1. Give a brief note on the different ethical outlook that science has brought
into the society.
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Less than 500 years ago, science was a dangerous business. In 1600, the Italian monk Giordano Bruno was sentenced to death and burned at the stake because he believed in free thinking in philosophy and science. Galileo Galilei narrowly avoided the same fate but only by publicly renouncing his support of Copernicus’ heliocentric view. Of course, the days of autodafés are over and modern science has an important influence on the development of society as a whole, compared with the days of the ill-fated Bruno. But while scientific progress has been rapid and astonishing, it is still disturbing for those people who feel excluded from the debate surrounding the application of science in new technologies and products. Furthermore, as scientific progress becomes increasingly fundamental to society, it is constantly challenging if not completely clashing with long-held beliefs concerning our ethical values. It is, therefore, necessary to conduct ethical discussions in order to adapt the use of scientific knowledge—namely new forms of technology—to a general context that is in agreement with the basic principles of our civilisation. Scientists should be concerned about the use of scientific knowledge and they should address the ensuing ethical questions, both in general terms and in terms of their own work.
The word ‘ethics’ comes from the Greek word ‘ethos’, meaning custom or behaviour. The concept of ethics was originally proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle for the discussion of philosophical questions relating to daily life: the ‘ethike theoria’ deals with the study of, and gives criteria for the evaluation of human behaviour. Since then, ethics has become one of the major topics in Western philosophy when debating social and individual values, their relationship and their hierarchy in society. Today, the meaning of ‘ethics’ is more or less equivalent to that of ‘morals’, which comes from the Latin word ‘mos, moris’ and also means custom or behaviour, but at a more personal level. Moralists, such as Nietzsche, Santayana and Russell, claim that ethical values are rather personal interpretations, deliberations or preferences and not general principles that can be proven true or false. John Ziman, the former Chairman of the Council for Science and Society, interprets ethics not as an abstract discipline but as a way of dealing with differing opinions that arise when traditional values are faced with new realities (Ziman, 2001).
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