Jews are targets of hate, including in Berlin! The “Reach Out” victim advisory center reports an increased number of racist or anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish citizens in Berlin. In 2018, 309 attacks were documented. This is 46 acts of violence and massive threats more than in 2017.Footnote 1 Those affected by hate crimes can experience long-term (even lifelong!) traumas and disorders. The social climate has become much rougher in recent years. Why do adult men use violence against children and adolescents for racist reasons? In this matter, our society, including Berlin, has a serious problem!

The Humanistic Mission of Science, Respecting Human Rights, Against Reductionism

J. D. Bernal, the founder of Science Studies, claimed that science has a social function: “Fortunately science has a third and more important function. It is the chief agent of change in society; at first, unconsciously as technical change, paving the way to economic and social changes, and, latterly, as a more conscious and direct motive for social change itself.”Footnote 2

Here it should be made clear that, as J. D. Bernal points out, this conscious and direct motive of science to contribute to social change requires that science fulfil its humanistic mission. This means, however, that through its results science contributes to the guarantee of human rights, that it assumes its responsibility: to secure the truth of its statements and to realize an application of the truth that serves life and man, and thus also sees its responsibility in promoting, not hindering, a deep “perception” of life and man, so that nature and man are recognized and acknowledged in their specificity and value.

If, as the long-standing IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) President Klaus Brunnstein repeatedly emphasized, it is assumed that there are not only individual but also social and international human rights, this means, for example, for the work of computer scientists, standing up for data protection, as an individual human right; for work and organizational design that promotes personality development, as a social human right; as well as for a life of peace, as an international and first human right. When we work to guarantee human rights, the inviolability of the dignity of every human being is paramount, and with it the fight against any form of degradation of the living, against racism and anti-Semitism.

J. D. Bernal recognized that society can only achieve its ambitious goals with the help of science, but that the social effectiveness of science is largely determined by the introduction and mastery of modern methods and techniques of research, and also by the organization and management of social processes. For the progress of knowledge, the traceability of complex processes and structures to the underlying elementary processes and structures is a decisive prerequisite. However, it is important to realize that one must not stop at reduction, because it is too limited for the realization of the whole. Today, a special responsibility of science arises in particular from the fact that a one-sided, reductionist, scientific-technical culture obviously leads to a loss of perception of life and man. Under certain social conditions this can in turn be abused by racists and other anti-humanists.

Against Reification and the Degradation of the Living

Life, with its unique, highly complex structure, is exposed to many dangers and this, as many authors point out, not only through changes in external conditions such as the greenhouse effect, but also and perhaps even more so through this loss of perception of a reductionist scientific and technical culture towards the living and towards man. It is not the discovery of nuclear fission or DNA, and now the decoding of the human genome, nor the development of the computer and, at present, the global digital networks—the Internet and the Internet of Things—that constitute this threat to our world. Rather, it is based on the fact of a far-reaching reification and degradation of the living, in that everything is now only regarded as a usable resource and treated accordingly. This ruthless urge to exploit, by which every new scientific hypothesis is immediately put to the test of its potentially profitable applications, characterizes the current zeitgeist to a large extent.

It is a legitimate aim of bio-medical research to uncover the causes of diseases that are still incurable today, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and Parkinson’s, and to seek ways of curing them. An intervention in this complex happening of life-processes should not be demonized as hubris. However, plans to improve human health as a whole, developed by misguided ambitions of scientists, or the hasty introduction of new products driven by the greed of some companies, must be firmly rejected as a violation of human rights. Here, in fact, the contempt for man, the degradation of all living things, the absolute necessity of exploitation under the prevailing economic forces, comes to the fore.

It is the responsibility of science and scientists to ensure that important scientific-technical developments—currently especially in computer science and biology—are not misused to underestimate or even disregard human beings in their complexity, sensitivity, uniqueness, individuality, etc.

