How should nontechnological solutions be judged?
Most members of the National Association for Science, Technology, and Society are teachers of engineering and science in the United States. But their annual Technology Literacy Conference brings them together with individuals from many backgrounds and many countries who are concerned with giving students and the public a realistic view of the advantages and disadvantages of modern technology. We thought our readers might be interested in some excerpts from a paper presented at this conference by Dr. David K. Nartonis, a member of the Committee on Publication staff of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Christian Science is not an antitechnology culture. Christian Scientists say that they normally forgo medical therapies much as an environmentalist might reject a particular technology such as chlorofluorocarbon aerosol sprays. Christian Scientists do not find medical therapies to be the best solution to the problem of maintaining health, given their particular values. They feel they are choosing the approach to health care that is most likely to keep them alive and healthy and believe they have a good enough overall record to deserve to practice this approach.
Many Christian Scientists who were raised in the medical tradition and came later in life to this denomination will tell you that they believe Christian Science works better for them than the medical tradition they left behind. Members of this denomination would not, however, be comfortable with a simplistic comparison of their holistic approach with the very different approach to health offered by modern medicine.
Dr. Nartonis then proceeded to raise a number of questions that conference participants might ask students to consider in classroom discussions. The questions that follow focused on the recent tendency of the press and some public officials to judge Christian Science only on its isolated failures and to ignore its century-long record of success:
What constitutes a scientifically literate approach to public policy? Is it scientific and rational to judge the solution to a problem by considering only its successes? Or only its failures? When considering alternative solutions, is it scientific to refuse to consider the overall record of any one of them? If this is unscientific and irrational, what are the implications of the state's acting in this way?
What does this say about the state's possible approach to other technologies? Might the state establish nuclear power and refuse to consider the advantages of alternatives? Might the state develop a preference for genetic engineering and then judge alternatives only on their failures?
When a technology becomes preferred by experts and state-sponsored—like medicine or nuclear power—should this end the toleration for and consideration of alternatives? What are the advantages of state-sponsored technologies? What are the dangers?
What arguments might be made for and against permitting many alternate approaches to health care? What arguments might be made for and against allowing technological and non-technological approaches to exist side by side? Is there a bias in our society today in favor of technological and against non-technological solutions to human problems?
...Scientific literacy should include an awareness of the fact that not all solutions to a given problem can be assessed by the same procedures. A scientific and rational judgment requires the use of measures that are appropriate to each proposed solution.
[Any] model that judges the accepted technological approach on its overall record, but judges nontechnological alternatives only on their failures, clearly brings into question the scientific literacy of [those involved]....
The participants at this conference, which was held in February in Washington, D.C., included philosophers, English professors, attorneys, theologians, and textbook authors. Among the topics considered were the effect of technology on the environment, the ethics of scientific experimentation, sexism in the teaching of science and technology, the effect of technology on non-Western cultures, and sensational reporting of science and technology in the press.
In commenting on his participation in this conference, Dr. Nartonis told us he was reminded several times of Mary Baker Eddy's statement "As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany).
