Sunday, September 7, 2008

Bacon and the Two Cultures?

"In Bacon's account, the scientist is not an unpolitical servant, meekly delivering his discoveries to his masters, but takes responsibility himself. Those who wield such power should be prepared and purified" (Pesic 33).

According to the above, Bacon says that there is no moral check from the literary culture on the scientist; instead, it is the duty of the scientist to provide his own moral check on his own works. However, unlike Snow, Bacon does not insist that this moral check derives from the nature of scientific inquiry itself. That would mean, therefore, that it is necessary for scientists to be educated on morality, since it is not up to the other culture or to the political realm to regulate the morality of science. Firstly, am I reading this right? Does Bacon think that science itself has no internal regulating morality, but that it is still the duty of the scientists (who are separated from science itself) to regulate their inquiry? Secondly, if scientists are able to regulate their own work, in what way should science interact with the literary?

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