Science and Technology

Abstract

Genuine scientific knowledge is the most important means of teleological action in the modern world (see Fig. 11). Teleological action is the essence of human culture. Is it fair to blame science for the kind of use, often an unwise and destructive use, of our knowledge in the context of teleological action? The philosopher Toulmin (1) writes:

… Other critics attribute current anxieties about the moral justification of science to its impact on the natural and human environment, and their views certainly appear to have a little more foundation. There may of course be some reason to foresee a possible future in which the applications of natural science to technology might have a drastic impact on the quality of human life, even on the possibility of its continuance. Yet, once again, there is an element of exaggeration in the current debate which distracts attention from the true sources of our present ambiguities. If we leave aside the special problems created by the use of non-degradable pesticides and similar chemical agents, the remaining basic sources of environmental pollution are nearly all of them the present day products of historical processes going back to the year 1800 or before—certainly, long before any serious application of scientific ideas to industry or manufacture. These sources are (in brief) population growth, urbanization, and ill-controlled industrialization, all of them factors whose chief origins lie outside the scientific movements. Thus, if we end up by having more children than we have the resources to support, that is not the fault of science. If cities and factories use the earth’s air and waters as an open sewer, that is not the fault of science either. So it need not surprise us to find all the main themes of the contemporary ecology movement anticipated long ago, in the writings of men like Thomas Malthus, William Blake, and Anatole France. Even apart from the whole of 20th-century science, we would still be overloaded with Blake’s ‘dark, Satanic mills’; and without the help of contemporary science these factories might well have been even more damaging to the environment than the ones we actually have. Arguably, indeed, there seems to be too little application of scientific thought and analysis to the industrial organization and practice, not too much. Industrial technology is industrially damaging not because it is too scientific, but because it is too unscientific.