The Ethical Thinker

"It is the task of the ethical thinker to sustain and strengthen the voice of human conscience, to recognize what is good or what is bad for man, regardless of whether it is good or bad for society at a special period of its evolution... [O]nly if this voice remains alive and uncompromising will the wilderness change into fertile land."

Yes, I'm still thinking about this, and wondering why a science education doesn't better prepare a person to deal with larger ethical dilemmas. Why are we scientists left on our own when it comes to foraging through the wisdom of our ancestors for guidance? How and when in the history of science did it become acceptable (even expected) that a scientist simply does the investigative work, without worrying about what may come of it?

To be sure, a scientist that got too caught up in his larger responsibilities to mankind might not get very much work done. But when so many fields of science now take a person to the very limits of what we think it means to be human, how can a scientist justify maintaining ignorance of or detachment from the larger impact of his or her work? To whom should we leave those concerns? To what extent must a scientist concern himself with how his work will be framed, if not by him, then certainly by those who will talk about it?

Perhaps the best that we can do is to try to take our journey with others of high integrity, to keep questioning ourselves and our motivations, to never assume that our wisdom is superior to that of those around us or who came before us, and to be hopeful but not naive in the face of a realistic awareness of the positive and negative aspects of human potential...