prometheus was punished for bringing knowledge to the world, and Faust for wanting it too much. Lest one thinks that the biblical tree of knowledge, for the tasting of the fruit of which man was expelled from Eden, was only about the knowledge of good and evil, Milton’s version in Paradise Lost makes the issue clear. The serpent addresses the tree as ‘Mother of Science’ and Adam tells the Archangel Raphael that, while his thirst for knowledge has been largely satisfied by what Raphael has told him about the Creation, some doubts do remain. Raphael’s response is rather patronizing: he doesn’t blame Adam for asking, but

  … the Great Architect

  Did wisely to conceal and not divulge

  His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought

  Rather admire.

  God is, he says, rather amused by their ‘quaint opinions’. What, Raphael asks, does it matter if the sun be the centre of the world? His advice is: ‘Solicit not thy thoughts with matters and … Be lowly wise. Think only what concerns thee and thy being.’ In Francis Bacon’s time it was perceived that ‘knowledge puffeth up’, and it has even been suggested that Francis Bacon’s task, and main achievement, was to show that science was not after all Mephistophelean.

  The issues can best be analysed along two main lines. First I will attempt to determine just what responsibilities scientists have: what obligations they have as scientists as distinct from their responsibilities as citizens. My suggested obligations are only that they must inform the public about the possible implications of their work and, particularly where sensitive social issues arise, they must be clear about the reliability of their studies. My other line of analysis is related to the first and necessitates examining to what extent ignorance about the nature of science and its conflation with technology have contributed towards presenting a misleading representation of the role of science. For the applications of science are not necessarily the responsibility of scientists. Moreover, many apparently new ethical issues are in fact old ones that have become confused because they are linked with a science that is strange and new, such as genetic engineering. In order to justify these statements I will first consider some aspects of the development of the atomic bomb, particularly from the viewpoint of one scientist, since it illuminates some of the moral issues involved. Moreover it is a moral tale. Then the history of eugenics will be used as an immoral tale.

  In 1933 The Times quoted the physicist Lord Rutherford, who had just split the atom, as saying that ‘anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of atoms was talking “moonshine”.’ A Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard, was staying at the Imperial Hotel, Bloomsbury, and read the article. He was reminded of H. G. Wells’s The World Set Free, published as long ago as 1914, in which both the development of atomic energy and an atomic bomb are described. To Szilard, pronouncements of experts to the effect that something cannot be done were always irritating. As he later wrote, ‘This sort of set me pondering as I was walking the streets of London, and I remembered I stopped for a red light at the intersection of Southampton Row … I was pondering whether Lord Rutherford might not be proved wrong.’ It was at that instant that the idea of a neutron chain reaction came to him. This was a crucial moment in the history of the atomic bomb. While he could not see at that moment just how one would go about finding an element that would give a chain reaction, or what experiments would be needed, the idea never left him. He was convinced that in certain circumstances it might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction and so liberate energy on an industrial scale, and construct atomic bombs.

  When Szilard took his ideas to British physicists, he found no support. Rutherford virtually threw him out of the office, and another physicist told him he would have no luck with such fantastic ideas in England: perhaps, it was suggested, he should try Russia.

  Nevertheless Szilard stuck to his idea, and in 1934 he applied for a patent which described the laws of a chain reaction. Because of his reading of H. G. Wells, he did not want the patent to become public and possibly used by the Germans, and so he assigned it to what, I would guess, was a rather puzzled British Admiralty. By 1936 his own and others’ experiments had extinguished his faith in the possibility of a chain reaction, and so he wrote to the Admiralty waiving the secrecy on the patent and suggested that it be withdrawn altogether. But in 1938, now living in the USA, he learned that uranium had just the properties that might sustain a chain reaction. He now tried to persuade his physicist colleagues not to speak publicly about the possibility of a chain reaction, as this might give invaluable information to the Germans, who could use it to build an atomic bomb. But the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi would not take him seriously, because he thought the possibility of a chain reaction was still unlikely. Other physicists, like Nils Bohr, could not accept secrecy in physics, as it was completely against the openness of science. Bohr was also not convinced of the likelihood of producing a nuclear explosion. Fermi and Szilard nevertheless hesitated as to whether to publish their own results, which made a chain reaction seem very likely, but they were pre-empted by a publication in Nature which effectively made public the same conclusion.

