May 18, 2000 / The British Times / Editorial
Science has not become the greatest instrument for discovering the truth about the natural world without, according to this editorial, making enemies. The Church, its traditional antagonist, has patched up an uneasy peace, with even the Vatican conceding that its treatment of Galileo and Giordano Bruno may have been immoderate. But into the breach has stepped the Prince of Wales, who, in concluding the BBC's Reith Lectures on Radio 4 last night, launched a heartfelt assault on modern science. His views will strike a chord with those who prefer the mysteries of nature to remain mysterious.
To them science is a good servant but a poor master. Happy to benefit from rapid transport, good health, plentiful food and the luxury of having time to think, they nevertheless deprecate the process which has brought about these improvements in the human condition. Science, they feel, is always on the verge of going too far.
Prince Charles, heir to an honourable British tradition which runs back at least as far as John Ruskin and William Morris, pines for a world of unspoilt nature, hand crafts, and meadows bursting with spring flowers. So do we all, in some part of our psyche. But in truth there is nothing very natural about such rural dreams. They were the creation of an earlier epoch of science, not of the truly natural processes which shaped the Earth before mankind began to take a hand. To prefer them is simply to favour old technology over new.
More worrying are Prince Charles's appeals to "instinctive wisdom" which he sets in antithesis to scientific rationalism. It is this "heartfelt awareness," he says, which provides the most reliable guide to whether or not our actions are really in the long-term interests of our planet. This is nonsense and, moreover, dangerous nonsense. When people appeal to the instincts and imply they embody a truth to be valued above the intellect, they move onto treacherous ground.
That said, it is clear that the Prince, in attacking science, speaks for a substantial number of people. While the cosmological theories over which Galileo faced the Inquisition no longer have the power to shock, and Darwin's challenge to established religion has been absorbed, the new science of genetics has stirred up very similar fears. These take two forms.
Genetic engineering seems to challenge the sanctity of life itself, while sociobiology claims to explain every human action and motivation by means of the "selfish gene" hypothesis.
In advancing on both these fronts, some scientists have been guilty of immodesty and overstatement. Triumphalism is never attractive, and while the achievements of genetics have been formidable indeed, it stirs up fears and generates resentments to exaggerate them. Scientism - the excessive belief in the power of science - is a sin to which some leading scientific popularisers are prone. It is no surprise that they have inspired opposition.
The long-term question is whether the values of science and those of the Prince can be reconciled. The question is of more than academic importance, for a growth in anti-scientific sentiments would have damaging effects on future prosperity. Already it is plain that if the West turns its back on GM crops, they will be developed in China, perhaps with fewer safeguards than would be insisted upon here. The chances are that a true reconciliation is impossible, because the two value systems are incommensurable. The best we can hope for is that they can learn to coexist, just as Ruskin did, uneasily, with 19th-century capitalism. To achieve that, both sides must learn to speak more moderately.
(posted without permission)
