Are The Sciences Values-free

Are the sciences value-free? Are the sciences value-free? Although this looks like a simple question, the answer has severe consequences. Why? Because science, whatever it is, is one of the biggest discoveries of humankind. Science has arrived to the human understanding of reality and has changedalmost everything that we know. By answering the question, are the sciences value-free or not, we could get a better understanding of social values. It is important to approach this theme because science touches most of the thingsthat we know. The consequences of scientific discoveries have serious repercussions in the life of human beings. History can testify to that. For instance, scientific discoveries have had an significant role in our contemporaries’ wars. Science also, has been one of the causes between the enrichment of the richest country of the world and the impoverishment of the developing countries as well. Let´s add another question to the issue; which further repercussions would the morality values of science have, if any, in the understanding of our world? But, before continuing we can ask; what is science? In a restricted definition science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research. Science is quantifiable, telling us what is empirically true; it is about data and facts. Some scientist would say that science cannot discover values, because facts have no values: facts just are. Is that totally true? Could sciences be considered to have some kinds of values in spite of the objectivity that that discipline claims to have? More questions arrive to our essay; is the science free from political interests or any kind of evil power which would want to dominate the world? That question could look like the first line of a Hollywood movie. However, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Awtzwitch, Word War I-II, and so on can testify that the question is more than justifiable. For a better understanding of our prompt let´s take a look to the follow news. The report is about the financial aid that Obama´s government will give to the research in embryonic stem cells. WASHINGTON (March 2009) - Reversing Bush policy, President Barack Obama cleared the way for a significant increase in federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research and promised no scientific data will be "distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda." Obama's action reverses Bush's stem cell policy by undoing his 2001 directive that banned federal funding for research into stem lines created after Aug. 9, 2001. Fox News.

Why do we have two different political decisions about the financial aid on scientific research? Why does president Obama claim that those researches won´t be used or concealed for the government? What is the polemic behind that kind of scientific experiments? Why do two different

governments have very different opinions about the same topic? If the science is value-free why does the government have to intercede in this kind of situation? As we can see the issue here is not only about financial aid, but about two different perspectives in relation to a specific experiment. If the science only focuses itself in empirically true data and facts, why should we have to be worried about what our scientists do in the labs? For some groups, scientists for instance, we only need to discover what is true. It doesn´t matter the consequences of the discovery because that is not the field of science. Other groups such as religion, politics, philosophers of science,and so on, believe that each scientific discovery has its consequences. For instance, Harold Kincaid, professor at University of Alabama says: “Science is a human enterprise, so values inevitably come into play.” How can that be true? If it is true, is there not a contradiction based on the own definition of science? Let´s bring another perspective. Dr Robin Craig, Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of NSW believes that one of the shortcomings of science is that it “cannot give us values, or worse, it destroys the basis of values.” Moreover, Michael Crichton in his book Jurassic Park says something very interesting: "Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world... But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it ... And [the power science gives] will force everyone to ask the same question - What should I do with my power? - which is the very question science says it cannot answer."

Let´s take a look to other news. Few days ago, precisely, on April 13 2009, The UN security council condemned North Korea's rocket launch on 5 April, demanding an end to further launches and saying it will expand sanctions against the reclusive communist nation. North Korea carried out the launch in defiance of intense international pressure, claiming it had put a satellite in orbit which is allowed under a UN space treaty. The United States, Japan and South Korea claim North Korea was really testing long-range missile technology, which Pyongyang is banned from doing. Associated Press (2009).

Who has the last decision about scientific experiments? Who decides whether a scientific experiment should be allowed or not? Does science itself, scientists, or governments have the answer if a morality value judge is needed? Can we take some morality values from science or do we have to ask the political community about that? Is it true that science is just one of the best weapons of humankind? If that is true, and science is independent of morality values; who and how will we avoid that a scientific experiment destroys humankind? If science is a human enterprise, could we affirm that it is inevitable that values come into play?

