Where Angels Fear to Tread

First Delivered at the UU Church of Brevard

Sunday, July 19, 2009 

 

I like to begin my sermons by sharing why I chose the subject for one of our worship services. This morning’s topic was inspired by readings assigned by the Humanist Institute for our session on Science: Methods and Uses and a newspaper article I stumbled upon in Florida Today.

My class’ required texts for this session have included a broad range of writers, subjects and genres. We have read books explaining very technical aspects of specific lines of scientific inquiry and general explanations of the different areas our education system designates as science. We have read books concerning the history and philosophy of science, essays promoting scientific endeavors and essays scathingly criticizing science and scientists. Our reading included a Tony-award winning play and a book forecasting what would happen to our world if human beings suddenly no longer inhabited it.

I must admit I am drawn to the general overviews and texts concerning biology and astronomy more so than I am to highly technical explanations and the minutia of nuclear physics. I find myself contemplating the staggering vastness of the universe more easily than the almost unimaginably tiny realm of the quark and vibrating string. It is all I can do to get a grip on the four dimensions I can experience and observe without imagining seven more.

The books I enjoyed the most, I appreciated because they demonstrated what felt to me to be the most practical and personally relevant applications of science—or because they exhibited what I consider to be appropriate reserve with respect to confidence in human pursuit of knowledge.

Although I firmly believe the scientific method is the best tool at our disposal for learning about our world, I have serious reservations concerning the ethics of when, why and how we decide to pursue our natural human curiosity. I also must emphasize that however objective our intentions, science is a human endeavor, and therefore inherently limited to human capabilities and fallibilities.

While much of the scientific literature available to the general public is quite fascinating, and I think it behooves us to keep abreast of developments and educate our children with science textbooks rather than revealed scripture when it comes to understanding our natural world, some of it can be outright disturbing.

The New Humanists: Science at the Edge edited by John Brockman, founder of the website Edge, is one of the required texts for this session. Edge’s tag line in the website logo says, “Edge: To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” The site’s stated mandate is “to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” I have no quibble with this aim, but do notice that non-scientists are essentially restricted to a ring-side seat rather than invited in as participants.

John Brockman provides the introduction to this book with an essay on the New Humanists. The bulk of the book is divided into three parts with essays by a variety of scientists commenting on their particular field. Part I is called Homo Sapiens, Part II is called Machina Sapiens? and Part III is called Evolving Universe. The epilogue contains responses to Brockman’s initial essay on the New Humanists. I was surprised and delighted to find that some of the responses were supportive and other scathingly critical. This should be the nature of good science in my opinion—a willingness to have one’s assertions and findings openly challenged and debated.

The middle section of this collection of essays is the part that disturbed me. Machina Sapiens? That essentially means human machines. I very much dislike the metaphor of machinery being used with respect to organism, or all of creation for that matter. It grounds us in the paradigm of the industrial revolution and is not only woefully out of date, but absurd and possibly dangerous. We are not machines and machines are not humans. I am going to sound horribly conservative, anti-scientific and perhaps a wee bit paranoid, but I have yet to be convinced that if the problem is ultimately solved and we have the ability to create artificial intelligence with human-like or close to human-like abilities that we should do so.  Perhaps I have seen too many movies with cataclysmic results when cyborgs are deployed, but I find the concept of artificial humans positively chilling. Granted, in the movies, the humans always prevail, presumably because we are the ones purchasing the tickets.

Not surprisingly, we can all probably recognize the ongoing metaphor shift from machinery to computing. They overlap right now, but I would not be surprised if the human body ceases functioning as a machine in the next century and becomes fully analogous to a computer. We already have the computational model for the human mind.

I completely understand why the world and its creatures were understood using the analogy or metaphor of a machine when machines were coming into their own. I doubt Rev. William Paley would offer proof of the existence of God by suggesting a Divine Watchmaker in a time prior to the advent of industrialization. Today one wonders if his argument for God would be a Divine Programmer instead of Watchmaker. The Catholic priest and writer, Andrew Greely, has already toyed with such notions in his novel, God Game, several decades ago. I anticipate eagerly a time when we can drop the metaphors however, and appreciate ourselves as organisms interdependent with our environment rather than constructions apart from it.

