THE ETHICS OF SCIENCE AS A UNIFIER OF SCIENCE

Thus far I have discussed the strange fact that the unity of science was seldom fully presented and seldom criticized. 1 have said, it is often alluded to and then always highly favourably, and it was always conceived as a sacred point of science - but there is almost no criticism of it.

I have already mentioned the enormous emotional appeal, when dis­cussing the oceanic feeling. This, really, is only a variant of the overflowing sweetness allegedly felt by the mystic when uniting with the universe. And there is little doubt in my mind that if one traces the idea of the unity of science back* to the 16th century one arrives at the mystic doctrine of the time, now called light-metaphysics, then called Pythagoreanism, and previously called Cabbalism - which is a mutant of neo-Platonism. And, if, with Bacon, one goes back to ancient Greece, one finds the same mysticism there, in the Pre-Socratics, particularly Parmenides, and even in Socrates, his skepticism notwithstanding.¹⁰

One need hardly say that the mystic doctrine is, as Bacon noticed, not only emotional but also, even chiefly, ontological. And rationalism, whether inductive or apriorist, always rested on the thesis of the utter comprehensibility of the universe by reason. Hence the hostility of science to religion. Hence, likewise, the call to return to religion, which stemmed from the aftermath of the crisis in physics of the turn of our century; once one claims that reason may be limited, the old conflict is gone, once and for all. This is how Maimonides put it; and this is how things still stand. Though Maimonides believed in unity and in comprehensibility, he stressed the limits of reason, as his chief quarrel with the rational unbelieving philosophers.¹¹

In order to show that the utter comprehensibility of the universe drives religion out, one has to place morality within the domain of comprehensi­bility.

How is this egalitarian universalistic sentiment, one may wonder, inte­grated within the optimistic tradition?

This is a point much more articulated in popular philosophy and cheap science-fiction than in more serious philosophy. Its epitome may well be the mad scientist from the marvellous cheap chiller-movies of the thirties, sipping his claret, and airily, half-pensively, mumbling in perfect Oxford diction, ‘Murder, you say? My dear fellow, this is a scientific experiment!’ The mad scientist does not recognize morality and, in effect he claims, he has no duty to morality as long as he is fulfilling his duty to science: as long as he is a good scientist, he implies, he is good. Being a good scientist first was conditioned on being a good citizen; soon being a good scientist became a touchstone for being a good citizen (show me a good scientist and I will show you a good citizen); the last step, the perversion, is the conclusion that eo ipso, being a good scientist implies being a good citizen. In the beginning of this line of reasoning, morality is taken for granted, and science is declared subject to its laws; in the end of this line of reasoning, the roles have subtly been reversed (in a manner, incidentally, quite common in schizophrenia: the mad scientist is clinically nearer to the truth than the whole of Ibsen’s lunatic asylum).

It ought to be stressed, if confusion is to be avoided, that the idea of the separateness of science and morality is 20th-century; traditionally we have pious science and evil science and nothing in between. Also, one must notice, the idea of evil science is as old as the idea of pious science. It is a serious mistake to think that fears of evil science were invented by Mary Shelley, or, more generally, by the 19th-century antiscientific Romantic movement. The idea is as old as the myth of the proximity of the gates of Hell to the gates of Heaven; the practical Cabbalist and the alchemist shared it, and their monster of Frankenstein was the Golem of Prague. Francis Bacon had it too. His idea that the scientist must be pure is not accidental to his philosophy, even though, as C. W. Lemmi has shown in his Classical Deities in Bacon of 1933, Bacon borrowed it from an alchemist by the name of Natalis Comes.