From my point of view, as I quoted before: “Science is a human enterprise, so values inevitably come into play”. Yes, it is true that in the hard sciences is naïve or incoherent to talk about values. However, what is the main goal of those subjects. We shouldn´t forget that our researches, facts, and experiments are not disassociated from our main goals. What are our main goals? I will talk later about it. The fact that science is most related with the empirically word doesn´t imply that the way that the results of an experiment are interpreted are not affected for some kind of values. The result of every kind of experiment is stained with our preconceptions. Values and agendas most of the time compromise scientific objectivity. When the result of an experiment compromises the pocket of the sponsor the results must be changed. For instance, advances in the use of green technology have been hidden for many years in the automotive industry. After decades avoiding the use of alternatives sources of energy, General Motors, for example, have accepted, under the pressure of Obama´s Government, to change its system of production. In many situations scientistsbring their assumptions and biases to the lab or even more, to the final result of the experiment. Science is not only empirical data, facts or numbers but the result of sensitive data affected with humans values. Our contemporary progress, thanks to science, is always trying to define itself. Each era has its own definitions of values and who is valuable as well. Four centuries ago people who doesn´t look like a European person, weren´t considered human. One century ago our definition about who was human being and who deserved respect changed. Thanks to science the ideals and utopias which come from ethics values are having a strong support. If it is true that hard sciences: physics, math, astronomy, and so on, do not say anything about ethic and morality values, it is also true that our knowledge, our reason and our capacity to understand the world, have addressed us to a better comprehension of our human rights. Science is about reason, and our reason most of the time let us know what is the correct direction to gain our dreams of a better world. Our knowledge has been used to sustained horrible causes. However it is more what we have gained in the progress of our civilization than the things that we have loose. It is true that science doesn´t let us know by itself what is good or evil. Nevertheless, science, as one of the most perfect projections of what a human being is, has a rational basis for values. As professor Kincaid says, rational thought which comes from science is “the prime virtue…from which the other virtues such as integrity, justice, productivity and pride are derived.” Some ideas come against my opinion about science and its connection with values. For instance, there are people who believe that science cannot help us decide what to do or how to live with values. Those people sustain that the main purpose of science is no more and no less than to learn facts about reality, and values are not reality.

Additionally, in the scientific community, there are certain sorts of pessimism which sustain that science itself has destroyed any root of values. I want to share Bryan Appleyard´s ideas as an example of that kind of thought. Mr. Appleayard is a British journalist author of the book Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man. This summary appeared in the Weekend Australian of June 6-7, 1992, Weekend Review 4): The oddest thing about the science I have been describing is not simply that it creates a cosmic machine that does not need us, but that science only actually works on the assumption that we do not exist ... The scientific world view has denied us an external anchor for our values ... Science implicitly denies the self its place in the world and its source of values. So the self resorts, finally, to a pagan art devoted to its own cultivation and worship ... If you do not believe in any ultimate mystery in the world, then there can be no ultimate mystery in the human self...

From this perspective science seems to be a creation of human beings, a grown up monster that hasabandoned its creator. The point of view above presented, doesn´t only affirms science as value-free, but even more also claims science as destructive of values. To defend my arguments against those who considerer science as value-free I will use Habermas´ ideas. Habermas, in his book Knowledge and Human Interests, shares the thought that knowledge is rooted in universal human interests. According to Habermas every kind of interests, and each type of knowledge – natural science, human science, criticaltheory – should do their job working in harmony with each other. Habermas considered that all problems begin when knowledge is reduced to the knowledge of nature that we get from the physical and natural sciences. “It is the abuse of the physical and natural sciences and their technological model of rationality that causes our social problems”: says Habermas. According to this philosopher the fact that science and technological rationality have been abused and misused, as Marcuse, Nietzsche, and Heidegger believe, doesn´t imply that science and technology are inherently dangerous through society. Science still has a liberating potential. Habermas believes that the potential of science is based upon the beneficial dimensions of science application for the improvement of human life. Moral and ethical values do not belong only to the metaphysical world. The reason and all the knowledge of human being, you can call it science, technology or whatever you want, have a main value from where other values are derived. That value is the human life. The virtue of that life is the rational thinking from the other “virtues such as integrity, justice, productivity and pride are derived”. It is up to us to deny or to accept what our reason is calling us to do. The respect of human life and the search for the ideals of humanity, directly or indirectly, are the main goals of all the sciences. We should keep trying and never give up on making those goals reality.