It is the basic attitude of a reductive, primitive mechanistic materialism, which has been spread with the great successes in modern science, especially in biology and computer science, that provides the breeding ground for religious fundamentalist movements. If the mind is generally denied, which identifies with information processing and attributes this to signal processing; or syntactic information processing is reduced when, in the name of modern science, it can be generally explained that man and computer are identical—‘it is only hardware or wetware’; when, as the latest finding of science, the identity of mind and brain, the reduction of the mind to neuronal connectionsFootnote 3 or connections of small robots,Footnote 4 is proclaimed everywhere, then one should not be surprised that with a widespread lack of prospects for humans, a counter-reaction is thus triggered so that—as is becoming apparent even in the rich countries—one wishes for the “intelligent designer.”Footnote 5 It is not entirely surprising, then, that this is becoming a mass movement even in parts of Europe, or that one is turning to other fundamentalist groups and to a body of ideas which also promotes racism.

The reduction of human beings to animals, and the inferiority of parts of humanity in biological and spiritual terms that this claimed, was one of the important ideological prerequisites for both world wars. The reduction of man to the machine; the currently widespread postulate that automata could even become better people and a post-biological age could dawn; human society could be replaced by an automaton society, as postulated by the MIT robotics/artificial intelligence researcher Hans Moravec in his book Mind ChildrenFootnote 6, thereby anticipating the complete destruction of humanity. Even such false ideas have power, as J. WeizenbaumFootnote 7 and Benno Müller-HillFootnote 8 never tired of reminding us, since they contribute to the degradation of human beings and thus to racism and anti-Semitism.

Information Creation: An Essential Category for Model and Theory Development and as a General Methodological Guiding Principle!

Reductionism in science as an ideological attitude can and must be countered by working out the specifics of the living, especially of the living in relation to the dead; especially of the human in relation to the technical automaton, the so-called autonomous robot. Joseph Weizenbaum asks Hans Moravec whether he can really assume that one can transfer the truly human—e.g., a smile of a young mother to her child—to robots.Footnote 9

The learning automaton, including the those under development for so-called autonomous vehicles, receives its information and its value system from outside. In the origin of life, as Manfred EigenFootnote 10 demonstrated with his Darwinian theory of the origin of life, the information and the value system must originate internally.

The category of information creation proved to be essential for understanding the origin of life, for model and theory formation in the border area between physics, chemistry, and biology. Wherever functions need to be newly created and organized, new information and evaluations are required. Therefore, the category of information creation is as essential for the understanding of phylo- and ontogenesis, as well as for model and theory formation in the border area between computer (software) and the human mind, as well as automat-supported information systems (application systems) and creative-learning social organizations. It is part of the responsibility of science, especially of a theory of biology as well as a theory of computer science, to bring this specificity of the living and of man to bear, because this is the only way to protect decisively against the degradation of man to the automaton and thus also against further forms of discrimination.

There are, also scientific-theoretical and methodological implications of the concept of creativity: the creation of information has gained in importance for almost all areas of scientific interest. In particular, there is methodological evidence for safer navigation between the Scylla of gross reductionism, (inspired by 19th-century physics) and in the 20th century by the “mind–brain identity” (neurophilosophy) of connectionist AI research and the Charybdis of dualism (inspired by the vitalism of 19th-century Romanticism and in the 20th century by the functionalist body–mind / hardware–software duality of cognitivist AI research.

The basis for post-humanistic and other anti-humanistic concepts is the reduction of the human being to an information system and the reduction of information to its syntactic structure, in accordance with the information processing approach of classical AI research. The central idea of creativity—namely the origin of information in the living, in creative thinking and in an evolving, living social organization—leads to an understanding of human–computer interaction as a coupling of machine (syntactic) information processing with the creatively active human being capable of semantic information processing. Thus, the goal of automation is not superautomation, i.e., the complete replacement of humans, but the meaningful coupling of the specific abilities of computers and humans. This means that anti-human ideas are also losing their theoretical and practical ground.

