Few echoes of the controversy over the nature of science will be found in this article. An earlier generation agonized over the question: “Does scientific inquiry tell us anything about values and moral obligations?” and reached a very skeptical conclusion. Fifteen years ago, studies of the language and logic of science appeared to many scientists and philosophers to have settled the question: You could not logically leap from assertions about what is and what is possible to assertions about what ought to be. Then came war and the Manhattan project, and many who had accepted the divorce of science and ethics were frightened into reconsidering the matter. If science had nothing to say about values and duties, so much the worse for science. There ought to be a connection between science and ethics. Whatever the semantic difficulties, something needed to be done to prevent a suicidal use of scientific knowledge....
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1 November 2004
November 01 2004
From the Archives: The Scientist’s Code of Ethics
The fact that a scientist spends a good deal of his time in studies from which he tries to exclude moral judgments, the author of this article points out, does not mean that the scientist and his activity will not be subject to moral judgment.
Physics Today 57 (11), 55–60 (2004);