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The Dreams of Reason: Science and Utopias
One of the most forceful critics of the "We never had it so good" school of parasites of placid acceptance of the status quo and the belief that science, harnessed, can produce anything and securely give it to every last free leader has been Dr. Rene Dubos. The present book contains the George B. Pegram Lectures, delivered at the Brock-haven National Laboratory where Dubos's period of being lecturer in residence or what might perhaps be termed "visiting philosopher" gave him the opportunity to try out and develop various themes of philosophy, morals, and a great body of scientific knowledge in a way which must have been extraordinarily stimulating for those who were in close association with him during his tenure of the lectureship.
- GenresPhilosophyScience
167 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1961
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About the author
René Dubos
86 books18 followersRené Jules Dubos was an American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, and humanist. He is credited as an author of the maxim, "Think globally, act locally".
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 31, 2016
El libro es una serie de conferencias publicadas en 1960 acerca de los alcances y los "no-alcances" de la ciencia, buscando hacer conciencia (jojojo) sobre el papel del científico a futuro. El hecho de que casi todas estas ideas siguen vigentes 50 años después de publicadas habla muy bien de la capacidad de visión del autor y de cuánto tenemos que recordar la sobriedad en las ciencias.
April 4, 2025
This is an eye-opener even today, 60 years after the lectures were delivered. Maybe if you're already steeped in the sciences and philosophy, this book will seem like a summary, but for the average person who hasn't thought about this stuff, it's illuminating and more.
Dubos has a few basic points to make. One is that scientific progress had been astonishingly rapid in the two centuries prior to his lecture (remember it was 1961-62), and the pace was accelerating. This brought unheard-of prosperity, health and comfort to people all over the world. And this was due in large part to scientists 200 or so years prior abandoning the idea that their purpose was to make abstract deductions about the world and look solely for root truths. Instead, they began to apply knowledge that predecessors had gained and to which they added, in order to improve life on earth right now. Practical applications led to basically everything in our modern world, from electricity to vaccines to moon rockets.
This applied science approach has been beneficial, but Dubos notes it comes at a cost. By divorcing science from larger human and universal concerns, science potentially lost sight of even more important things it could do to improve the human condition (and condition of everything else). By leaving those grand ideas to religion and philosophy, science ceded ground on which its actions are actually quite important. And the astonishing discoveries that were just coming to light when he wrote his essays showed that eternal questions about what is life, how does the universe operate, etc., actually seemed to show a convergence of scientific findings and philosophical thought (ie., uncertainty, etc.). Dubos calls for recognition by science leaders and society at-large that science should not be divorced from these grand questions, and he notes that the ability of atomic bombs to destroy the entire world was, ironically, bringing the need in focus for science to become part of the cultural debate.
The author's arguments carry great weight today when AI, to cite one example, potentially can overrun our ability to understand it or stop it. Debate is going on about the utility of AI, but clearly not enough. And when you add in the anti-science bias of Republicans and their efforts to literally close down most federally funded scientific research, we see that the warnings of Dubos have gone unheeded by a huge part of the population. And we will all suffer for it.
Another Dubos observation is that science can't answer all the mysteries of life. The example that sticks in my head goes something like this: all matter is made up of carbon in whatever tiny molecules, atoms, protons, whatever the smallest subatomic particles are. All matter, both living (people, trees, bacteria) and inanimate (rocks, water). We're all made of the same stuff. So why did some of that stuff suddenly at some point come to life and have the ability to reproduce, but other stuff didn't? Why is some static, like a rock, but other is not, like a human? What animates us and sets us apart from a rock, given that we're made out of the same material? That question blows my mind.
