In his chapter “In Praise of Amateurs” in The Scientist as Rebel, Freeman Dyson describes the importance of amateur contributions to scientific inquiry by elaborating on the “ancient clash between two visions of the nature of science.”  According to its historical pathway in modernity, science has been characterized by two conflicting visions of practice.  The first is known as Baconian, named after Francis Bacon.  Baconian science seeks to examine every element and fact of nature as individual pieces of knowledge to be increasingly accumulated.  In contrast is the second type of science, Cartesian science, named after René Descartes.  Cartesian science seeks the grandeur of unified and finite laws of nature under which all natural phenomena can be explained.  According to the Dyson, both types of science are essential as they are complementary to each other within the overarching pursuit of scientific knowledge:

Francis Bacon

Baconian science is interested in details, Cartesian science is interested in ideas…We need Baconian scientists to explore the universe and find out what is there to be explained.  We need Cartesian scientists to explain and unify what we have found.

Dyson traces the evolution of individual fields of sciences as a three-phase transformation between Baconian and Cartesian science.  Roughly speaking, in the first phase of scientific inquiry within an individual field, Baconian science is dominant as the most important responsibility is that of simple discovery: figuring out what is there to explore.  In this phase, individual amateur scientists play the most important role.  In the second phase, Cartesian science takes over.  Professionals are called in to establish organizations and institutions to codify and unify the discoveries into comprehensive theories.  Finally, the third phase features a mixture of Cartesian and Baconian science, where “amateurs” are re-empowered to probe the frontiers of individual discovery while “professionals” continue to build upon and their unified theories.  The breaking into the third phase has much to do with technological advances enabled by the second phase:

René Descartes

In the third phase, cheap and powerful tools [arising from the second phase] give scientists of all kinds freedom to explore and explain.  The most important of the new tools is the personal computer, now universally accessible and giving amateurs the ability to do quantitative science.

Dyson describes astronomy as the paramount (and first) example of a field of science that has passed through the first two phases and broken into the third.  This is evidenced by the importance of amateurs in contemporary astronomy, who have alternative daytime jobs and moonlight as individual and personally motivated astronomers.  It is this collection of astronomers that creates a system of constant surveillance over the entire sky and leads to timely discoveries of transient astronomical phenomena, such as passing comets and cosmic collisions.

But it is not only astronomy in which this three-phase evolution can be seen.  Dyson explains that chemistry and physics are stuck for now in the second phase, but he predicts at the time of writing his essay that contemporary biology will be the next field of science to break into the third phase.  His prediction seems to be coming to fruition: as technology becomes cheaper and knowledge disseminates, the practice of genetic engineering has made its way into the private homes of amateurs.  The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American both released interesting articles (here and here) this year discussing these newly arrived amateur “biohackers.”

The Wall Street Journal describes the ease in which these amateurs can now enter the field in their own unique way, giving as an example the following:

She’s got a DNA “thermocycler” bought on eBay for $59, and an incubator made by combining a styrofoam box with a heating device meant for an iguana cage. A few months ago, she talked about her hobby on DIY Bio, a Web site frequented by biohackers, and her work was noted in New Scientist magazine.

Though the discussion of whether or not these at-home genetic engineers presents a threat to national and international security is certainly relevant, there is no doubt that these individual Baconian discoverers have much to contribute to the field.  The multitude of well-funded university and corporate research programs exploring the depths of molecular and genetic biology may dominate the field’s trajectory, but amateur biologists present to possibility of exploring specific phenomena that the official programs miss or are not funded to look at.  Scientific American cites Mackenzie Cowell, who started the DIY Bio blog in which “biohackers” share their information.  Cowell notes:

Perhaps this new breed of enthusiasts will create new interest and ideas for a field that has traditionally been the province of folks working in large, well-funded labs.

But is it just within the hard sciences that this Baconian-Cartesian complementary duality can be seen?  This duality also seems present in the areas of politics, national defense, and international security discourses.  It is useful to understand the Baconian-Cartesian duality as somewhat of a dichotomy, but as with all dichotomies, continuums or spectrums of understanding more accurately reflect reality.  In the field of politics, national defense, and international security, a multifarious collection of actors span the entire Baconian-Cartesian spectrum—from individual bloggers to think tanks to government agencies to the final-word policy makers.  And just as in the world of hard science, each of these approaches to topics in politics, defense, and security are complements to each other in intricate ways.  The Baconian “amateurs” explore into new ideas and areas of understanding and look for trends.  The Cartesian “professionals” are tasked with unifying the facts, trends, ideas, claims, and evidence into policy.

The Internet is the prime tool of amateurs in this third phase.  Just as the discovery of a comet or a new genetic sequence by an individual amateur scientist represents a contribution to an entire field of science, a single article or published viewpoint, when injected into the discursive arena presents the possibility, however large or small, of generating (or contributing to) an impact on the collective network of thought.