The Need for Education and Training Against Racism: The Responsibility of Science in the Fight Against Anti-Semitism

The fight against racism must be a major concern in the debate about the responsibility of science and scientists. It was argued that there is no need for scientific arguments against racism, since a humanist must be against all forms of racism from the outset, regardless of any scientific evidence. Even if this is correct in principle, because ethical values do not come from natural science but from experiences of the social life of human beings, the scientific insight that there is no “cultural gene,” for example, can be useful, as postulated by some molecular biologists and philosophers under the assumption of a strict genetic determinism. The genes have nothing to do with what is meant by being human.Footnote 11

We understand humans as a bio-psycho-social unit, a biological–psychological and predominantly social being. The basic physical and mental abilities of humans are determined by their genes. In evolution, selection has been based in particular on skin color, speed of movement and perception of the environment, but not on those characteristics that would allow one person to be considered inferior to another; So—as previously stated—not about one being human. This is an expression of the whole person.

Racism is a false, extremely dangerous ideology! But it would therefore be naive to simply dismiss it as an ideology and not to argue scientifically against it. Especially now that findings from human genome analysis show that “Genetic differences exist between ethnic groups, which relate to external characteristics and parameters of metabolism. They have nothing to do with ‘being human’, but could serve to camouflage misanthropic statements by a racism of any kind, a division of people into good versus bad races, falsifications and distortions of science.”Footnote 12 Society must ensure that its members consider all people (including the disabled) as ‘equal’, regardless of genetic differences between individuals and groups.

The central ethical question posed by modern biotechnology and modern information technologies in a new quality is that of the constructability and replaceability of human beings.

On the one hand, science bears the responsibility for obtaining genuinely true statements about the world around us and about ourselves, but also for ensuring that this truth is applied for the benefit of mankind. It is clear that this responsibility thus goes much further than gaining methodologically secured knowledge—that it ultimately has our own existence as human beings and our ability to make ethical decisions as a problem. There are enough examples in recent history of biological facts (for there are indeed human races, not only animal species and plant varieties) being deliberately and erroneously misunderstood and misinterpreted (racism).

In memory of the 6 million European Jews who were killed in the concentration and extermination camps of German fascism, it should be one of the most important tasks of science, especially of German scientists, to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms, to contribute to education against hatred and violence and anti-Semitism, and above all to help to overcome the social causes that repeatedly produce such an inhuman ideology. We hear that every year thousands of Jews leave France and emigrate to Israel. Reporting on this issue, “Der Spiegel” commented: “Anti-Semitic attacks have increased by 74 percent in 2018, a surely unbelievable rise. 500 incidents were recorded, up from 311 the year before.”Footnote 13 In Germany, as in many other countries, the number of attacks on Jews has increased, as in Austria and Switzerland.

What are the reasons for a development that, based on historical experience, was hardly considered possible? After all, we do not have an economic crisis in the countries mentioned, comparable to that of the 1920s, for which a scapegoat was sought and found. It is not possible here to go into the multitude of possible prejudices, dating back to the Middle Ages, which were the breeding ground for anti-Semitism, against which there has always been a fight. Active work is also ongoing to overcome the various causes that stoked such prejudices in the past. At present, one of the obvious causes is the tense relationship between the Palestinians and Israel. Above all, the old mechanism of demagogues is being used again. Real contradictions are addressed, no (or inappropriate) solutions are offered and a scapegoat is sought for grievances that have still not been eliminated.