The essays on artificial intelligence and computing were not as disturbing as some of the information in The World Without Us, particularly the descriptions of what would happen to nuclear waste in Colorado and oil refineries in Houston if humans are no longer around to regulate our environmentally disastrous technologies. I had just finished reading this book when I stumbled upon the article in Florida Today regarding current NASA projects. The following quote grabbed my attention.

“ NASA is presently engaged with missions that will pave the way for a return to the lunar surface by US astronauts. One mission will send a rocket crashing into the Moon to scour the debris plume for evidence of water ice.”

It grabbed my attention because the article contained absolutely no information about why these efforts were being made. I searched the NASA website and emailed a public relations contact and received no response. I could not find anything to tell us why we were returning to the moon, what the projected benefits were from such an endeavor, why this particular action (which as described sounds rather destructive) was being taken and what the potential consequences for this action might be.

Where was the public debate concerning the use of our resources? Have we become enamored of scientific and technological discovery to the exclusion of ethical and moral implications? Is it appropriate to place our faith in science as a pursuit and scientists, who are after all human and subject to all the limitations that entails, when we still do not know how to contain, maintain or clean up the products of previous scientific achievements. I realize not everyone has the same priorities and many will disagree with me. I may also feel the way I do because of having just read The World Without Us, but it strikes me as odd to return to the moon when we have so many problems here we need to address. Human kind can survive without another trip to the moon. We may not be able to survive if we do not make a full and coordinated effort to be in right relationship with our home.

I do not have as strong a quibble with individual scientists, who still shoulder a personal ethical responsibility regarding their work, as I do with the universities, organizations, corporations and nations making the decisions regarding scientific priorities. I am extremely curious to know by what criteria they decide which research to fund and how these results are applied technologically.

We are blowing up a chunk of the moon, at least according to Florida Today’s weak reporting, when we have not even found a way to clean up the mess we have already created here on Earth. I am fundamentally disturbed by this.

The impetus for scientific exploration too often seems to fall into one of two categories. We engage in such exploration because we can or because we can get rich. Where is the decision making based upon affirmation of inherent worth and dignity of the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part? It is definitely not in the factory farm or the food industry that pumps us full of corn syrup and sick and distressed animal meat. It is not in the chemical companies that create an relentless chain of demand by systematically killing one portion of a food chain and thereby disrupting what nature so elegantly manages well enough alone. It is not in the energy companies exhibting no evidence of a full court press for clean, renewable energy when drill more, drill here, drill now, hybrid cars and the absurdly named “clean coal” technologies are being promoted. Sorry, but reduced contaminants and pollutants are still contaminants and pollutants. While string theory is fascinating, how is that knowledge going to make life better for us, our world and our progeny? I have yet to see any sort of debate concerning this question.

I am in no way advocating abandoning scientific inquiry. Far from it, as I most definitely do not want a plea for deliberation, humility and ethical debate to be misunderstood as an anti-scientific diatribe. What I am advocating is popular awareness and responsible scientific inquiry. Put down the Tom Dorsey novel and pick up a current science book. Put down the People and Reader’s Digest magazines and pick up Science, Nature, Archaeology or Discover magazines.

Perhaps as demand increases, scientists in the academic realm will enjoy an increase of peer acclaim through the dissemination of scientific information to the laity and experience less of a drive to “publish or perish” highly technical scientific articles utterly unintelligible to the rest of us. Serious scientists can and should venture out of the ivory tower with the responsibility, indeed an ethical responsibility, to help us understand the nature of their work and its implications. There can be no public discourse when the public is ignorant.

