Signs of the Times

Jacob Bronowski

The Saturday Evening Post

Dr. Jacob Bronowski in The Saturday Evening Post Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Few believe that science has a conscience. Most people think themselves generous if they allow that science is neutral and that its findings can be used either for good or for evil. These people imply, of course, that what is good and what is evil cannot be judged by the standards of science. Science, they say, tells us only what is true and what is false; and they insist that true and false are quite different standards from good and evil. True and false, they say, are matters of fact; but good and evil are matters of conscience which lie on a different plane.

This separation of the true and the false from good and evil is destructive of sound morality. For it removes morality from the tests by which we judge the things that happen around us every day, and makes it something remote from our practical lives.... Our habits, particularly our habits of thought, are shifting profoundly. In every field of human welfare ... we learn that we can truly judge the actions of others only when we understand their motives.

In such a time it is a disaster to think that the difference between knowledge and ignorance is somehow more trivial than the difference between good and evil. True humanity is understanding —understanding Nature and understanding man. This is why there is no human warmth unless wisdom and goodness are linked together and are seen as facets of our character which cannot be separated....

Science is not a mere collection of discoveries, an album of facts and theories that have been established once and for all. Science is the process of discovery itself, a living process. It is not what scientists know that matters to them, but what they do not know; and what drives them is the urge to know more. In short, knowledge is a form of experience for the scientist—as, indeed, it is for all of us.... What matters is not the experience that we have had but the experience that we are having.... The truth we are looking for in science is something at the center of things: it has to fit the facts, but it has to be much deeper, more coherent than the mere facts. [Published November 12, 1960.]

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March 11, 1961

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