detail is just as important as being truthful in the large. That is responsible for the success of science. That is why I can usually believe the printed scientific paper from Peking or Los Angeles or Atlanta. I place absolute trust in what the man says." Bronowski mentioned Michaels' and Morley's ether drift experiment of 1887 in which the results were so unbelievable that scientists continued for 20 years to coriduct experiments on the same subject. They were not pointing accusing fingers at the experimenters, who had made the discovery or calling them liars; they were simply trying to remove doubts about the result and make sense of what had been found. It may be significant that the experiments provoked a reevalution of the laws of physics because the finding showed all our conceptions of life to be not only wrong but self-contradictory. "The remarkable thing about the whole matter," according to Bronowski, "was that prominent scientists, like Einstein, trusted Michaels and Morley and based the next 20 years' work on trying to prove or disprove their findings.
lute trust. He provoked a laugh from his audience when he stated that he thought the financial and sports pages were the only truthful portions of American newspapers. "All the rest," he said, "have to be regarded with the gravest suspicion. They do not deliberately deceive, but they think that they are, on behalf of a greater faith, putting out things that are not quite true but will have the right influence." Another ripple heralded his statement, "In our country, this is called the credibility gap." Unscientific thinkers, according to Bronowski, reason that you know what is right and it doesn't matter what means you use; you're going to support it. "So," he said, "people are liquidated, crucified, and put in concentration camps. Why? Because the end justifies the means. "Science is exactly the opposite. It makes absolutely no distinction between ends and means. The end of science is to discover the truth, and the means to be used have to be truthful in the smallest detail. The moment you say this, you have November-December 1967
Dr. Hempel's hold on his audience was never more noticeable than during the conferences with the small groups of students where there was considerable dialogue between this renowned scholar and top students.
founded an ethical value for science. You have placed one central ethical value in the activity of science—finding the truth, and find the truth by truthful means." Bronowski cited the case of a scientist who won a Nobel prize for his discoveries but was eventually proven wrong. However, the man did not fade away in disgrace and is still prominent in scientific circles. This is the case, because he did not deliberately set out to fake documents or experiments. Bronowski stated emphatically, "You cannot practice science without a profound ethical commitment to the notion that being truthful in
"Truth is the nexus that holds the scientific community together. Being able to trust the other man is the absolute foundation for doing work yourself. Science is a communal enterprise. It cannot be done without the help of other people who make instruments for your measurements or people who have written earlier papers on which you rely. And you must be able to trust them absolutely. This explains to us how, in the short time of about 300 years, we have made such remarkable progress in science. We didn't have to spend all our time suspecting that someone was trying to put one over on us. When someone said something, you could go on from there. In 300 years, you can go an enormous distance if you march in a straight line; but, if you're always zigzagging, avoiding the untruths of this, and the propaganda of that, at the end of 300 years, you're just about where Charles II was in 1660, namely governing his people by a mixture of flattery and threat." He then raised two questions: "Is it really possible from the years of science, to get an ethic?" and "Ought we to be using science for the purposes that we do?" To illustrate his point, Bronowski 23