Such an impact is not only an extension of the Baconian-Cartesian duality, but also a feature of an open, deliberative democratic society.  Individuals are empowered to present their own viewpoints, understandings, and claims.  Within the micro-dynamics of discursive power, individual voices build upon and cut into each other in idiosyncratic ways to form final conceptual structures.  Even when some voices are stronger than others, it is the synthesis of all the voices that forms the final word.  The professionals may decide what that final word is, but the amateurs play an important role giving it shape.

Within the life sciences curriculum of colleges around the world exists an exigent academic gap.

History has exemplified the imperative for science scholars to contemplate the ethical, social, and political implications of their disciplines.  Max Weber characterized the traditional scientific ethos in his description of science as an isolated value sphere, one that should not be coupled with ethics and politics.  J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, exemplified this Weberian spirit in his contention that “the true responsibility of a scientist, as we know, is to the integrity and vigor of his science.”  However, after the use of the atomic bomb, the tremendous culpability felt and expressed by many of the Manhattan Project scientists, including Oppenheimer as well as Robert R. Wilson, signaled the rise of a new scientific ethos, one that cultivates an ethically, socially, and politically responsible self-identity for the scientist and science scholar.  At this nexus between science and responsibility lies the curricular gap of life sciences programs.  I write to you in the spirit of the new scientific ethos with the express purpose of recommending that you include the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC/BWC) as a mandatory component in the curriculum of undergraduate programs pertaining to the life sciences.

It should be incumbent upon institutions of higher learning—charged with the task of creating individuals who are simultaneously astute authorities of their fields and responsible citizens of the world—to inculcate their science scholars with a socially, politically, and ethically responsible ethos.  Equipped with this holistic approach, these scholars will be properly prepared to go forth and conscientiously implement their powerful knowledge while guarding against dangerous misuse or nefarious exploitation of this knowledge.  In the life sciences, this ethos involves legal responsibility: the BWC is an international legally binding treaty that has been signed and ratified by our nation.  In light of the notorious dual-use dilemma of the life sciences, a large cohort from the international science community united with policymakers and diplomats have in the past two decades increasingly voiced deep concerns over irresponsible decision-making that is at odds with the obligations and objectives of the BWC.  They have declared the need to institute a global culture of bioethics, awareness, and codes of conduct.  Industry’s control over the life sciences continues to rise, and many worry about the possibility for advertent and inadvertent social, political, or physical damage as a result of reckless science—that is, science exclusively concerned with raw technical and industrial advances at the expense of considering its potentially problematic effects.

The BWC provides a foundational framework within which these dangers may be mitigated, but the BWC by itself is insufficient for executing such a formidable task.  The life sciences disciplines and industries cannot be dealt with as a single, autonomous organism.  Ultimately, individual people making individual choices on a daily basis determine the trajectory of the life sciences.  Thus, in order to achieve efficacy, the BWC must be applied and demonstrated on the basis of the individual scientist.  Moreover, a common grievance concerning the BWC is its lack of a verification protocol.  This unfortunate deficiency, whether a result of verification being impracticable or a result of complex politics, also places greater accountability and responsibility for compliance on individual states and individual actors within those states.  To comprehensively ensure compliance with the BWC and foster a conscientious eye toward maintaining global safety and security, individuals (in addition to governments) must be directly exposed to the material of the BWC.  Institutions of higher learning are the ideal setting in which to propagate this vital exposure.

We live in a world that has identified the need for comprehensive safeguards against harmful research, both advertent and inadvertent.  The BWC is the locus of these safeguards in the life sciences.  The scientist proponents of international bioethics are attempting to proliferate the new ethos of moral, political, and social responsibility in advance so that they will not, as nuclear physicist Robert Wilson did, have to repent:  “Thinking back to that time, it occurs to me that it would have been an excellent occasion for the conscience of a scientist to have been exercised.”  I entreat you, form your institutions into exemplars of progressive and ethical life sciences scholarship; infuse values of law, civility, and humanity into all disciplines; and ensure that your colleges provide its life sciences scholars with all the knowledge and understanding necessary to pursue the true goal of science: to advance the well-being of society and of the world.  Establishing the BWC as a mandatory life sciences curricular component is absolutely pivotal to this bioethical imperative.

Sincerely,

Weapons and Hope

(Please note: This piece does not take a take a stance on the legitimacy of the atomic bombings.  It is meant to be provocative but not judgmental.)

In the new ethos, prompted by the atomic bomb and subsequent rise of ‘technoscience’, the scientist no longer practiced a reductionism of self-identity—based on the perceived existence within an isolatable value sphere and unconditional pursuit of its raw, technical objectives—but rather incorporated a new awareness of unavoidably overlapping value spheres into a new ethically, socially, and politically responsible self-identity.

