The sciences: unshakable knowledge?

Descartes, who instituted a quite reasonable and modest search for new standards of certainty in science, also had the vision of something much grander that might lie beyond them -- of an absolute, invulnerable certainty, an ideal form of knowledge which nothing could ever shake. This unreal vision has given endless trouble. It is not only excessive; it gives priority to the wrong sort of ambition. The kind of perfection at which the Cartesian project aims is the perfection of epistemic safety. It concentrates on knowledge, not because of any special view (such as Plato had) about what we need to know and why we need to know it, but because knowledge means security from error. By assuming that the possibility of error is the evil that must above all be avoided, it distracts (among other things) from asking about the various reasons why knowledge can be important. And . . . it systematically directs us away from interesting and important questions that possibly cannot be completely settled, and towards less interesting ones where the risk of error seems easier to control.
All this might not matter so much if the demand for unshakable certainty could be satisfied and then put aside. But it cannot. Its ideal is unattainable, going far beyond anything the sciences have ever delivered or could deliver. In all of them since Descartes's time, beliefs which were thought to be unshakable have been first shaken and then abandoned. Mary Midgley, Wisdom, Information, and Wonder: What Is Knowledge for? New York: Routledge, 1995, p.36.

Science is not morally neutral

In an article in The New Atlantis, Yuval Levin argues that science is not a morally neutral enterprise. He writes that, on the contrary, " . . . modern science was a profoundly moral enterprise, aimed at improving the condition of the human race, relieving suffering, enhancing health, and enriching life." One of Levin's sources for this is Francis Bacon. But Descartes also wrote, says Levin, in a similar vein, and in his Discourse on Method, he said that the "conservation of health" was the greatest good.

Here is Descartes, in his own words (translated into English):
". . . the preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one;" (public domain)

What's wrong with that? Levin says that this idea, that health is the primary good, is the unspoken assumption behind much of what we do today, not just in science. (He didn't say it, but consider hospitals. They are always adding on and remodeling, while, at least where I live, public schools are in outmoded, cramped, and even dangerous buildings. That says something very loud about our priorities.)

Levin does say this "And so when the pursuit of health through science and medicine conflicts with even the deepest commitments of modern life—to equality, to rights, to self-government, or to protection of the weak—science and medicine typically carry the day."

In his concluding paragraph, Levin writes that "The real challenge lies not in the tools that science gives us, but in the attitudes it forms in us. The trouble is not that technology can be used for both good and evil, but that people in the age of technology may have real trouble telling the difference between the two."

This is a warning that we should certainly heed.

Thanks for reading.