First Reith Lecture - a disappointment

In 1960, C P Snow delivered a lecture entitled "The moral un-neutrality of science".

In 2010, Martin Rees delivered the first of his Reith Lectures, entitled "The Scientific Citizen".

In comparison to the former, the latter is very disappointing, though in many respects the subject matter of the two lectures is the same. Read the two lectures - perhaps read C P Snow's lecture first - and make your own judgement.

C P Snow is willing to discuss the idea of truth, the idea that scientists are motivated by a search for the truth of things, a desire to know what is there; and that this constitutes a moral component at the heart of the scientific enterprise.

The desire to find the truth is itself a moral impulse, or at least contains a moral impulse.

He also highlights the moral problem faced by those scientists who, like many of his friends, worked on military projects of one type or another, or who, like himself, took on a scientific role in the Civil Service.

I can put the result in a sentence: I was hiding behind the institution, I was losing the power to say 'No'.

He also indicates another moral imperative in the life of the scientific community, one that arises from the particular knowledge that scientists might have, and their specific knowledge of the outcomes to which their work might be directed.

It throws upon scientists a direct and formal responsibility. It is not enough to say scientists have a responsibility as citizens. They have a much greater one than that, and one of a different kind. For scientists have a moral imperative to say what they know. ... It is a duty which seems to me to live in the moral nature of the scientific activity itself.

Like, C P Snow, Professor Rees addresses in his lecture the role of the scientist in relation to society as a whole. Though both lectures refer to science as a "self-correcting system" (Professor Rees qualifies the phrase by the word "generally", and we might read something of significance into that), they mean that in quite different ways. I don't think you will find the word "truth" anywhere in Professor Rees' lecture. In its stead, there are phrases like "Science is 'organised skepticism'" or the following, which suggests concensus as an epistemological principle for science:

... what's crucial in sifting error and validating scientific claims is open discussion.... The imperative for open-ness is a common thread through all the examples I've discussed. It ensures that any scientific concensus that emerges is robust and firmly grounded.

Open discussion, understood as freedom of enquiry, is a clear pre-requisite for the anxiety to discover the truth that C P Snow sees in the scientific enterprise; but in itself it is not sufficient as an epistemological prinicple for the enterprise that is science. For Professor Rees, it is quite natural then to focus the attention of his lecture on the relationship between scientists and the media who are able to promote - or undermine - the concensus of the scientific community to the whole of society.

Professor Rees very subtly separates the scientific enterprise from any intrinsic ethical impulse:

.... political decisions are seldom purely scientific. The involve ethics, economis and social policies as well. And in domains beyond their special expertise, scientists speak just as citizens.

In some ways, Professor Rees' concluding paragraph is akin to C P Snow's view of the responsibility of scientists to "say what they know" - but I think it is also fundamentally different:

...professionals have special obligations to engage .... Scientists shouldn't be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should try to foster benign spin-offs - commercial or otherwise. And they should resist, as far as they can, dubious or threatening applications

There's a widening gap between what science allows us to do and what it's prudent or ethical actually to do - there are doors that science could open but which are best left closed. Everyone should engage with these choices but their efforts must be leveraged by 'scientific citizens' - scientists from all fields of expertise - engaging, from all political perspectives, with the media, and with a public attuned to the scope and limit of science.

Because of its lack of reference to truth, does not Professor Rees offer us a picture of science that is ethically/morally pragmatic? And, at a time when religious belief is playing an increasingly significant part in society, where does Professor Rees offer any basis for a dialogue between science and religion?

We may never discover how the Universe ticks

We may never discover how the Universe ticks
Our brains are limited. It may take a posthuman species to work out the big questions

 
These are the headline and strapline to a column in today's Times. The column is written by Professor Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal Professor Rees is the 2010 Reith Lecturer. The subject of his lectures will be "Scientific Horizons", and his article in today's Times trails that theme.

Science is a global culture ... It’s a cultural deprivation not to appreciate the panorama offered by modern cosmology and Darwinian evolution — the chain of emergent complexity leading from some still-mysterious beginning to atoms, stars and planets. And how, on our planet, life emerged and evolved into a biosphere containing creatures with brains able to ponder their origins. This common understanding should transcend all national differences — and all faiths too.

I do rather like this observation. For the person of religious faith, the failure to appreciate the picture of the world offered by modern science can only leave their faith lacking in the richness that it should have. An opposition to an evolutionary perspective cannot, in my view, be considered as a matter arising from Christian belief. Fundamentalism, or more precisely, a form of fideism on this point does an injustice to both science and faith. Rather, this field of science is a field for dialogue between the secular world and the world of religious belief.
 
One might be a bit cautious about Professor Rees' last sentence and want to clarify that the common understanding he suggests should be shared with all nations and religions rather than it being a case of an exclusively scientific understanding taking dominance over nations and religions.

...Einstein would have been specially gratified at how our cosmic horizons have expanded. Our Sun is one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is itself one of many billion of galaxies in range of our telescopes. And there is firm evidence that these all emerged from a hot dense “beginning” nearly 14 billion years ago.

Other sciences have advanced apace, disclosing the nature of atoms, genes and cells. Last year, we celebrated Charles Darwin’s anniversary. His pioneering insights are pivotal to our understanding of all life on Earth, and the vulnerability of our environment to human actions.

I found it striking that Professor Rees would cite much the same aspects of the universe revealed to us by science as those cited by Pope Benedict XVI when speaking about the Trinity in June 2009.