In the introduction to his book, Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science, John Gribbin writes:

The fate of specialists in any one area of science is to focus more and more narrowly on their special topic, learning more and more about less and less, until eventually they end up knowing everything about nothing. It was in order to avoid such a fate that, many years ago, I chose to become a writer about science, rather than a scientific researcher. The opportunity this gave me to question real scientists about their work, and to report my findings in a series of books and articles, enabled me to learn less and less about more and more, although as yet I have not quite reached the stage of knowing nothing about everything.

I am afraid I cannot accept the argument that good scientists cannot also be good communicators. The ability to share scientific knowledge effectively with the general public should not be seen as an exception to the rule and indicative of some kind of rare genius. That smacks of both intellectual snobbery and laziness.

On the other side of the equation, I think the general public have an incredibly awesome responsibility as well. We do not have to become either scientists or writers about science, but we can be readers…. and talkers. We can find the time to learn about the issues presently being debated in the scientific community. We can appropriately apply and use scientific fact, rather than either revealed dogma or widely-held but erroneous traditional beliefs, when communicating with politicians and business leaders.

Science occupies an odd and somewhat paradoxical position in our social environment. On one hand, it so innately trusted that pseudo-science can be used to manipulate consumers in advertising campaigns. For example, pharmaceutical company commercials often use actors in lab coats rather than business suits to promote their products. I have also seen one that makes the absurd statements claim that there is some sort of fundamental difference between how indoor and outdoor allergies affect the human body. Too often, what is displayed as scientific is accepted uncritically as fact because it looks scientific. Our academic system should prepare adults to think both scientifically and critically so we are equipped to distinguish between pseudo-scientific manipulation and rational scientific facts. More importantly, they equip us to analyze whether public policy decisions make sense. I still cringe when I think of the number of people who purchased plastic sheeting and duct tape in the fall of 2001.

On the other hand, science is often viewed with contempt, and sometimes outright hostility, when its findings contradict cherished religious beliefs. Religions should evolve and adapt to reality. Instead religious professionals force a cognitive dissonance on adherents by waging war against established scientific theories they consider inconsistent with scripture and dogma. They do no one any spiritual favors by forcing people to live in conflict with the world as we have come to know it.

How odd, and disheartening, that what is supposedly the most objective human endeavor is also at the heart of our most contentious controversies.

To conclude, I would like to summarize what I believe are the ethical responsibilities of human beings with regards to science. Individual scientists should engage in work they find congruent with their personal value systems and they honestly believe will contribute to the well-being of their fellow humans and their world. They should contribute to making their work both intelligible and available to the general public.

Funding organizations, corporations and nations should make funding and technological application decisions based upon sound scientific data, the common good and the sustainability of the health of our planet rather than upon profit or power motives. They have a responsibility to make their decision-making criteria and process accessible to the public for open discourse.

The media should provide the public with process stories—to provide the answers to "why" and "how" questions, not just "what" and when." They have a responsibility to provide a broader perspective, ask probing questions and produce stories with a robust context rather than simply regurgitate press releases unquestioningly.

Educators have an ethical responsibility to educate in the sciences based upon scientific principles and theory rather than scripture. Our educational systems should commit to science as a highly valuable academic discipline and include ethics in the science curriculum. They should train scientists to communicate academic findings to the general public and reward them for doing so.

We all have an ethical responsibility to become and remain educated regarding the scientific process, established theory and ongoing developments. We should create a demand for the information necessary to engage in responsible public discourse regarding the ethics of science and technology. We must participate in such public discourse as rational, yet compassionate, people who care about one another and our future.

Copyright © 2009

Ann Fuller, July 2009

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Further Discussion

Email: Can we get a list of the books you are reading for the Humanist Institute?

AF: Absolutely! The list is published on the Humanist Institute website. The list of science books is toward the bottom of the page since they were for the most recent session.

Email: You do realize not everyone is ever going to agree on priorities for scientific exploration?

AF: Yes, I do. I would be stunned if it were otherwise. However, that shouldn't prevent us from debating those priorities.

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