ABSTRACT. Values intersect with science in three primary ways. First, there are values, particularly epistemic values, which guide scientific research itself. Second, the scientific enterprise is always embedded in some particular culture and values enter science through its individual practitioners, whether consciously or not. Finally, values emerge from science, both as a product and process, and may be redistributed more broadly in the culture or society. Also, scientific discoveries may pose new social challenges about values, though the values themselves may be conventional. Several questions help guide disciplined inquiry into ethics and values.
1. Introduction
A fundamental feature of science, as conceived by most scientists, is that it deals with facts, not values. Further, science is objective, while values are not. These benchmarks can offer great comfort to scientists, who often see themselves as working in the privileged domain of certain and permanent knowledge. Such views of science are also closely allied in the public sphere with the authority of scientists and the powerful imprimatur of evidence as "scientific". Recently, however, sociologists of science, among others, have challenged the notion of science as value-free and thereby raised questions--especially important for emerging scientists--about the authority of science and its methods.
The popular conceptions--both that science is value-free and that objectivity is best exemplified by scientific fact--are overstated and misleading. This does not oblige us, however, to abandon science or objectivity, or to embrace an uneasy relativism. First, science does express a wealth of epistemic values and inevitably incorporates cultural values in practice. But this need not be a threat: some values in science govern how we regulate the potentially biasing effect of other values in producing reliable knowledge. Indeed, a diversity of values promotes more robust knowledge where they intersect. Second, values can be equally objective when they require communal justification and must thereby be based on generally accepted principles. In what follows, I survey broadly the relation of science and values, sample important recent findings in the history, philosophy and sociology of science, and suggest generally how to address these issues (this essay is adapted from Allchin, 1998).
Bless...
No point, really...
Phil was right...