Yet another point Dubos makes is that science has become in the 20th century an effort to keep man comfortable and healthy. But this is an assumption that isn't necessarily the best way to go about things. We live with that idea so deeply embedded that we don't think about it, and few scientists do, either. But why is that the purpose? Maybe the purpose should be to figure out eternal questions like what is life. But instead we have this idea based on 19th century notions of utopia that science can solve all health and environmental problems. Yet utopias make no sense at all because they are static environments in which all needs and wants are met and never change, but we know that no part of the world or human nature is static. It just doesn't happen. Utopias are impossible unless everyone could be made into an automaton. This is just one of the many misconceptions that bedevil science and the culture that looks at science.
As a final note, I'll say that my favorite books are those that send me on new routes of inquiry, and this book hits that mark. Dubos quotes thinkers about science through the ages, and I'm going to seek out some forms of summaries of their ideas (not interested in diving directly into their long-winded arguments written in arcane language) as I seek to have a fuller picture of what we are doing about science and, more importantly, life on earth.
Dubos has a few basic points to make. One is that scientific progress had been astonishingly rapid in the two centuries prior to his lecture (remember it was 1961-62), and the pace was accelerating. This brought unheard-of prosperity, health and comfort to people all over the world. And this was due in large part to scientists 200 or so years prior abandoning the idea that their purpose was to make abstract deductions about the world and look solely for root truths. Instead, they began to apply knowledge that predecessors had gained and to which they added, in order to improve life on earth right now. Practical applications led to basically everything in our modern world, from electricity to vaccines to moon rockets.
This applied science approach has been beneficial, but Dubos notes it comes at a cost. By divorcing science from larger human and universal concerns, science potentially lost sight of even more important things it could do to improve the human condition (and condition of everything else). By leaving those grand ideas to religion and philosophy, science ceded ground on which its actions are actually quite important. And the astonishing discoveries that were just coming to light when he wrote his essays showed that eternal questions about what is life, how does the universe operate, etc., actually seemed to show a convergence of scientific findings and philosophical thought (ie., uncertainty, etc.). Dubos calls for recognition by science leaders and society at-large that science should not be divorced from these grand questions, and he notes that the ability of atomic bombs to destroy the entire world was, ironically, bringing the need in focus for science to become part of the cultural debate.
The author's arguments carry great weight today when AI, to cite one example, potentially can overrun our ability to understand it or stop it. Debate is going on about the utility of AI, but clearly not enough. And when you add in the anti-science bias of Republicans and their efforts to literally close down most federally funded scientific research, we see that the warnings of Dubos have gone unheeded by a huge part of the population. And we will all suffer for it.
Another Dubos observation is that science can't answer all the mysteries of life. The example that sticks in my head goes something like this: all matter is made up of carbon in whatever tiny molecules, atoms, protons, whatever the smallest subatomic particles are. All matter, both living (people, trees, bacteria) and inanimate (rocks, water). We're all made of the same stuff. So why did some of that stuff suddenly at some point come to life and have the ability to reproduce, but other stuff didn't? Why is some static, like a rock, but other is not, like a human? What animates us and sets us apart from a rock, given that we're made out of the same material? That question blows my mind.
Yet another point Dubos makes is that science has become in the 20th century an effort to keep man comfortable and healthy. But this is an assumption that isn't necessarily the best way to go about things. We live with that idea so deeply embedded that we don't think about it, and few scientists do, either. But why is that the purpose? Maybe the purpose should be to figure out eternal questions like what is life. But instead we have this idea based on 19th century notions of utopia that science can solve all health and environmental problems. Yet utopias make no sense at all because they are static environments in which all needs and wants are met and never change, but we know that no part of the world or human nature is static. It just doesn't happen. Utopias are impossible unless everyone could be made into an automaton. This is just one of the many misconceptions that bedevil science and the culture that looks at science.
As a final note, I'll say that my favorite books are those that send me on new routes of inquiry, and this book hits that mark. Dubos quotes thinkers about science through the ages, and I'm going to seek out some forms of summaries of their ideas (not interested in diving directly into their long-winded arguments written in arcane language) as I seek to have a fuller picture of what we are doing about science and, more importantly, life on earth.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews