The multiple connections between science and ethics

response to Stephen Toulmin

Loren R. Graham

pp. 425-438

in: Daniel Callahan, Tristram Engelhardt (eds), The roots of ethics, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

Stephen Toulmin's attempt to answer the question, "How can we reconnect the sciences with the foundations of ethics?" contains a great many observations with which I entirely agree. His belief that we have recently passed through a period (a generation or two) in which an extreme and historically conditioned effort was made to achieve a complete divorce between science and values is, in my opinion, correct. His observation (and prediction) that this era is now coming to an end, and will not soon be repeated, is supported by current controversies in many scientific fields. Equally helpful is his suggested alternative of a 'series of spectra" to the "value-free" picture of science that has reigned in much of Western Europe and America in past decades.

Cited authors

Toulmin Stephen