Although Bacon often spoke of the inductive method of demonstration, he never explained it; much to the frustration of his chief commentator Robert Leslie Ellis. His real view of the matter, however, had nothing to do with demonstration, but with the idea of grace as understood by the practical cabbalist and the alchemist. Speculation is putting Mother Nature in chains - we force her to conform to our blueprint. Induction is not so much collecting facts for the purpose of demonstration as the act of worshipping Mother Nature, of showing her humble obedience and respect. And, obedience is the best method of enlisting Her services; for She will reward us by revealing to us all Her secrets. You may be sure of that, since it is the prerogative of God alone to be hidden forever.¹²

Abstract speculation, says Bacon, is tyranny over Nature as well as the conquering of kingdoms of the mind, which are philosophical schools. The speculant is impatient and wishing to achieve fame he arrives at his theories by spurious methods, attaining the goods by force instead of by honest work.

We have three traditional characters worthy of examination, equally at home in popular literature, in traditional philosophy, and in scholarship of all sorts. We have the good scientist who is a good man, a good citizen, a pious person - a man answering all descriptions of your personal ideals. He is the hero of most so-called science-fiction literature; he is the hero of most of the trash and nonsense and willful distortions and embarrassingly obvious self-deceptions of the so-called biographies of such impossibly difficult individuals as Newton and Laplace, heavily made-up as placid, warm, and worldly-wise.

Whereas the only three traditional archetypes are Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Faustus, the 20th century has created a new one, best presented in the biographical movie on the life of Dr. Wernher von Braun. Whether the movie tells the truth about its hero’s scientific or moral career is not of much significance here. The movie does, it is well-known, represent its hero as he himself has chosen to appear to the public: able and concerned as far as science is concerned, but rather indifferent to moral and political questions, or at least one who puts scientific considerations first and moral ones second.

Dr. Faustus is not at all Goethe’s Faust. Goethe’s hero is a really unified person - he loves science, youth, love, happiness, righteousness and, finally, action. Unlike Faust, Dr. Faustus comes from the same folklore to which Bacon’s philosophy belongs: he is an occultist whose mind got twisted and who became evil, poor fellow. He is not a refutation of Bacon’s doctrine: he is a fallen angel, a freak. He was a good scientist and hence a good citizen, but he lost his soul to the devil. Like his heir, the mad scientist, he lost his heart but not his brain; to be precise, not the storage part of his brain. It is von Braun who breaks away from the Baconian tradition. We are still ambivalent about him - emotionally, morally, philosophically.

To illustrate this, let me refer to a strange similarity between the views of the leader of the Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath, and those expressed by the great scientist and Nobel Prize Laureate Werner Heisenberg. In his contribution to the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science of 1936 Neurath stresses the traditional hope that unified science will bring its practitioners together from different disciplines, from different walks of life, and from different countries. There is nothing objectionable in Neurath’s view except perhaps that, especially for the mid-thirties, it is somewhat naive - and who does not regret this! The same thesis is to be found in a lecture given by Heisenberg in Gottingen University in 1946 and reprinted a few times under the impressive title ‘Science as a Means of International Understanding’.¹³

The problem aired in that paper was, understandably, very much in the air where it was delivered: what should a German science-student do to remedy the moral and political situation of post-war Gerpiany? There is perhaps a lot to be said on this question, e.g., regarding the need for expiation and the like. I ^shall say no more than that Heisenberg barely faces it. Yet he does give an answer which¹ is the same perversion of Baconianism that we have already met. He argues, to use my words, that since a good scientist must be a good citizen, you shquld now forget as much as is reasonably possible about all your civic duties so as to concen­trate maximally on your duties as science-students. Becopie good scien­tists, and eo ipso you will also be good citizens. So much for my words; now I shall give a critical summary of the paper in its o^vn words, so that you may judge whether I was fair.

“It has often been said... repeatedly been stressed, with justification” that science is international, interracial, interreligjous. “At this particular time [1946] it is important that we should not i make things too easy for ourselves. We must also diiduss the opposite thesis, which is still fresh in our ears.” Why must we?

It is no doubt the case that we need not make things too easy for ourselves, that we should listen to critics, pay serious attention to opposite opinions, be ready to learn from opponents and change our minds. But there is a limit to all this. We are not obliged to take seriously every opponent. Heisenberg goes on: “I should like [!] to discuss which of these two views”, he says, namely the unity of science and the national, racial exclusive view of science (i.e. Nazism), “is correct and what are the rela­tive merits of the arguments that can be produced in their favour.” I hope the reader suspects that there is a distortion here. Fortunately, indeed, there is: Heisenberg does not quite mean what I have quoted him to say. Yet the quotation is rather thought-provoking.

