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[Edward Schreiber]

Greetings,

Here is a new article by Jonathan Moreno.
In my view it is all about sociatry.

Best,

Ed

CULTIVATING SCIENCE
Science Progress, the Phrase and the Title
What We're All About

 SOURCE: NASA Science is the perpetual "new frontier."
By Jonathan Moreno | Thursday, October 4th, 2007 | Share This
The phrase “science progress” seems redundant from one angle but  
highly contentious from another. The first sense reminds us that we  
are the inheritors of the Enlightenment’s confidence in the  
possibility of improving the human condition, a possibility  
predicated on values of individual freedom, social equality,  
democratic solidarity, and reason as superior to dogma. From this  
standpoint scientific inquiry is the paradigmatic exercise of  
Enlightenment values.

Science as progressive boasts philosophical and political skeins  
stretching much further back into the American historical experience
In another sense, though, the title of this new publication, Science  
Progress, is purposely argumentative. It suggests that science, both  
as a way of thinking and as a source of novel ideas and products, is  
in the main a liberating practice that enables human flourishing.  
This understanding of science as progressive does not deny that the  
power of science may be misused. Nor does it exclude the need for  
guidance and even regulation in the service of equality and  
solidarity. But it does assert that the core values of science are  
democratic and anti-authoritarian.

The very words “science” and “progress” came to have their  
modern meanings in the 19th century, and they did so right around the  
same time. This simultaneous semantic evolution was, of course, no  
accident. Microscopes and telescopes were drilling both down and up  
into nature, and stethoscopes revealed the body’s inner space.  
Systematic investigations that manipulated variables proved more  
revealing than mere observation. The possibilities that could emerge  
from human insight began to seem endless.

Science as progressive, however, boasts philosophical and political  
skeins stretching much further back into the American historical  
experience. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis is often credited as the  
first to express the modern idea of progress in terms of advancing  
science and technology. And this vision was to have a profound effect  
on later 17th century thinkers, including those who provided the  
intellectual justification for the American Revolution. For all the  
founders’ disagreements, there was no doubt that the new nation’s  
promise was necessarily bound up with its innovative genius. Even  
those bitter rivals Jefferson and Hamilton made their own  
contributions: Jefferson through the patent statute that rewards  
inventiveness; Hamilton by laying the foundations for history’s most  
successful capitalist economy.

It is also no coincidence that other concepts that have been  
important to the way that America has come to understand itself,  
ideas such as the frontier and the West, demand an experimental  
attitude in grappling with novel challenges. Who, besides the  
westward settlers themselves, has come more to represent the pioneer  
spirit than America’s “inventors,” people like Benjamin  
Franklin, Thomas Edison, Jonas Salk and Bill Gates?

Even as America’s western frontier has vanished the pioneer spirit  
and the virtues and values associated with it continue to have a  
powerful hold over the American mind. Few government initiatives have  
been so wildly successful in capturing the public imagination as the  
space program of the 1960s, which resonated with the Kennedy  
administration’s “new frontier.” The ideas of science and  
progress are deeply held in America’s self-identity, pervasive in  
our notions of who we are, what we do and why we do it. The  
optimistic “can do” spirit, the approval of bigness, boldness, and  
adventure, the lure of “the road,” are all associated with this  
sensibility. At our best we hold these truths to be, if not self- 
evident, at least within our grasp.

And of course generations came to characterize America itself as an  
“experiment,” a romantic and visionary theme that comported well  
with the orientation of both pragmatist philosophers and early  
progressives. The only sure path to social and scientific advancement  
was seen as an iterative process of hypothesis, systematic  
experimentation, and data-gathering, and then reform in light of  
experience. That the human condition can and should be improved by  
any means necessary—whether through government or private enterprise  
or some combination of the two, but with government as the ultimate  
guarantor of the public interest—has come to be the essence of  
progressivism, but so has the need to ground such alleged  
improvements in the best possible evidence.

Few government initiatives have been so wildly successful in  
capturing the public imagination as the space program of the 1960s,  
which resonated with the Kennedy administration’s “new frontier.”


The progressive theme of history is not, however, self-evident in  
Western culture. The Greeks tended to think of their own time either  
as inferior to the mythical Golden Age or as part of a cycle of  
advance and decline. Imperial Romans saw themselves as in stasis  
since the establishment of the empire. Medieval Roman Catholic  
thinkers largely gave up on worldly progress in favor of spiritual  
improvement while awaiting Armageddon.

Neither has the conjunction of science and progress always been  
welcomed as an unalloyed good. Just as the words’ modern meanings  
were coming into consciousness there were also the first signs of  
alarm, in a tradition that began famously with Mary Shelley’s  
Frankenstein, continues to exert a powerful hold on popular culture,  
and has lately manifested itself in a conservative critique of  
science. Taken to an extreme, far from being a guarantor of progress  
(which even progressives could not reasonably assert), the  
potentially inhumane drift of science threatens the idea of progress  
itself.

One common criticism of progressive science policy is that it  
uncritically adopts an instrumental view of science without  
reflection on the goals of innovation. Although we reject the notion  
that a philosophy of innovation must be dumb to moral values, we  
appreciate that progressives have too often appeared to worship at  
the altar of change. Science Progress will therefore seek to compass  
consideration of ends as well as means.

Similarly, at the risk of invoking a hackneyed reference to  
spirituality, we also believe that science occupies an exalted  
dimension, that the growth of reliable knowledge is in effect an  
expansion of consciousness. Science may not be the only path to a  
greater grasp of reality, but it makes a unique contribution to  
enhanced understanding of the cosmos and our place within it. To  
distort the process of inquiry amounts therefore to a narrowing of  
vision, a corruption of imagination, and a threat to our freedom as  
beings endowed with intellect.

It would be disingenuous to deny that the trigger for Science  
Progress is the sense among many that in recent years the respect for  
evidence and the spirit of open inquiry has been threatened for the  
sake of short-term political advantage. But the larger issue is the  
long-term national interest, which depends on the best evidence that  
only science can provide for commercial innovation, economic growth,  
military defense and the best possible array of intelligence options.

In the 21st century, more than ever, it is no exaggeration to assert  
that only free and rigorous inquiry and not authoritarian dogma can  
provide the reliable information required for our physical survival.  
Perhaps most important, progress in science is essential for a  
continued sense of our national purpose as participants in an  
historic experiment in freedom and self-governance, as one people  
joined by a common future rather than a common past, a future we  
cherish for the sake of the generations of Americans to come.

The goal of Science Progress is to help identify and realize the  
elements of that boundless American future. We hope this goal is  
manifest in our statement of mission:

Science Progress proceeds from the propositions that scientific  
inquiry is among the finest expressions of human excellence, that it  
is a crucial source of human flourishing, a critical engine of  
economic growth, and must be dedicated to the common good. Scientific  
inquiry entails global responsibilities. It should lead to a more  
equitable, safer, and healthier future for all of humankind.

—Jonathan Moreno, Editor in Chief, Science Progress, Senior Fellow  
at the Center for American Progress, and the David and Lyn Silfen  
University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and the History  
and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania


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