Deadly Science: The Demand for the Destruction of Life “Unworthy of Life” Was “Scientifically” Justified

A number of German researchers were deeply involved in the crimes of the German fascists, directly or indirectly promoting them through their scientific work. “What that meant sounds unimaginable today: Scientists of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG-Biologen) ordered the eyes of murdered people directly from the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele in Auschwitz.” […] “They were pairs of eyes of twins, of Sinti and Roma,” reports Rürup.Footnote 14 In his book: “The Philosophers and the Living,” the Cologne molecular biologist Benno Müller-Hill reports in the last chapter (entitled “From the Mythology of Animals and Blood to the Cult of Extermination in Auschwitz”), on the “intellectual preparation, the intellectual assistance in the execution and finally the erasing of the traces of the greatest crime ever committed in Germany: the construction of Auschwitz as a place of extermination and production.”Footnote 15 In lectures, Müller-Hill described to his students how race researchers and biologists assumed from the outset that there were inferior elements in society and that Germany was doomed to extinction by the decline of its race (allegedly organized by Jews). The 1921 volume “Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene” (Human heredity and racial hygiene) by Bauer, Fischer and Lenz became the textbook that shaped public opinion for the next two decades.

One asks oneself again and again how such cruelties and inhumanities, such as the segregation, eradication of Jews, Sinti and Roma and mentally ill people, could have happened. There was a tendency in many cases to blame Hitler alone for those great crimes. Certainly, Hitler was a particularly cruel and brutal man. No smear test can or should be taken on his guilt. But he had too many willing helpers. And it is precisely when we look at various scientists that we clearly see the involvement of pioneers in science. In 1920, the psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Alfred E. Hoche and doctor of law and philosophy Prof. Binding published an article titled: “Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” (The release of the destruction of life unworthy of life). They become thereby the crucial pioneers of the organized mass destruction during the period of German fascism. Thus, the pseudo-scientific basis for medical killing was laid, for a development which was to reach its terrible climax 20 years later, for which psychiatry offered both theoretical and practical space, since everything concerning the desired ‘racial purity’ and the eradication of ‘inferior’ hereditary material was to be classified under psychohygiene.

If one does not also look at the scientists, then an essential piece is missing when seeking to answer the perennial question: “How could this happen?” What is then also missing is an essential piece of prevention, to ensure that it never happens again. Of course, it is not science in itself, but rather the social structures in and for which science is effective. On 14 July 1933 the Nazi regime enacted the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases of Young Persons.” It allowed forced sterilization for “congenital feeble-mindedness, schizophrenia, circular (manic-depressive) insanity, hereditary falling sickness, hereditary St. Vitus’ dance, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe physical deformity, and severe alcoholism. As Müller-Hill points out, experts had already prepared a similar bill during the Weimar Republic. Some psychiatrists, such as Prof. Ewald and also the Catholic Church openly spoke out against this law. However, such objections, including proclamations from the pulpit, remained ineffective.

I got to know Benno Müller-Hill personally, when I was asked by my friend Samuel Mitja Rapoport to discuss amongst us three the manuscript and theses of Müller-Hill’s book, “The Philosophers and the Living.” In 1981, I wrote to Benno Müller-Hill about his resolute confrontation with racism: “I would like to say here once again that what impressed me most was the presentation of the continuous development of racism in exploitative societies—the continuity from Plato’s theory of the state to Häckel’s failures, to the fascist ideology with the consequence of Auschwitz.”Footnote 16

Since Ernst Häckel was introduced to me repeatedly—during my high school graduation, but also during my studies of biology, as well as in the Häckelhaus in Jena—as being a famous biologist, I was especially affected by the mentioned racist failures of Häckel. In the First World War he had indeed written: “A single finely educated German warrior, as they are now falling en masse, has a higher intellectual and moral life value than hundreds of the raw natural men that England and France, Russia and Italy confront them with.”Footnote 17

Another thought in this book affected me very much. Müller-Hill writes: “Even false ideologies have power. Theories of human beings are therefore not, as many would like to see it, timeless, without history and without consequences. When some have lectured long enough on the degeneration of the breed, others collect gold teeth from the murdered for the state.”Footnote 18 He also wrote: “Deadly Science - The Elimination of Jews, Gypsies and the Mentally Ill 1933–1945.”Footnote 19 To discuss this book, I met with S.M. Rapoport and Müller-Hill at the Charité, Berlin’s pioneering research hospital. The terrible things that B. Müller-Hill reported at our meeting are addressed in the theses above. However, he also noted that the files on the crimes committed by psychiatrists disappeared at some point in time—simultaneously—in both the post-war Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and German Democratic Republic (GDR). On hearing this, Rapoport jumped up and shouted in the lecture hall, “these files are made of solid material, they can’t just disappear, someone must have arranged and executed it.”