In his famous lecture in 1918 at Munich University, the text of which is entitled “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber instructed his audience against the use of science to determine ethics and values.  Weber trivialized the overly rational perspective that science could answer humanity’s deep political and philosophical questions, rhetorically asking:

Who—aside from certain big children who are indeed found in the natural sciences—still believes that the findings of astronomy, biology, physics, or chemistry could teach us anything about the meaning of the world? (Weber 1918: 142).

Weber relates the practice of science as a vocation with the task of teaching and warns his audience that “whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgments, a full understanding of the facts ceases” (146).  For Weber, the scientist, like the teacher, must focus exclusively on his pursuit of technicality, logic, and the full spectrum of objective facts while purposefully neglecting personal and political views, which threaten to defile the purity of science.  According to Weber’s perceived scientific ethos—an ethos passionately devoted to the raw pursuit of technical mastery over the world—science should generate its own types of knowledge and techniques independent from the values of other disciplines and spheres of life: “the tension between the value-spheres of ‘science’ and the sphere of ‘the holy’ is unbridgeable” (154).  J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, characterized this Weberian spirit in the contention that:

the true responsibility of a scientist, as we know, is to the integrity and vigor of his science. (Oppenheimer 1947: 91)

J. Robert Oppenheimer

The embracing of this scientific ethos resulted in a reductionist practice of self-identity focused exclusively and unconditionally on the technical function of the modern scientist, a phenomenon that is epitomized by the scientists in the Manhattan Project.  In his lecture entitled “Physics in the Contemporary World,” Oppenheimer situated the traditional value of science in ‘method’, rather than ‘doctrine’, thus implicitly depicting science as an exercise of technique rather than morals, ethics, and value judgments (Oppenheimer 1947: 96-97).  The practice and organization of science described by Oppenheimer indicated that, to a large extent, the popular self-identity of scientists incorporated a robust complacency in ignoring the tough social, political, and ethical questions: “science is disciplined in its rejection of questions that cannot be answered and in its grinding pursuit of methods for answering all that can” (99-100).  The Manhattan Project scientists, it must be noted, certainly engaged in deep discourses on the ethical and social implications of their work in the course of the project.  However, the unconditional focus on the scientist’s technical pursuit suggested a superficiality within these discourses: they were to be discussed and contemplated but not allowed to affect the order and operations of life, which is indicated by the scientists’ unanimous unwillingness to halt their efforts even after V-E Day (Else 1981).  Oppenheimer retrospectively described this technical spirit in his 1954 security hearing testimony:

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it, and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. (Oppenheimer 1954)

A sense of patriotism certainly exerted some amount of influence over the Manhattan Project scientists, who sought to ensure the safety of American citizens and military superiority of the U.S.  However, Edward Teller’s spirit in support of the hydrogen bomb, which can be likened to the spirit of the original atomic bomb scientists, demonstrates that it was not patriotism that was responsible for eliminating possible sources of moral dilemma, but rather the self-ascribed, exclusively technical function:

it is not the scientist’s job to determine whether a hydrogen bomb should be constructed, whether it should be used, or how it should be used. This responsibility rests with the American people and with their chosen representatives. (Teller 1950: 71)

As described by Oppenheimer and various other physicists working under him in the Manhattan Project, these scientists had conceptualized scientific knowledge and technique in a totally de-contextualized manner, envisioning scientific knowledge and technique as products to be pursued in and of themselves.  Thus, they established their self-identities within an isolated value sphere, which many would regret having done in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The rise of a new scientific ethos featuring profound disapproval with the past reductionism of self-identity was implicit within the tremendous guilt felt and described by many of the Manhattan Project scientists.  In his retrospective contemplation of the moral implications of atomic involvement, Oppenheimer could no longer dissociate himself and his discipline from ethics and value judgments:

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. (Oppenheimer 1947: 88)

Manhattan Project physicist Robert Wilson shared Oppenheimer’s overwhelming feeling of guilt (Else 1981).  Fulfilling the self-identity of the traditional scientific ethos depended upon pursuing scientific knowledge and the ‘technically sweet’ with an ethically, politically, and socially neutral perspective.  However, the deep pangs of guilt and conscience crises experienced by many of the Manhattan Project scientists evidenced the rise of a new ethos in which the scientist assumes responsibilities beyond that of the technical.  Robert Wilson alluded to his previously one-tracked, technical consciousness with deep remorse and a new conviction to bridge the Weberian separation between value spheres:

Robert Wilson Breaking Ground at Fermilab in 1967

My reawakening from being completely technically oriented came dramatically on July 16 as I experienced the test explosion of the first nuclear bomb…That which has been an intellectual reality to me for some three years had suddenly become a factual, and existential reality. There is a very great difference. My technical work was done, the race was run, and the full awful magnitude of what we had done came over me. I determined at that moment that, having played even a small role in bringing it about, I would go all out in helping to make it become a positive factor for humanity. (Wilson 1971: 74)