  Szilard now contacted Einstein and persuaded him to write the famous letter to President Roosevelt which was sent on 2 August 1939: ‘Sir, some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future … This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs …’ Einstein asked the President that some permanent contact be maintained between the administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America and that funds be provided to speed up experimental work. In May 1940, President Roosevelt spoke to the Pan American Scientific Congress in Washington. Germany had just invaded Belgium and Holland. He told them that if the scientists in the free countries would not make weapons to defend their freedom, then freedom would be lost. He assured them that it was not the scientists of the world who would be responsible. In effect he gave the scientists a presidential exoneration for the consequences of any weapons that they would help construct.

  Meanwhile a committee had been set up in Britain to look at the possibility of a chain reaction bomb, and in 1941 it reached the conclusion that it would be possible to make an effective uranium bomb. On 9 October 1941 the British report was taken to Roosevelt and influenced the decision to proceed. It was at this meeting that the policy on the future of the bomb and any future decisions were moved firmly under the President’s control. As Richard Rhodes, from whose book The Making of the Atom Bomb much of this story has been taken, writes:

  From this time on, a scientist could choose to help or not to help build nuclear weapons. That was his only choice. The surrender of any further authority in the mat
ter was the price of admission to what would grow to be a separate, secret state with separate sovereignty linked to the public state through the person and by the sole authority of the President.

  The commitment to build an atomic bomb was made by Roosevelt alone.

  Szilard remained in Chicago while the bomb was being developed at Los Alamos, New Mexico. In March 1945 he began to examine the wisdom of testing bombs and using bombs. It became clear to him that the war against Germany would soon end, and so he began to question himself about the purpose of continuing the development of the bomb, and about how the bomb would be used if the war with Japan had not ended by the time the USA had the first bombs. The initial motivation of getting ahead of the Germans was no longer there. He drafted a memorandum for Roosevelt: he saw little point in approaching anyone else. He again persuaded Einstein to write to the President. Einstein did so, pointing out that the terms of secrecy did not permit Szilard to give him information about the events in question, but he did emphasize Szilard’s concern about the lack of adequate contact between the scientists who were doing the work and the members of the administration who formulated policy.

  Szilard argued that, by preparing to test and use atomic bombs, the United States was moving along a road leading to the destruction of the strong moral position it had hitherto occupied in the world. When, Szilard argued, other countries acquired nuclear weapons, the US military supremacy would be lost and an arms race would begin. He went on to consider the possibility of international control rather than an American monopoly of the atomic bomb.

  Roosevelt died in May 1945, and it was Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, who met with Szilard. He argued that Congress would want results for its $2 billion investment, and that not to test was not an option. Also, the USA’s having a bomb might make the Russians ‘more manageable’. The bomb was inevitably and successfully tested on 15 July. It could be regarded as a triumph of engineering. Many, many scientists and engineers were involved. The technology was amazing, but at heart it was merely a gigantic superstructure that made Szilard’s original idea work.

  Even before the bomb was tested, Szilard was circulating among the scientists working on the bomb a petition to present to Roosevelt’s successor, President Truman. It started, ‘Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future.’ It continued by arguing against the use of the bomb now that there was no danger of the enemy using it against the United States:

  … a nation which set the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale … We, the undersigned, respectfully petition first, that you exercise your power as Commander-in-Chief to rule that the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender …

  Sixty-seven scientists signed the petition, but it never reached the President.

  One of those who refused to sign the petition was Edward Teller, who wrote to Szilard: ‘First of all let me say that I have no hope of clearing my conscience. The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls … Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the people.’

  The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.

  There are several lessons to be learned from this tale. First there is no clear relation between ideas and implementation, between science and technology. Building of the bomb was a technological commitment, and its achievement was based on scientific knowledge. To the very end there was no certainty that it would work as planned. The gap between basic scientific knowledge and application was in this case enormous. The principles were well founded, but their application was a gigantic engineering feat which had little to do with science in the sense that it provided no new understanding of the way in which the natural world works.

  In emphasizing the technology, I do not mean to underplay the science involved. This can be illustrated in relation to the problem as to why the Germans didn’t build the bomb. Werner Heisenberg and other German physicists may have missed some crucial scientific point, which may account for their failure to build an atomic bomb. Thus Heisenberg’s statement, made after the war, that German physicists were spared the decision as to whether or not they should aim at producing atom bombs is as likely to mean that they didn’t know how to as to mean that Hitler showed no interest. After the defeat at Stalingrad a decision was taken not to invest heavily in nuclear weapons but to concentrate on rockets.