Religious Traditions as a Cause of Anti-Semitism?

The Protestant theologian Emil Fuchs wrote a resolute article against anti-Semitism as early as 1920.Footnote 20 He continued his commitment to the Jews even during the period of fascism, in his interpretations of the New Testament, which were sent as illegal writings to his Quaker friends and to representatives of the forbidden covenant of religious socialists.Footnote 21 He turns against the misinterpretation of Paul, which contrasted Christianity and Judaism and was thus appropriated by the fascists to prepare the ground for the Holocaust.

Saint Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians (chapter II, verses 15–16) says: “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.” With the false identification of Paul’s critique of the law with the Torah, the “antithesis of Christianity versus Judaism” was anchored at the center of the doctrine of justification.Footnote 22

Emil Fuchs then writes about the dangerous interpretation discussed here: “But if one repeatedly derives from this a justification for the contempt for the Jews, then one should also remember the many who, along with the apostles from the Jews, were bearers of the movement of Jesus Christ, and there were many, which proves the importance of the Palestinian congregations up to the time of the revolution against the Romans in 69/70 AD.”Footnote 23

In the preface to the interpretation: “The Good News according to Luke” by Emil Fuchs, Claus Bernet points out that here Fuchs also rejects the accusation against the Jews. He asks: “Which German theologian in his publications of 1939/40 took such a clear position for the Jews (with the exception of Helmut Gollwitzer and his ‘Introduction to the Gospel of Luke’, who possibly had taken the exegeses of Fuchs himself or knew about them)?Footnote 24

For Fuchs, the core conflict of the Epistle to the Galatians, which revolves around the solidary relationship between Jews and non-Jews, becomes a foil for criticism of the Aryan racial mania, the German-Christian variety of which culminated, for example, in the efforts to “de-Jewify” the New Testament in the vicinity of the Eisenach Institute for “Research into Jewish influence on German church life.” With astonishing clairvoyance, Fuchs develops a new paradigm of Paul’s interpretation in antithesis to both the prevailing anti-Semitism and the state conservatism of the theology established in church and university, as the theologian Brigitte Kahl points out.Footnote 25

Causes of Anti-Humanism, Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Neo-Nazism in the Contemporary World of Work; A Deeper “Perception” of Life and Human Beings is Also Necessary in the Economy!

We are currently experiencing a strengthening of Nazi, i.e., neo-fascist, thinking in society, especially in companies and following similar developments within scientific institutions. In her book: “The Snow of Yesterday is the Deluge of Tomorrow,”Footnote 26 Daniela Dahn clearly illustrates the danger of the present situation and the reasons for this Right turn, including within scientific institutions. Under the heading: “Universities” Dahn writes: “Before right-wing extremism reached the center of society, it came from the center of the state. A particularly serious example of this was the award of the first honorary doctorate after the fall of the Berlin Wall by the Humboldt-Universität to the General Staff Officer and Commander of the “Goetz von Berlichingen” SS Panzergrenadier Division [Wilhelm Krelle]. This happened despite the protests of students and others.” I too protested vigorously, and wrote a protest letter on behalf of former professors of the Humboldt-Universität, but without success. The powers of the past must have been strong again, even in scientific institutions, to grant (notwithstanding his work in economics, mathematics, and physics) an honorary doctorate to such a divisive figure as Krelle.

