Science and Society: A View from Ethics

Abstract

This paper intends to offer a critical reflection about the relationship between science and ethics, based on the current situation, inasmuch as science and society have interests and needs that are not always satisfied by scientists. From this point, we intend to consider the relationship in two ways: on the one hand, to examine science as an activity considered “neutral” and uncontaminated. On the other hand, to think of science as a practice where men, beyond their theoretical and objective achievements, advance technologically up to a point that leads us to think of science as guilty of the ills that the world suffers. Nevertheless, we think that science today can be named "technoscience" because it is almost impossible to separate it from technology, and it is precisely here that the problem becomes more critical: Is the ethical neutrality of science possible?

In this dialectic game between science and society, we find values and ethical rules as regulating principles of human activity faced with the interests, the power, and the loss of human rights; they become devalued and lead us to think of a “hammer” science that frightens us. These problems can only be overcome when, alongside reason, the human dimension takes its place.