Under the Microscope: The purpose of science is to uncover the natural mechanisms that underpin the workings of the natural world.
It differs from the arts and humanities, including religion, in that its mature conclusions pretty much win universal approval amongst its scientist practitioners. Science strives to produce objective general statements, whereas the arts and humanities act in areas of personal and social knowledge where what is true for one person is not necessarily so for another. One enormously important area of personal knowledge, on which science is silent, is ethics. Science discovers powerful and successful ways of intervening in nature but it cannot tell us whether we should or should not use these interventions.
Science strives to be impersonal. If I carry out a successful piece of research, write up the results and submit the paper to a professional journal, the paper will be automatically rejected if I write the account in the first person. I cannot say "I did X"; I must say "X was done". Also, my conclusions must be based only on the experimental data I have produced. I cannot say, for example, "the authors have a very good feeling about this particular approach and feel sure that its widespread adoption by others would yield fruitful results."
Almost all scientific experts in a field will agree, within narrow limits, on the merits of any particular paper written in that field. On the other hand, it would excite no surprise at all if three experienced theatre critics wrote three quite different reviews of the same performance of a play.
This does not mean either that one reviewer is right and two are wrong, or that they are all wrong. They can each be right because we are dealing here with personal knowledge and not an objective general statement.
Again, say three poets and three scientists were asked to analyse the same beautiful sunrise. Poet number one may wax lyrical about the beauty of the scene and the grandeur of the dawn chorus. Poet number two may write very sadly about natural life going on regardless on the day his beloved is to be buried. Poet number three may ecstatically celebrate the birth of a new day, the very day his first child is due to be born. Three beautiful poems, all personal knowledge, each very different from the others, and all entirely legitimate.
Now for the scientists. Each will note the precise compass bearings of the point on the horizon where the sun rises and the exact time when the full disc clears the horizon. They will each take spectroscopic readings of the sun's illumination, and so on. The scientists' reports will all tally closely with each other, and if they don't you will know that something is wrong. Uniformity is expected and it is highly valued. On the other hand, if the three poets came back, each with the same poem, you would think they were a pretty useless lot. Uniformity is valued in science; in the arts and humanities uniformity is merely boring. (Further discussion in Rebuilding the Matrix by Denis Alexander - Lion Publishing, 2001)
Neither can science tell you whether you will like something, or what will make you happy. Happiness and contentment are personal choices. If we want guidance in this area we must look to literature, religion, philosophy and so on. And scientific analysis cannot describe the emotions you feel when listening to a haunting melody, looking at a beautiful countryside, seeing your child come in first, or last, in a schools sports race. To describe these important human feelings you must resort to arts and humanities.
Science, and its creature, science-based technology, have transformed the world, and, in the process, have generated a host of issues that call for ethical guidance. For example, scientific breakthroughs have led to the development of biological technologies such as cloning and genetic engineering, but science cannot tell us whether or not we should use these technologies, and, if we do use them, for what particular applications.
The application of science produced nuclear weapons. Servicing world-wide electrical power production, an application of science, has pumped huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Science promises to discover cures for many horrible illnesses, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, etc, if it can uninhibitedly work on embryonic stem cells.
Unfortunately, however, harvesting stem cells from embryos kills the embryo. What should we do? The list goes on and on.
Decisions on what applications of science are ethical cannot be left to scientists to decide, nor indeed do scientists seek this responsibility. Such decisions must be made by society as a whole and the matter is usually delegated to ethics committees, whose membership is drawn from the main stakeholders in society: representatives from the major religions, trades unions, political parties, and from the philosophical, scientific, medical and legal professions.
I am running out of steam, so I will end with a story that has an ethical dimension. A lawyer took his client ice-fishing. While they were sitting around the hole in the ice, a polar bear, with a hungry look in his eye, started charging them from half a mile off. The lawyer immediately pulled off his ice boots and started putting on a pair of tennis sneakers. The client said, "We're doomed - you can't outrun a polar bear; their top speed is 40 miles an hour!" The lawyer calmly replied, "I don't have to outrun the bear - I just have to outrun you!"
• William Reville is associate professor of Biochemistry and Public Awareness of Science Officer, UCC. http://understandingscience.ucc.ie