That right-wing extremism has now reached the center of society obviously provides a breeding ground in the current world of work. In a large number of publications on the subject, there is talk of the successes of right-wing populism, which were achieved “in part above average” even among trade union members.Footnote 27 In practice, today’s political language speaks of “right-wing populism”—probably to avoid hastily labeling those who are sympathetic (or potentially susceptible) to far-right ideology, and in the hope of ultimately winning them back into moderate politics. From that perspective, such a strategy may be regarded as appropriate (or necessary), but for me it is a trivialization. What we are confronted with today throughout Europe and in the USA, as a clear shift to the right and the anti-humanist thinking associated with it, follows the pattern already successfully practiced by the German fascists: real grievances are taken up and openly criticized, but without having a solution to deal with them. Therefore, a guilty party is then sought. In those days it was the Jews; today it is foreigners, but also—step by step, and not only in Germany—also again the Jews. The leaders, at least—the ideologists of the movement—are therefore demagogues and not populists.

During Hitler’s rise to power there were an extraordinarily high number of unemployed people in Germany. This was an essential basis for anti-Semitism to gain a foothold among the working class. Today, at least in Germany, there are far fewer unemployed people. Therefore, one first feels a general astonishment about the high degree of neo-fascist thinking, specific expressions and activities in today’s working world. There—as it were, under the cover of a much-praised economy of success—the situation has become more acute. This results in losses of control and perspective. Political solutions are rare, and growing criticism of the establishment is the result. Having evaluated a whole series of sociological studies conducted within German companies, Dieter Sauer concludes that “the de-diabolization of the extreme right is progressing.”Footnote 28

The defense against this development must be supported by a civil society that has been shaken awake, and must be must be opposed by a labor policy that counteracts the deterioration of conditions in the world of work. This is therefore a task for society as a whole. But science also has a central responsibility here.

Workers have the right to scientifically substantiated statements about real conditions in the world of work. They have a right to see that the world of work is made humane. This is particularly aimed at computer scientists, ergonomists and organizational developers. A human-oriented introduction of modern information and communication technologies requires a socio-technical design of the working world, an information system, work and organizational design from a holistic perspective. This is a major scientific challenge, which is not easy to meet either theoretically, methodologically, or practically, and which requires a great deal of effort, starting with training in the scientific fields directly involved in shaping the world of work.

A really deep, deepened, or new “perception” of the living and the human being is also urgently needed in the economy, because it is precisely this perception which, under the pressure of globalization and digitalization, is even more strongly forced to innovate in order to bring new products and services onto the international market. This calls for ever more research and new knowledge. Thus, the usability of knowledge must be questioned. But this does not have to be connected with the degradation and objectification of man and all living things, as for example through the identification of automaton and man, which is almost unnoticed by many and therefore widespread. This, among other things, should be combined with a revival of the discussion about the possibility of super- or full automation in connection with the development of industry 4.0. The associated degradation of man—not only to the level of an animal as a result of racism, but beyond, i.e., to that of a machine, can have disastrous consequences. Automatic machines (robots) can completely take over human activities and entire production sections, e.g., in the automotive industry. Today, however, hardly anyone considers the complete elimination of humans from production processes (a factory without humans) to be really desirable and possible. The new possibilities of automation, via the Internet of Things (Cyberphysical Systems) and with the support of learning robots, demand and enable a meaningful combination of automaton and human being.

The fear of job losses due to structural changes in industry and the service sector is real, e.g., with the planned switch from diesel and petrol engines to electric motors and other mobility concepts. VW’s management clearly states that less manpower is needed to build electric vehicles. At the same time, it is announced that VW is in contact with Amazon to develop and introduce a concept for the electronic control of production processes in all plants, which again would result in the loss of large numbers of jobs, this time mainly in administration. The implementation and announcement of permanent restructuring measures in companies are indeed a real source of uncertainty and fear. This is of concern not only in the automotive industry, but also in the expanding logistics and telecommunications sector as well as banking institutions, where staff reductions result in increased pressure to perform.

These structural changes are usually associated with the use of modern information and communication technologies (ICT). This use, however, irrespective of the fact that these general structural changes are catalyzed by the use of ICT, also has further-reaching effects on employment relationships, qualification requirements, and new and increased performance controls in the context of digitization and the use of modern information and communication technologies.

