Above all, do no harm

Haldane's response to this obvious objection reflects all the arrogance described in the first part of this essay: I have superior scientific knowledge of this subject and can therefore be trusted to forecast future potentials and dangers; from what I know of chemistry, and from what I have learned from the data of World War I, chemical weapons will remain both effective and relatively humane and should therefore be further developed.

One of the grounds given for objection to

science is that science is responsible for such horrors as those of the late War. "You

scientific men (we are told) never think of the possible applications of your discoveries.

You do not mind whether they are used to

kill or to cure. Your method of thinking,

doubtless satisfactory when dealing with

molecules and atoms, renders you insensible

to the deference between right and wrong."

. . . The objection to scientific weapons

such as the gases of the late War, and such

new devices as may be employed in the

next, is essentially an objection to the

unknown. Fighting with lances or guns,

one can calculate, or thinks one can

calculate, one's chances. But with gas or

rays or microbes one has an altogether

different state of affairs. Poisonous gas had

a great moral effect, just because it was new

and incomprehensible. As long as we

permit ourselves to be afraid of the novel

and unknown, there will be a very great

temptation to use novel and unknown

weapons against us .... What 1

have said about mustard gas

might be applied, mutatis

mutandis, to most other

applications of science to human

life. They can all, I think, be

abused, but none perhaps is

always evil; and many, like

mustard gas, when we have got

over our first not very rational

objections to them, turn out to be,

on the whole, good.

In fact, Haldane didn't even grant moral arguments--or the imposition of moral restraints-any role at all in the prevention of war. He adopted the same parochial and arrogant position, still all too common among scientists, that war could be ended only by rational and scientific research: "War will be prevented only by a scientific study of its causes, such as has prevented most epidemic diseases."

I am no philosopher, and I do not wish to combat Haldane's argument on theoretical grounds here. Let us look instead at the basic empirical evidence, unwittingly presented by Haldane himself in Callinicus. And let me propose a test: If he is right, and scientific recommendations should be trusted because scientists can forecast the future in areas of their expertise, then the success of Haldane's own predictions will validate his approach.

I propose that two great impediments generally stand in the way of successful prediction: first, our inability, in principle, to know much about complex futures along the contingent and nondeterministic pathways of history; and second, the personal hubris that leads us to think we are acting in a purely and abstractly rational manner when our views are really motivated by unrecognized social and personal prejudices.