Wilson, like many other scientists in the new atomic age, would no longer sit on the sidelines of political decision-making; he committed himself to the new ethos that inhabited not only the value sphere of science but also those of politics and ethics.  Wilson and Oppenheimer became integral in forming the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, which made political moves in pushing for international control of atomic energy.  Oppenheimer’s and Wilson’s sentiments illustrate how the new, unparalleled intimacy between science (specifically physics) and the ethically and politically significant capability to destroy produced a moral quandary so powerful that science was sucked into Weber’s sphere of ‘the holy’ as well as the spheres of politics, ethics, and social dynamics.  Self-identity in this new scientific ethos is no longer reductionist; rather, it straddles many different value spheres.

The rise of the age of technoscience, the origins of which have strong roots in the Manhattan Project, and its associated forms of scientific organization further illustrate the new intimacy between science and other value spheres.  Beginning with the Manhattan Project, U.S. scientific research and organization moved principally into the realm of state direction.  Political agendas increasingly drove and funded science; science had become intimate on a new level with external industries and institutions seeking to take advantage of it in precise ways for technological applications.  The term technoscience refers to this “end of the bifurcation between science and technology” (Professor Andrew Lakoff).  The fact of state-dominated funding implicitly indicated a de facto unity of mission, a deal-brokering process, between the scientific and political realms.  Organizational trends—specifically, the increase of interdisciplinary cooperation combined with huge mobilizations of scientific personnel—illustrate the increasingly direct orientation of science towards political agendas.

From this perspective, scientists were no longer neutral collectors and explorers of knowledge; other value spheres had extended themselves onto that of science and consequently imbued the scientist with ethical, political, and social responsibility.  Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, acknowledged the importance of technoscience.  Peter Galison described Wiener’s thinking during WWII: “to be useful in the war effort, it was science itself that would have to change, becoming both materially grounded and squarely directed into the world of weapons,” that is, into technological application (Galison 1994: 235).  However, after the use of the atomic bomb, Wiener himself suffered an “acute attack of conscience” resulting from his awareness of the scientist’s multi-sphere role in the technoscientific world:

I think the omens for a third world war are black and I have no intention of letting my services be used in such a conflict. I have seriously considered the possibility of giving up my scientific productive effort because I know no way to publish without letting my inventions go to the wrong hands. (253)

The new scientific ethos and its elaborated form of self-identity have become firmly established within today’s collective consciousness, but this does not mean that every scientist has fully accepted and adopted them.  For this reason, the issue of the scientific ethos continues to have a vivacious presence in public discourses.  For example, within the discourse of the life sciences dual-use dilemma vis-à-vis the obligations established by the Biological Weapons Convention, a large cohort in the international scientific community united with public policy makers and diplomats have in the past decade increasingly voiced a deep concern over irresponsible decision-making on the level of the individual scientist and declared the need to institute a global culture of bioethics.  These advocates recognize the state’s weakening control and industry’s rising control over the life sciences, and worry about the possibility for inadvertent physical, social, or political damage as a result of reckless science—that is, science concerned more with technical and industrial advances than the social and political implications of those advances.  Dr. Jamie Metzl is one such advocate who envisions the frightening possibility of an international genetic arms race as a result of unchecked science.  He proposes a global “Genetic Heritage Safeguard Treaty” which calls on states, institutions, and individual scientists to incorporate a universally accepted set of ethics and standards into their activities in order to mitigate dangerous possibilities (Metzl 2008).  The proponents of a global culture of bioethics, in effect, oppose the reductionist self-identity of the Weberian scientific ethos just as many of the Manhattan Project scientists had come to do.  However, whereas the Manhattan Project scientists retrospectively recognized the predicament of a reductionist self-identity, the scientist proponents of international bioethics are attempting to proliferate the new ethos of moral, political, and social responsibility in advance so that they will not, as Robert Wilson did, have to repent:  “Thinking back to that time, it occurs to me that it would have been an excellent occasion for the conscience of a scientist to have been exercised” (Wilson 1971: 70).

Works Cited

Else, Jon, dir. The Day After Trinity: Oppenheimer & the Atomic Bomb. 88 min. KTEH, 1981.

Metzl, Jamie. “Brave New World War.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. Issue #8 (Spring 2008), 50-58.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert. “Physics in the Contemporary World,” in Oppenheimer, The Open  Mind, 81 – 102. 1947.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert. Security Hearing Testimony. 1954.

Teller, Edward. “Back to the Laboratories.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 6 (March 1950),  71- 2.

Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” 1918. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 129 – 156. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Wilson, Robert. “The Conscience of a Physicist.” Alamogordo Plus Twenty-Five Years, ed. Richard S. Lewis and Jane Wilson.  New York: Viking, 1971.