Oh, and there are one or two irreverent/amusing comments to the online version of Professor Rees' article!
The first of the Professor's Reith Lectures is to be broadcast tomorrow and I expect that, as in all recent years, the text and an audio recording of the lectures will appear on the Radio 4 page dedicated to the lectures.

Reith Lecture: Morality in Politics

One of the benefits of my flexible working arrangements is that I sometimes catch a radio programme I would otherwise miss. Sometimes it is Woman's Hour, and sometimes it is something interesting. This morning, it was the second of this year's Reith Lectures on Radio 4.

The Reith Lectures are an annual series of broadcast lectures, on a question of significant contemporary interest. The 2009 lectures are about "A New Citizenship". The lecturer, Professor Michael Sandel, has studied the idea of a "politics of the common good". This page on the Reith Lectures website gives an introduction to the lecturer.

A transcript of the first lecture can be downloaded from this page. I listened to this last week, but have not yet studied it in detail. I think it would be interesting to read this transcript along with my posts earlier this year about Professor Philip Booth's lecture at Westminster Cathedral: here and here. I think the question of "self-interest" and "selfishness" which Professor Booth addresses particularly in the second of these posts is also addressed by the Reith lecture.

A transcript of the second lecture can be downloaded from this page. This is a very interesting lecture, arguing as it does for a proper place for a moral and religious discourse in the political sphere. Professor Sandel argues against the idea of a moral space in the political sphere that is "neutral".

Many people shudder at the prospect. “Isn’t it dangerous?”, they ask, “to bring morality and religion into politics? Isn’t it safer for a government to try to be neutral and avoid taking sides on the moral and religious convictions its citizens espouse?” I say no, not necessarily, for two reasons. First, it’s often not possible for government to be neutral on substantive moral questions; and, second, the attempt to do so can make for an impoverished public discourse.

I hope that, with the following quotation, I am successfully extracting the essence of Professor Sandel's argument, whilst abstracting from his exemplification:

So this idea that there are certain proper ends or purposes to social practices, this idea suggests that to determine the right way of valuing things, we have to figure out the purpose, the end of the social practice in question. And this idea is an idea that goes all the way back to Aristotle. ....

Most people would agree that flutes are for the sake of producing music. What happens if people disagree about the purpose of the activity in question? Is it possible to reason about the purpose of social practices in the face of disagreement? Aristotle believes that it is, and I think he’s right.

The advocacy of reason here is a theme that is reminiscent of Pope Benedict XVI, speaking for example, in the context of the university (cf the La Sapienza controversy). Professor Sandel continues:

.... debates about rights are often unavoidably debates about the purpose of social institutions, the goods they allocate, and the virtues they honour and reward.

And this is, of course, something to which equalities advocates wish to remain, at a best interpretation, indifferent and at a worst interpretation, hostile. Professor Sandel follows this argument through in a detailed discussion of the question of legal recognition of same-sex relations. Well worth reading in the transcript of the lecture.

Another interesting point made at the very end of the lecture is an argument for a more robust recognition of difference or disagreement in society.

But if, as I’ve argued, it’s not possible for government to be neutral on these disagreements, is it nonetheless possible to conduct our politics on the basis of mutual respect? The answer, I think, is yes. In recent decades, we’ve come to assume that respecting our fellow citizens’ moral and religious convictions means ignoring them, leaving them undisturbed, conducting our public life in so far as possible without reference to them. But this stance of avoidance makes for a spurious respect. Often it means suppressing moral disagreement rather than actually avoiding it. This in turn provokes backlash and resentment, as we see in the rise of religious fundamentalism. A more robust public engagement with our moral disagreements could provide a stronger, not a weaker basis for mutual respect. What would that look like? Well rather than avoid the moral and religious convictions of our fellow citizens, we should attend to them more directly - sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening and learning from them. It is always possible that learning more about a moral or religious doctrine will lead us to like it less, but we cannot know until we try. A politics of moral engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. If it’s true, as I’ve tried to argue, that our debates about justice are often inescapably arguments about the good life, then a politics of moral engagement is also a more promising basis for a just society. Thank you very much.

In the discussion after the lecture, a question was asked by one Dr Evan Harris MP, who represents a constituency near the Oxford venue of this second lecture.

HARRIS: Thank you. I do a lot of public policy on abortion and gay rights and assisted dying and embryos, and it seems to me that it’s not the morality that’s missing on either side. I come from the non-religious side and I would say that I bring morality - the principle of non-discrimination, the principle of not harming someone unless there’s evidence that your policy creates harm. Obviously the religious side bring their morality. But one side, I think, tends to bring evidence and an acceptance that their position might change with evidence; whereas another side, the religious side, is much less likely to accept and consider evidence and bring that to the table because their moral position is relatively absolute. And so shouldn’t we be arguing that we should bring evidence into the moral arguments, where appropriate, not bring morality in when it’s already there on both sides?

MICHAEL SANDEL: I agree with what may be the impulse behind your worry, which is that if people simply assert dogmas rather than offer reasons and listen to the reasons given by their interlocutors in public debate, that’s not a very valuable contribution. Where I think you and I may disagree is on this. I don’t think that those who enter into public discourse and advance moral arguments that may be informed by faith traditions, I don’t think they have a monopoly on dogmatic assertions. I think there are dogmatic secularists, just as there are dogmatic religious fundamentalists.

Professor Sandel might have answered more strongly on the grounds of reason providing the common ground for a contribution of a religious believer just as much as the contribution of the secularist. But, on air, his answer came over ever so wonderfully ...