It is part of the responsibility of science to ensure that the use of these methods and technologies is not only technology-oriented, but primarily people-oriented.Footnote 29

People Must Be Able to Recognize the Meaning and Purpose of Their Existence

Wherever the reasons may lie for abandoning the topic of “humanizing work” or work design within the framework of computer science and also within the sub-discipline of computer science and society, it is in any case in keeping with the spirit of the times. It is an example of how even mainstream thinking can succeed in establishing itself at universities. “Even the scientific mainstream sometimes follows the opinion of the powerful.”Footnote 30 The philosopher Axel Honeth describes very vividly where this farewell or this turning away of science or scientists, including computer scientists, has led to. He writes in an article in the “Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie” on the development so far: “Never in the last two hundred years have efforts to defend an emancipatory, humane concept of work been as badly off as they are today. The actual development in the organization of industrial and service work seems to have undermined all attempts to improve the quality of work…”

Honeth continues: “what is happening in the de facto organization of work, the tendency towards the return of socially unprotected temporary, part-time and home-work, is also reflected in a twisted way in the shift of intellectual attention and social interests: disappointed were those who forty years ago still placed all their hopes in the humanization or emancipation of work, turning their backs on the world of work in order to turn their attention to completely different, non-productive topics.Footnote 31

A crazy society is essentially the cause of an irrational ideology. If we know today that with the further rigorous exploitation of nature and especially with the further nuclear armament and the development of autonomous weapons; that the existence of mankind as a whole is at stake, but that no decisive counter-movement with a credible and effective alternative is developing; but that society is so crazy that further overexploitation of nature is being carried out and especially a new armament is being started, then one should not be surprised if politically short-sighted people, in view of such a crazy society, also resort to irrational ideologies.

Only where people have a goal, where there is a perspective for the development of society, are their creative powers awakened. Can they, contrary to the widely prevailing egoism and greed, bring about new community in the family, in the world of work and in society, new forms of spiritual life, new knowledge of truth, and thus produce a science and art, forms of working life that guarantee greater justice, social security and peace?

Peace Must Be Secured!

Most people want peace. A life in peace is the first human right! They are therefore in agreement on the goal to be achieved. The differences in concrete wanting do not refer to the goal of wanting, but to the way by which the goal is to be achieved. Peace is to be maintained through armament and deterrence or through negotiations and alliance policy—which, the realization of the situation tells us, is the best way to maintain peace.

If an imperialism of instrumental reason rules (Max Horkheimer, Joseph Weizenbaum), the dominance of a technical–rational reason, which is connected with social rule, then great errors can be produced. For one relies on mathematical calculations where it is necessary to make a proper assessment of the social situation. Particularly important factors, especially human factors, are not or cannot be included in the model calculation. “Extremely important words are missing in the everyday vocabulary of modernity. There is a crucial lack of critical thoughts, ideas that have to do with people, with life in the current practice of everyday affairs in our world,” warns Weizenbaum.Footnote 32

The termination in 2019 of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty between the USA and Russia shows how quickly military confrontation can escalate again. The treaty made it possible at the end of the 1980s to disarm and ban nuclear short- and medium-range missiles. Now, the political situation has worsened again. Even in Germany, the development of its own nuclear weapons is being discussed. There is already talk of a new Cold War! After the atomic stalemate and the worldwide efforts to create a world free of nuclear weapons—initiatives based on responsibility and knowledge—hardly anyone expected a renaissance of nuclear weapons. But the issue will obviously determine security policy in the coming years. If the hardliners should prevail, the end of the relatively peaceful period is imminent.

