Post –Reading Activities Task 1

Now read the text a second time. Note that it is organized into three parts. Look for the details in the text and answer the questions

Paragraph One: Background information

• Who was Louis Slotin?

Paragraphs Two, Three, Four: The Accident

• What was he doing when the accident occurred?

• What caused the accident?

• How did he know the pieces of plutonium were too close together?

• Whose lives did he save?

• How did he save them?

• How accurately did he predict his own death?

Paragraphs Five, Six: The Author’s Statement

• What two things according to Bronowski make up morality?

• What, according to Bronowski, is the essence of morality?

Task 2

Look for the supporting ideas, the facts and details which build the main ideas. Circle any which are correct.

The Background

1 A description of Slotin	Good with his hands Had tested first atomic bomb a year before Born in 1946
2 The assembly of plutonium	One piece alone is harmless Several pieces brought together form an explosive mass Plutonium pieces are harmless

The Accident

3 Slotin` s experiment	A new type of experiment Similar to one done a year before Moving pieces of plutonium together
4 The incident that caused the accident	Pieces came a fraction too close Experts never make mistakes Was using a screwdriver; it slipped
5 Slotin`s act of heroism	Pulled pieces apart with his hands Exposed himself to the highest dose of radioactivity Asked co-workers to move from their positions
6 The result of his action	Saved lives of seven men Died of radioactivity Did not predict his own death

The Author` s Statement

7 Bronowski` s view of a scientist` s duty

We should all act alike We should each act according to our conscience Bronowski also chose to work on atomic bombs

Task 3

Discuss these questions:

1. What were Slotin`s alternatives when the accident happened?

2. What would you have done in Slotin` s position?

3. Have you ever made a very quick decision that affected other` s lives?

Talk about these issues and share your ideas with the others in your group:

1. Do you believe the story about Slotin illustrates heroism, morality or both? Why?

2. Do you agree with Bronowski` s definition of morality?

Text 2

The Moral Responsibilities of the Scientist

Pre-Reading Activities

Think over the questions:

1. Do you agree that scientists are not ordinary people?

2. Do they have to have the moral responsibility for their discoveries?

Reading Activity

You are given two texts under this headline, A and B. They deal with the same subject from different points of view. Read and study the two texts, noting the differences in argument and studying the vocabulary.

Text A

To argue that scientists have no moral responsibility for the use of misuse of their discoveries oversimplifies the issue. It ignores the fact that top-level research scientists are not ordinary people. Since their duty is to do no basic harm to the society in which they live, which has trained them and by which their research is funded, they should suppress those scientific discoveries which might be misused, and which ordinary people do not know about.

There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place scientists are, as individuals or as members of a research team, in a position to know what is going on at a given moment in their field, nationally and internationally. They are in a position to know what has been discovered, and in which field crucial discoveries are likely to be made.

Therefore, acting individually, or together with their fellow-workers, scientists possess invaluable information, which should be made known to their fellow citizens if it has, or may have a direct bearing on their well-being.

As privileged citizens, and members of powerful international elite, scientists are also in a position to fight for the suppression of potentially harmful discoveries. To suppress dangerous inventions does not only mean to conceal them. On the contrary, by revealing, or bringing them out into the open, which they have the knowledge and the professional authority to do, scientists can enable informed decisions to be made by their fellow citizens as a body. This is surely preferable to such decisions remaining secret, to being the largest of scientific espionage, or to being in the hands of irresponsible political or military rulers in pursuit of dangerous policies.

Furthermore, only the scientists- the experts in their social fields of research- have the knowledge, skill, and insight on which judgements relating to the latent use, or the consequences of use, of new products and processes can be adequately made. A disastrous moral judgment is more likely to be made by uninformed politicians, than by well-informed experts, able to consult with colleagues in other fields at the highest level.

It is not that one is entitled to expect scientists to have a higher brand of morality than their fellow- citizens. But in so far as knowledge constitutes power, scientists are powerful. Therefore their moral decisions, and thereby their duty, must be carefully considered in all their implications.

As privileged members of society, scientists have underlying obligation to reveal information about potentially harmful discoveries, to enable their fellow- citizens to anticipate danger and to decide what to do about them. It is easier, surely, to convene an executive committee to decide on the manufacture of a new and potentially lethal gas, than to replace lost lives. After all, dead citizens can not vote.

In short, scientists do have a direct and special duty to their fellow men. They cannot avoid this responsibility by maintaining that someone else should do it. If, to take an example, they are powerful enough to convince a government to ban alcohol or drugs, they are powerful enough to influence the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

A scientist is not isolated from society. He or she is also a moral being with a social conscience. Knowing more than ordinary people, scientist should be the first people to expose the misuse of scientific discoveries endangering the lives and surroundings of their fellow- citizens.

Text B

When we talk about the moral responsibilities of scientists we mean nothing more than that they have a duty to do no fundamental harm to the society in which they live. Since they share this duty with everyone else –insurance men, teachers, civil servants, manual labourers, farmers one assumes that they are singled out for special mention first because they are a new phenomenon (97 percent of all the full-time scientists who ever lived are still alive) and secondly because of their disproportionate power to help or harm society. Society` s fear of the scientist is not irrational; for society is conservative, backward- looking and intent on preserving the status quo, while the scientist is radical, forward- looking and by his or her discoveries likely to change the material environment of society. Since scientists threaten the established order in this way, they are, by our previous definition, immoral. The usual charge levelled at scientists is that they ought to, and do not, suppress those discoveries of which a harmful use might be made.

This naive accusation, however, reveals a basic ignorance about how scientists work. In the first place discoveries are not usually the work of one person, but of a team. Splitting the atom, the example to which any discussion of science and morality inevitably leads, is a case in point. Another is penicillin, which we owe partly to Fleming and partly to those who took up his work and made production a practical possibility. Secondly, scientific advances are not made in a vacuum. One advance follows the other, and each leap forward opens up new fields for further research. Science is a chain reaction, and it might be disastrous to suppress a discovery, however trivial, which might one-day be a vital missing link. Thirdly, discoveries have an uncanny habit of being made almost simultaneously by scientists working independently of each other in different parts of the world, so that one is tempted to believe that each advance becomes due at a particular moment and if not made by one person will be made by another. It is futile to ask a scientist to conceal his discoveries, because they are not his alone; he has worked in concept with others and even if by superhuman effort and diplomacy a whole team of scientists could be persuaded to keep them secret, they would soon be discovered and taken up elsewhere.

In any case who would be bold enough to set himself up as an authority capable of deciding what is harmful and what is helpful to the society? Arsenic can be used to poison rats or misused to poison people; atomic power to warm the world or to blow it up. The scientists who made possible the heating and lighting of houses by gas can hardly be blamed for failing to forsee the use Hitler would make of their society.

The truth is that it is the ordinary man and woman who use or misuse the discoveries of science. As members of society, scientists have a responsibility to see that they are put to proper use (a special responsibility because they know more about them than other people), but as scientists, their duty is to discover as much as they can about people and universe. The use that may be made of the discoveries of scientists is not a responsibility that can be shuffled on to them. It rests squarely on the shoulders of society.