p Chairman of the Commission: "You read several languages, are familiar with higher mathematics and can carry out some jobs. Do you consider that this makes you a human?”
Otark: "Yes, of course. Do you mean to say that people have other knowledge?”
p(From the sdeiKe-fktion story Day of Wrath, by S. Gansovsky)
p The problem of the interrelationship of science and morality has been widely discussed in popular and literary publications and fiction as well as in the statements and works by figures in various fields of knowledge, from sociology to mathematics.
p In this discussion the most varied opinions have been expressed. We meet the assertion that genuine science can only be moral because it will help man eventually resolve all problems plaguing his existence. At the other extreme the opinion is voiced that a scientific education is harmful to a moral upbringing, since science engenders the world of the contemporary machine civilization in which individuality is dissolved and overwhelmed along with the effacement of the personality and of the actual human relations. Because of this, it is said, mankind is suffering what may be called moral degradation.
p There are many intermediary opinions between these two. For example, some say that scientific and technological progress does in fact unify culture and level out individuality but this process is one that is beneficial for humanity; others 131 argue that although the scientific attitude is not identical with morality the "scientific principles" or bases for morality are indeed necessary. Finally, still others maintain that since science and morality are different, but both are necessary, each must be given to the individual in small doses.
p The problem arises as to how can we correlate the moral development of the individual with scientific and technological progress. Does this progress simultaneously signify moral progress, as many think? Or is the opposite true, namely that science and technology are actively ousting morality from the realm of human life, replacing moral consciousness with scientific thinking and the moral motives for actions with scientific calculations?
p These questions are more and more frequently discussed in the press, but the disputants often give diametrically opposite answers to them, adducing a large body of “facts” and “examples” to support their own versions of the truth. This should already put us on our guard against reference to “facts” as proof in the area under discussion. Apparently another path must be found to the resolution of the problem. In this article we will attempt to outline its contours within the framework of philosophy, assuming that this framework can place the analysis within a definite, historically evolved and objective system of thought, which will enable us to argue from the standpoint of theory rather than adopt the subjective "common sense" approach of one or another student of the problem.
p Making no claims for the formulation of categorical “propositions”, judgements or decisions, we wish only to present a possible (and apparently not the only) path to a philosophical analysis of the given question, drawing the reader’s attention to the method of reasoning as such.
p Theoretical thought differs from common sense above all in its systemic nature. Any theory represents a system possesing a base, an initial reference point for logical-theoretical movement, a fundamental concept of theory (the concept of essence) which is developed into a system called a theory. [131•1 From this viewpoint for example scientific theory is a specific aspect of theory. It differs from philosophical theory in its premises, the methods through which it is systematized, and, as we shall see later, in its object of research.
132p A. ARSENYEV
p From the standpoint of philosophy, the basic drawback of the numerous discussions on science and morality lies precisely in the lack of systematization and the argumentation "from the facts”. Any set of facts may be collated to another set opposed to the former. Therefore the disputants risk remaining rooted to their subjective points of view, to each his own. This occurs because facts per se do not exist. [132•1 The choice of empirical events, the formation from them of a scientific or philosophical fact, is a complex process, based on the individual’s mode of thinking, logic and attitude to reality—that which in studies of science is often called a paradigm.
p The failure to apprehend these premises forms the positivist illusion that science can be built solely on the basis of “facts”.
p But the apprehension of these premises outside the framework of history, outside the self-development of the individual as an historical subject, leads to the opposite assertion defending the a priori nature of theoretical foundations, for these premises, as well as moral principles, are not to be found within empirically given existence. Neither science nor morality can be understood without apprehending these historical foundations. One can only state the antinomic nature of science and "human values" and try to find out which is better (and what in the given instance does “better” signify?), knowledge taking values into account or values larded with knowledge.
Man’s continuing becoming in our day and age is the environment and basis analyzing which we can try to understand science, morality, and the relations between the two.
Notes
[130•1] TBO «riporperc». 1975
[131•1] See A. Arsenyev, V. Bibler, M. Kedrov, An Analysis of the Developing Concept, Parts I and 111, Moscow, 1967 (in Russian).
[132•1] This circumstance gave rise to the entire body of literature, both in the natural science and humanities. We refer the reader, for example, to Louis de Brouglie, Sur les sentiers de la science (Paris, 1960); Albert Einstein, Physic und Realitat; P. F. Preobrazhensky, Ancient Ideas and Images, Moscow, 1965, pp. 663-65; Istochnikovedenie, Moscow, 1964, pp. 59-101.