Values and Western Science Knowledge

The central question regarding the relationship between science and values is whether science is value-free or not. The doctrine of value-freedom, which should be understood as an ideal rather than a reality, is based on a categorical fact-value judgment distinction, according to which no value judgments can be derived from facts. It then states that the business of science is to discover facts about the world, not to pass any value judgments; that science is neutral with respect to social, political, and moral values and therefore can serve any such values; and that scientific theories and claims should be accepted or rejected on empirical-evidential grounds, not on social, political, moral, and religious considerations (Lacey 1999). The ideal of value-free science, an early formulation of which is owed to Bacon and Galileo, dates back to the great Scientific Revolution in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and remains especially popular among scientists today.

Contempor...