Abstract
IN the April number of State Service, the journal of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants, Prof. H. Levy contributes an interesting article on this topic. The social consequences, he says, that have flowed in the wake of technical advance stand now in such clear outline that even scientific men, traditionally concerned only with the internal content of their work and not with its external repercussions, are beginning to lose their complacency. In the past, the scientific method excluded from its scope all matters involving prejudice, desire, bias or purpose, and was purely objective in character. In the logic of the physical sciences, human desires play no part, but in the social sciences they are fundamental. The pursuit of science is essentially a co-operative activity and is therefore socially conditioned. It is directed to an end, and that end is its social purpose, but since the direction which scientific investigation takes is in this way socially determined, science itself becomes one of the determining factors of society. It improves the technical level of production; it introduces new factors into the way of living for the population; it affects their cultural interests; it creates new needs and therefore arouses new hopes and desires. In almost every walk of life, laws of detailed social behaviour on which action is based are already recognised. Is it too much to suggest that here in small detail are the kinds of regularities and recurrences that make a science possible? Are we not therefore entitled to expect corresponding regularities, perhaps deeper and more far-reaching, on a large scale, and as a consequence, since society is dynamic, a logic of social change? Since science is itself a motivating factor in that change, its study is a scientific responsibility.
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Science and Social Responsibility. Nature 135, 758 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135758a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135758a0