  Secondly, the decision to build the bomb was a political and not a scientific decision. It is not uninteresting to speculate what might have been the course of history if Szilard had not persuaded Einstein to write his first letter to Roosevelt. The bomb would probably not have been built during the war – it would have come too late, and building it in peacetime might not have been politically or economically possible. The scientists involved saw a clear demarcation between their responsibility and that of government, which Robert Oppenheimer, who was in charge of building the bomb, made explicit:

  The scientist is not responsible for the laws of nature, but it is the scientist’s job to find out how these laws operate. It is the scientist’s job to find the ways in which these laws can serve the human will. However, it is not the scientist’s responsibility to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be used. That responsibility rests with the American people and their chosen representatives.

  Szilard’s behaviour illustrates a third lesson: one of the most important obligations to emerge from this tale is that of openness, exemplified by his emphasis after the war on telling the public about the implications of scientific knowledge. It is true that Szilard argued for secrecy before the war, but it is also clear that it is not really possible to block the advance of knowledge. In general, all great discoveries made by particular scientists would sooner or later have been made by someone else. It is Szilard’s later emphasis on public involvement, unless national security is threatened, that we should focus on. The necessity for the public to be informed about science and its implications is a major obligation for scientists.

  There is another aspect to the bomb that needs to be put in perspective which shows how the alienation and misunderstanding of science makes it seem more culpable. The number of deaths at Hiroshima from the effects of the bomb was about 200,000 compared with the 100,000 deaths in Tokyo due to firebombing earlier in 1945 and a similar figure for Dresden. These figures must be seen in the light of the 100 million people killed by man-made means this century. About half of these, that is 50 million, were killed by guns or conventional bombs, and the rest by privation such as labour camps, displacements and man-made famine. No one associates these deaths with science, because the technology involved was simple and understandable.

  Pulling a trigger is easy. There was no temptation to blame science for the 50 million deaths from guns or conventional bombs. Certainly these were part of the war machine, but the technology was based on gunpowder, which is more familiar than nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, however, are alienating, because most of us do not understand nuclear physics. While not denying the disastrous potential of nuclear weapons, we should not underestimate this alienation, for I believe it lies at the core of many of the so-called problems about the social responsibility or irresponsibility of science. It leads to confusion between the weapon and crime, particularly since the weapon itself is so mysterious. It thus becomes the duty of all scientists to minimize this alienation whenever possible. Only in this way may it be possible to dissuade people from seeing the creation and use of death machines as the responsibility of scientists. They have in this respect no more responsibility than other citizens. Those who regard the scientists in America who helped develop the atomic bom
b as immoral should consider a scenario in which the scientists had decided not to do so and Germany had in fact been successful. Would they have been satisfied that such a decision should have been taken for them by the scientists?

  Since scientists are providers of knowledge, they have an obligation to report the implications of that knowledge; but the implementation, the application, of that knowledge is a social and political decision which it is not for them to take. In these terms, science is not responsible for misapplication of knowledge. But how, then, can we give credit to science for its positive applications? The answer, I think, is that knowledge, in the scientific sense, is intrinsically good. All understanding of our world is a positive achievement, and science can be applauded for this – even more so when it leads to positive applications ranging from penicillin to power generation. But is all knowledge beautiful and neutral in the sense I have suggested? The story of scientists and eugenics raises some difficult questions.

  In 1883, Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton coined the word ‘eugenics’. It came from the Greek ‘good in birth’ or ‘noble in heredity’. Eugenics was defined as the science of improving the human stock by giving ‘the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable’. For Galton, science and progress were almost inseparable. Men could be improved by scientific methods, in the way that plant breeders improve their stock. Would it not, he wondered, be ‘quite practicable to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations’? The scientific assumptions behind this are explicit: most human attributes are inherited.

  Galton’s views were derived from ideas about natural selection and evolution: ‘The processes of evolution are in constant and ponderous activity, some towards the bad and some towards the good. Our part is to watch for opportunities to intervene by checking the former and giving free play to the latter.’ Not only was talent perceived of as being inherited, so too were pauperism, insanity and any kind of perceived feeble-mindedness. Darwin himself was reported by Wallace to be gloomy about the future of humanity, for he thought that those ‘who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.’