“To gain clarity on this question”, he says, he wants to show how science works; and he tells the story which he can tell from personal experience: how international and unified the Copenhagen school in physics was when he joined it in the twenties. He learned in Copenhagen, Heisenberg says, that race and nationality are of no use in science; he received later “further proof of the ‘objectivity’ of science and its independence of language, race or belief”. The thesis of the unity of science, then, is proven. The argument, opened on the first page of the lecture, is over on its third page; before the opponent had the chance of a hearing, it seems.

But Heisenberg goes on, nonetheless. A digression to the story of the internationalism of science in the 17th century, including a quotation from Dilthey, and we are ready to slip into a difficulty. “It has always been considered self-evident that adherence to such an international circle would not prevent the individual scientist from devotedly serving his own people and feeling himself one of them. On the contrary”, internationalism enhances one’s sense of love and indebtedness to one’s own country.

Is there a problem lurking here? Indeed, it soon appears. How is it, asks Heisenberg, that all these cases of international scientific collabo­ration “seemingly do so little in preventing animosity and war?” Note the word “seemingly”. The nation of Gauss and Helmholtz and Kirchhoff and Fechner and Wundt and Koch and Planck, the nation of Kant and Goethe and Beethoven, to throw in an additional bit of international collaboration, only “seemingly” benefitted “so little” from that volume of collaboration in its attempts at “preventing animosity and war”.

But I misread: the words “seemingly” and “so little” merely serve to make an understatement. Heisenberg clearly states that science is politi­cally impotent; and for a simple reason: there are very few scientists around, and the forces of politics are much too strong, resting, as they do, on masses of people, their economic conditions, and on “a few privileged groups favoured by tradition”. The Junkers and their like plus mass unemployment, in case you miss the hint. “The political influence of science has always been very small, and this is understandable enough. It does, however, place the scientist in a position which is in some ways more difficult.” We remember that it is not a question of divided loyalty: the scientist loves his country as much as anyone else. The reason for the difficulty, says Heisenberg, is that politics largely depends on applied science. “Thus, the action of an individual scientist often carries far more weight than he would wish and he frequently has to decide, according to his own conscience, whether a cause is good or bad. When the difference between two nations cannot be reconciled he is therefore often faced with the painful decision” of whether to work with his colleagues or countrymen.

Not that the unity of science has been disproved, mind you: it has been proven less than two pages ago. Not that there is a conflict of loyalties either - this was established less than a page ago. Yet, on the fifth page of Heisenberg’s lecture all of a sudden the poor scientist is torn by inner conflict and outer strife.

The lecture goes on. There was a profound recent change in the relations between scientists and governments. In World War I, scientists adhered to their national loyalties. Not so in World War II, when “scientists claimed the right to judge the policies of their governments independently and without ideological bias.... Eventually scientists were sometimes even treated like prisoners in their own country and their international relations considered even immoral.” In 1946 Heisenberg spoke of governments in general, as if the status of scientist in one part of the world was compara­ble to that of another. Historians of post-war Germany may care to take notice of the fact that in Gottingen such words were spoken in 1946.

Heisenberg’s outline of the history of international collaboration is not clear to me. In the 17th century and in the twenties of the 20th, science was international. In World War I it was not; yet ‘a profound change’ took place in the thirties! I ask the reader to forgive me if I do not discuss this puzzlement, however, and if I now become a bit more cursory in my summary. The next paragraph speaks of the martyrs Bruno arid Galileo. The next to it speaks of the bomb, chemical warfare, and the like. The paragraphs which follow speak of the moral burden this puts on the individual scientist. “Can science really contribute to” international under­standing in the present circumstances? After a brief digression to the Middle Ages, we come to the history of nihilism (which “we find... in many parts of the world today” (not only in Germany?) even in “its most unpleasant form” (they too have concentration camps?) “disguised by illusion and self-deception” (they too dream of world domination?)), and to the possibility of its reinforcement by science, if riot more than that. I am again at a loss: was science ever influential? If not, then, since nihilism is influential “in many parts of the world”, the accusation that science contributed to nihilism fizzles out. If yes, how can we maintain the belief in the unity of science in Germany in 1946? I am at a loss. Why does he not refute this charge?