It is a crucial responsibility of science and scientists to oppose such a development and to mobilize people against it. There must never be another world war! A war in which the terrible weapons of nuclear fission and fusion, based on missile technology or information and communication technologies, are used. From this arises the responsibility and extraordinary challenge for contemporary science, especially physicists, to establish an effective control system for the abolition of weapons (see roll call from Berlin).Footnote 33

However, the newspapers are reporting these days that the arms race is already underway. A new missile defense system using hypersonic weapons has been announced. “For both medium-range missiles and hypersonic missiles, the advance warning time is so short that a serious clarification of the situation no longer seems possible from a military point of view. There is simply no time to determine whether an attack has begun—or whether there is perhaps only a glitch on the opposing side. A war by accident is one of the horror visions of all military personnel,” write Marina Kormbaki and Stefan Koch in the Berliner Zeitung from Washington.Footnote 34 The situation has obviously become much worse than that in which the computer scientist David Parnas, out of personal responsibility for the “Strategic Defense Initiative” initiated by Ronald Reagan during a tense phase of the Cold War, refused to take part; in which the computer scientists Klaus Brunnstein, Wilhelm Steinmüller, Klaus Haefner and others appealed to Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, stating that in such a situation the Federal President can no longer ensure the protection of the population. Therefore, we should not forget this tradition, but continue it. What can we, what should we do? We need a time of peace and reason, in which the problems of our world are not confronted simply by resort to war and violence, but in accordance with international law, through negotiation.

To achieve such a time of peace, as Albert SchweitzerFootnote 35 emphasized in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, a peaceful attitude is needed, otherwise the international organizations cannot be effective in peacemaking. Any form of anti-humanism—the degradation of man to animal or machine—is a blow to such an attitude.

Science Can Follow Its Humanistic Obligation to Serve Life, to Serve Mankind

A possible crisis of science can, as J. Mittelstraß has pointed out, arise from the threatening distance between the production and use of knowledge, which damages the knowledge process by making knowledge lose its very essence, “namely to be an expression of the epistemic essence of man.”Footnote 36 If we speak of the responsibility of science for guaranteeing human rights, in the fight against the degradation of the living, racism and anti-Semitism; and have shown that science itself—by failing to draw the right conclusions, by stopping at the methodologically necessary reduction or by giving in to excessive compulsion to exploit, with the “threatening distance between the production and use of knowledge”—can at least become a catalyst for inhuman ideologies that have developed in society, then it must be noted that science wants to gain methodologically secured knowledge. “The consoling thing is that this hope is on good ground, the ground of a powerful, incredibly inventive scientific mind, which is able to resist even its confused interpreters and false friends, and of a reason which is still judgmental when it only opposes its own inclinations instead of loving its strengths and weaknesses.Footnote 37

Of all the possible forms of human knowledge, it is science that fundamentally endeavors to gain methodologically sound knowledge. It is therefore right to defend itself against non-scientific influence. It therefore also objects to research projects being hindered by value judgements that are not rationally justified.Footnote 38 This cannot mean, however, that a positivist position is taken and that every ethical evaluation of scientific activity is rejected. As Manfred Eigen and Ruth Winkler have said, social information is not protected by “an automatic lock against misuse for self-destruction of life.”Footnote 39 From this they draw the decisive conclusion that: “an ethics must be oriented towards the needs of humanity. It must guarantee the preservation of humanity without unduly restricting the individual freedom of each person. Such ethics cannot be derived from any laws of matter below the level of human organization.”Footnote 40

Scientists like to elevate “objectivity” to the sole, highest value of science and to reject any further evaluation. This makes everything seem feasible. But from the shattering experience that this has paved the way to a deadly science, we must learn that it is not permissible to do everything that can be done. The urgent warning to be vigilant, the inescapable invitation to repeatedly examine what can truly be considered truth, scientific knowledge, arises for us today. Consequently—contrary to what is often postulated—“pure objective knowledge” is not the sole highest value of science. The search for true knowledge—real insight—also encompasses the question of the criterion of truth. To reconsider the criterion of truth is scientifically founded practice. However, this means that “pure objective knowledge” ceases to be the sole and highest value of science; in addition, there are rationally based ethical values. Thus, science can follow its humanistic obligation to serve life, to serve humanity.