SCIENCE AND ETHICS
pROFESSOR A. V. HILL, the Duke of Edin- burgh's successor in the Presidency of the British Association, could have chosen no more immediate and important question for his presidential address at Belfast on Wednesday than the relation between science and ethics—with particular reference, inevitably, to the use of such weapons as the atomic bomb. If the problem posed were simple a President of the British Association would not waste his audience's time by discussing it. It only becomes simple when the distinction between the exploratory work of science and the application of the fruits of scientific discovery are emphasised. The former involves intellectual qualities, the latter moral. " The fundamental principle of scientific work," said Dr. Hill, " is unbending integrity of thought, following the evidence of fact wherever it may lead." No one will question that as a motive. But then ? A general maxim of scientists, particularly in the field of medicine, is that discoveries— penicillin, streptomycin, cortisone—should be made the property of the whole world for the common benefit. But, asks Dr. Hill, what of the research chemist in a great industrial establishment ? Is he to share his discoveries with trade rivals ? Or the development of radar by Sir Robert Watson Watt and others—should that have been kept secret ? Radar was primarily defensive, but, pursues Dr. Hill relentlessly, if the best defence is offence, as it often is, must not the same diligence be devoted to the development of secret offensive weapons ?
Scientists are employed by Governments or private firms to make discoveries, and while the scientist must have the same freedom of conscience as any other citizen " freedom does not extend to giving away other people's property, whether of goods or of knowledge." There is unquestionably a moral duty on society to decide how the discoveries of science should be applied, and whether some of them should be applied at all. But what of the individual scientist himself ? If Rutherford had foreseen to what the splitting of the atom might lead should he have dropped his researches at the outset—knowing that another scientist elsewhere might go on where he had stopped, and confer on the country he worked for supreme military offensive power ? In the end there is no answer to these essential questions but for humanity to face them on an inter- national scale, leaving the scientists to " follow the evidence of fact wherever it may lead," but banning by common agreement the use of those discoveries against whose application its moral sense rebels. That is a moral problem in whose solution scientists as scientists can give no help. The community, in approaching it, as the Duke of Edinburgh most rightly added, must base itself on Christian principles.