Heisenberg’s discussion is nearly over: against his critics he must reaf­firm his faith. The fact is that science is the way to “the centre”, which is often called “spirit”, or “God”, or by other names. As the highway to God, then, science, in principle, is accessible to all. And the more people learn science, the greater the numbers of people who learn science, the nearer we shall come to God, and hence to live in a happier and nicer world.

And so Werner Heisenberg begins and ends with the profession of the same traditional faith as Otto Neurath. On the way he somehow succeeds in adumbrating certain severe criticisms of the thesis of the unity of science (e.g., in an unexplained manner it has led to nihilism), and he even speaks in a vein, totally alien to the traditional spirit of the thesis of the unity of science, that above and beyond his duties to science a scientist has to consult his conscience about the ethics and politics of science. But these ‘above and beyond’ are transient, I understand Heisenberg to suggest; soon science shall triumph and one’s duties to science and one’s other duties will merge again. Hence, the advancement and spreading of science are of great importance because a scientifically orientated world is one in which science can indeed help foster international cooperation and thus minimize hostility and war. Science, you remember, is in Heisenberg’s view the highway to God.¹³

Heisenberg is only an extreme example of a less extravagant but rather popular view. We are all willing to agree that the world is not black-and- white, and so our archetypes are not quite true; but they are, by and large, not too remote from attainment and so can serve as reasonable ideals. C. P. Snow, in his celebrated The Two Cultures, blames artists for being Luddites and commends scientists as progressivists. For the sake of balance he admits that men of science all too often have no use for Dickens, even for books sometimes; but he sees in this only an aberration. He is, by and large, committed to progress, to science, to rounded scientific education, to an art - especially literature - which is committed to both science and progress. Literature is committed to progress, science equals progress, humanism equals progress, progress is a free man’s worship - these ideas are common to the tradition of the unity of science. In his dream Descartes sees a poetry book and a dictionary, and in his dream he interprets the dictionary to be science and the poetry book to praise wisdom. So felt Dryden, so felt the Moderns of the late seventeenth century England, so feels Lord Snow.

Lord Snow will admit that in fact things are not so simple; he will admit, in particular, that all too often men of science ignore the arts. Indeed, the great novelty and the importance of his work lies precisely in his recognition, which is his starting point, that scientists have no more commerce with artists than artists with scientists. Yet, finally, he is mildly critical of the scientists but he comes down hard on the artists. His bias cannot be overcome by the mere observation of symmetry.

What I have tried to illustrate with these two examples - Heisenberg and Snow - is, first, that empirical criticisms of the thesis of the unity of science can be easily dismissed, and they often are. Second, that the thesis may be employed to defend positions alien to its spirit.

The idea, then, that scientists must be pure and disinterested etc., is in many new variants still very popular; what I have tried to show previously is that this is an essential element in Bacon’s philosophy, just as much as in Spinoza’s dr Kant’s or Russell’s. The comprehensibility of the world is not sufficient - there must also be the acceptance of the task or duty to comprehend it, the intellectual love of God. The fault of the Middle Ages was not that man had less capacity to comprehend, not that the world was then less comprehensible, but that man had degraded himself by intellectual laziness which made him give up his intellectual freedom of choice, just as Sartre’s modern morally lazy man sells out his moral freedom of choice: in both cases the condemnation is total.

It is perhaps hard to articulate fully the moral-religious aspect of rationalism as I have presented it thus far - as the task of universalizing and comprehending universality, of moral and intellectual universalism, of the moral duty of high optimism. Let me leave all this now, however, and show how it ties in with the idea of rationality as proof.

III.