Daedalus and Icarus

Peter Edman

Our forthcoming technology curriculum includes a section from Bertrand Russell’s Icarus, Or, the Future of Science. 

Icarus was written in 1924 in response to a 1923 published lecture by JBS Haldane, Daedalus, Or Science and the Future. The debate between these two great men of science is reconsidered in the Spring 2005 issue of The New Atlantis by Charles T. Rubin.

The real argument is about the meaning of and prospects for moral progress, a debate as relevant today as it was then. Haldane believed that morality must (and will) adapt to novel material conditions of life by developing novel ideals. Russell feared for the future because he doubted the ability of human beings to generate sufficient “kindliness” to employ the great powers unleashed by modern science to socially good ends.

Both authors explore the problem of relating moral and technological progress with sufficient depth that we would benefit by reexamining this debate with a view to our own time. But the manner in which they frame the problem stands in the way of articulating a clear moral goal that might serve as progress’s purpose and judge. With serious ethical discussion thus sidelined, technological change itself becomes the fundamental imperative, despite the reasonable doubts both Haldane and Russell have concerning its ultimate consequences. And while Haldane is more loath to acknowledge it than Russell, the net result of their debate is a tragic view of mankind’s future, marked by an irreconcilable and destructive mismatch between our aspiration to understand nature and the power we gain from that knowledge.

From Rubin’s conclusion:

The net result is that a debate about science’s ability to improve human life excludes serious consideration of what a good human life is, along with how it might be achieved, and therefore what the hallmarks of an improved ability to achieve it would look like. Shorn of serious moral content, the measures of “progress”—if it can be said to exist at all—become our amazement at or dissatisfaction with all our discoveries and inventions, our awed anticipation of what might yet be achieved, our terror about what might go wrong along the way. The result of framing the question of scientific progress in this way is evident in the very structure of most popular discussions of science, both in books and on television. Start with a little history to produce an attitude of pride that we know so much more than we once did. Look at what we know now, and stress the dangers of our remaining ignorance. Anticipate the future, and how humbled we are that those who follow us will know far more than we do if only we stick with it.

Above all, the very thinness of any notion of progress that survives the Haldane-Russell debate—little more than the fact of accumulation of knowledge and a vague hope that things might turn out well in light of unspecified yet grand civilizational projects—helps to explain the widespread belief that any effort to restrain science on the basis of ethics represents a threat to “scientific progress.” To see this as simply a result of the self-interest of scientists is to do them an injustice. Like Haldane, most scientists are probably unaware of how the belief that morality must adjust to scientific and technological change amounts to saying that might makes right. The sense of threat is partly due to the poverty of thought on the subject, and perhaps the narrow education that is required for making measurable scientific achievements. For restraint doubtless would slow accumulation, and (from this point of view) can only represent the triumph of fear over hope. But what is to be said for accumulation when Russell and Haldane have done with it? It serves either the power of the conventionally powerful or the power of the scientists.

Gleanings, Character and Ethics, Science and Technology, Wed 06 Jul 2005