Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Rightful Place of Science

Today was a historic day. People who marched on Washington with Dr. King came and watched President Obama take the oath of office. There were several interesting things in the speech. The thing that has caused me the most thought since the speech was the following quote. "Science will take its rightful place." I believe this is pretty close.

So the question is what is the rightful place of science. First I suppose we would need to define what it means by rightful place. The rightful place of stockings are over the fireplace. I understand that this quote is likely referring to the comparison of science to religion or moral beliefs likely in regards to items like stem cell research though I suppose it could also be talking about global warming as well. So he is using the rightful place as an ordering. So I have been pondering, what else gets ordered with science. Maybe we order the group of items: science, morals, democracy, freedom of speech, ... I am not really sure what would get ordered with this. If it is really science vs moral beliefs then what is the rightful place of science? It seems to me that science clearly should come after moral beliefs. I am not sure how there could be any other way. Ok so really what the truth is that everyone would say that science comes behind moral values. Right? What people really differ in is the definition of moral values. Thoughts?

1 comment:

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