There's been a range of interesting reactions to my piece on Pete Seeger's question about whether confidence in science as a source of human progress is underpinned by fact or faith.
Some readers may have missed that the discussion was not about confidence in science as an enterprise, but confidence that benefits would always accrue to society from applications of scientific knowledge. The piece focused on the example of recent debates over research creating a virulent flu strain. Here are some highlights from particularly interesting non-anonymous comments (a perk aimed at fostering constructive discourse), along with thoughts sent to me by two prominent analysts of the intersection of science and human affairs, Brad Allenby, the professor of engineering and ethics at Arizona State University and co-author of one of my favorite books of 2011, "The Techno-Human Condition," and Steve Fuller, a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick in Britain and author of "Humanity 2.0: The Past, Present and Future of What it Means to be Human," which I look forward to reading over the holidays.
Here's Allenby on Seeger's conclusion that confidence in science as en endless source of progress is based on faith:
There has to be a big dollop of faith: no single person can possibly begin to understand the world we live in from first principles. It is, of course, a rationalistic faith, in that I am fairly confirmed in my belief that, say, 747's will fly because in fact the vast majority of them do, and frequently. More fundamentally, my faith that 747's will fly is of a different kind than the traditional religious kind, in that the latter cannot be supported by direct experience, but only by interpretations of direct experience which pull on the faith narrative.
There is also, of course, the tension between empiricism and scientific theory, as demonstrated often in engineering: English suspension bridge designers in the 19th century were generally empirical, and their bridges stood; French were highly scientific and theoretical, and their first bridges, tho elegant, almost all failed (turned out to be the way they anchored their cables) . . . and the regrettable tendency of scientists to think that, because they are authoritative in their own field, they are thereby authoritative in policy and social engineering . . .
Lots of strands in that disconnect . . .
Here's Fuller:
The prospect that scientists have created a lethal strain of avian flu and are on the verge of publishing their technique in the world's leading scientific journal has reopened the debate over science's aspiration to 'universal knowledge' in two distinct senses: Should science investigate everything, and should its findings be made available to everyone? Doubts on both fronts pertain to the potential evil that might be unleashed, either by will or by accident. That the doubts should center so clearly on evil consequences betrays the theological origins of the concern. From the serpent in the Garden of Eden to the Cartesian demon of modern skepticism, evil is always portrayed as something that simulates good in nearly all respects. Yet knee-jerk moves to censor and otherwise restrict scientific inquiry threaten to compound rather than the remove the evil in question..........
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