Part II timetable

Paper 7
Ethics and Politics of Science, Technology and Medicine

Paper manager: Stephen John

Science, technology and medicine play a central role in the modern world. However, there are many on-going political and ethical controversies over the role they ought to play. These include debates over whether, when and how, ethical and political values should shape scientific research and practice, and over when and how scientific results and new technologies should be used. Furthermore, these important disputes relate to more fundamental questions about the relationship between truth, values and objectivity. The aim of this paper is to introduce students to both practical and theoretical debates over the politics and ethics of science and to examine their inter-relationships.

Primary source

JBS Haldane, 'Daedalus; or, Science and the Future' (1924)
Bertrand Russell, 'Icarus; or, the Future of Science' (1924)
Leon Rocha (4 seminars, Michaelmas Term)

In 1923, Cambridge biochemist JBS Haldane (1892–1964) delivered a talk to the Heretics Society, entitled 'Daedalus; or, Science and the Future'. It was subsequently expanded for publication in 1924. Haldane predicted that molecular biology and genetics would allow humans to be in charge of their own evolution. He further argued that science could provide the basis for ethical progress. Another Cambridge scholar, the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), wrote 'Icarus; or, the Future of Science' in response. Russell was sceptical about mankind's ability to direct modern science to socially good ends. These two pieces of work will not only allow us to revisit a classic debate on science, ethics and moral progress; we will also explore a myriad of topics such as the relationship between science and socialism, science and religion, the life and work of Haldane and Russell, popularisation of science, and the history of speculative fiction and utopian literature.

Lectures

The Politics of Science: Historical and Contemporary Debates
Nick Jardine, Stephen John (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Philosophers, historians and sociologists of science have proposed many different models of how scientific research does and should relate to social, political and educational concerns. The aim of this course is to introduce students to some of the most influential models. The first part of the course provides an oversight of how thinkers in the early- and mid-twentieth century understood the relationship between science and political concerns, paying particular attention to topics including early sociologies of science, the relationship between science and Marxism, and the 'Two Cultures' debate. The second part of the course focuses on more recent debates over the extent to which science can and should be free of political concerns. In these lectures, we first look at debates over the proper role of political considerations in the funding of research, using Philip Kitcher's work as a starting point. We then go on to look at arguments over whether political values should influence our research methods, building on Heather Douglas's work on the problem of inductive risk. We also consider debates over the promulgation and uses of scientific research, discussing recent arguments over the role of scientific expertise in policy and educational contexts.

Law and Science
David Feller (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

This course is designed to inform scientists about the ways the law looks at, forms and guides their work, and inform non-scientists of the ways in which those processes affect their lives on a daily basis. It is intended that the course will provide a basic description of common legal systems, and by looking at case studies – specific topics where the law and science have converged – demonstrate in real terms how those processes play out. Specifically, we examine how science and technology are defined and addressed by the law; how science and technology affect the law in lawmakers' offices and in the courts; how the law defines science; how science is used in the courts; and the problems raised for local courts by the globalization of science.

Bio-ethics
Tim Lewens (4 lectures, Lent Term)

The aim of this course is to introduce students to philosophical debates over the conduct of medical research and the uses of medical technologies. In discussing these issues, we touch upon important topics, including the proper role of consent in research, the distinction between research, treatment and enhancement, and the ethics of new genetic technologies.

Values, Wellbeing and Policy
Anna Alexandrova (4 lectures, Lent Term)

A venerable tradition in philosophy of science maintains that it should be value free. However this ideal is particularly hard to sustain in the case of the social sciences, where concepts such as poverty, health, crime, rationality and well-being all presuppose substantive moral and political values. What sort of value freedom should we aim at in the social sciences? Are values and objectivity compatible? When social scientists study happiness and well-being, what sort of definitions and measures should they use? And should this knowledge inform public policy?

Science and Gender
Patricia Fara, Vanessa Heggie, John Forrester (4 lectures, Lent Term)

This course explores several aspects of the complex relationship between science and gender. Most obviously, famous scientists have tended to be men; what effect, if any, has this had on the course science has taken and the concepts it has employed? Rethinking how the history of science should be written shows how women of the past played different roles from men – but different does not necessarily mean insignificant. And there are many other subtle issues. For example, science (or particular sciences) may be seen as suited to the cognitive skills of one gender. Yet these perceptions vary with time and place; mathematics, for instance, might be considered a boy's subject in one country but a girl's subject in another. And, of course, the causal arrow also points the other way: 'gender' is a new concept, the product of developments in biology, psychology, psychoanalysis and medicine intersecting with political movements and developments in the humanities to produce a new configuration of the relations between 'biological sex' and 'personal identity'. This short course introduces, from several different perspectives, one of the most fascinatingly complex points of interaction between the scientific and the social.

Preliminary reading

• Barnes, Barry, David Bloor & John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (London, 1996)
• Buchanan, Brock, Daniels & Wickler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge, 2000)
• Collins, Harry & Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge, 1993)
• Collins, Harry & Trevor Pinch, The Golem at Large: What Everyone Should Know about Technology (Cambridge, 1998)
• Douglas, Heather, Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal (Pittsburgh, 2009)
• Foley, E, The Law of Life and Death (Harvard, 2011)
• Goldberg, S, Culture Clash: Land Science in America (New York, 2009)
• Huber, Peter, Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (New York, 1993)
• Irwin, Allan, Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development (Routledge, 1995)
• Jasonoff, Sheila S, Science at the Bar (Cambridge, MA, 1995)
• Fox Keller, Evelyn & Helen E Longino (eds), Feminism and Science (Oxford, 1996)
• Kitcher, Phillip, The Lives to Come (Penguin, 1996)
• Kitcher, Philip, Science, Truth and Democracy (Oxford, 2001)
• Nelkin, Dorothy, Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology, revised edn (New York, 1995)
• Pielke, Roger, The Honest Broker (Cambridge, 2007)
• Sunstein, Cuss, Risk and Reason: Safety, Law and the Environment (Cambridge, 2002)
• Tuana, Nancy (ed), Feminism and Science (Indiana University Press, 1989)
• Vos, Megan E, Uncertain Risks Regulated: Facing the Unknown in National, EU and International Law (Routledge, 2009)
• Winter, G, Multilevel Governance of Global Environmental Change: Perspectives from Science, Sociology and the Law (Cambridge, 2011) [selected chapters]

Further resources are available on CamTools