Science and Virtue: An Essay on the Impact of the Scientific Mentality on Moral Character

by Louis Caruana

Charting new territory in the interface between science and ethics, Science and Virtue is a study of how the scientific mentality can affect the building of character, or the attainment of virtue by the individual. Drawing on inspiration from virtue-ethics and virtue-epistemology, Caruana argues that science is not just a system of knowledge but also an important factor determining a way of life. This book goes beyond the normal strategy evident in the science-ethics realm of examining specific ethical dilemmas posed by scientific innovations. Here Caruana deals with more fundamental issues, uncovering morally significant tendencies within the very core of the scientific mentality and explaining how science, its method, history and explanatory power can shape a conception of the good life.

142 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2006

Reviews

[Milad Moghimi]

This book is good for a amature reader of philosophy books. I think this book turn to be a little bias about religion!

[Brent Ranalli]

Virtues of this book: it is mercifully short. And it is written clearly enough. And it bravely attempts to tackle an intriguing question: What virtues might we suppose scientific practice instills in its practitioners, that would shape their character generally?

This could usefully be approached as a hypothesis-generating exercise for empirical sociology of science research. Sadly it is treated instead as an arid exercise in analytic philosophy. The five scientific "virtues" identified in the book are fairly obscure abstractions, straight-jacketed into an Aristotelian framework, and there is no suggestion of what they would look like in ordinary life (i.e., how the conclusion could be validated by comparing scientists who have achieved those virtues with their layman neighbors). The brevity of the book means the author rests his analysis on a fairly superficial and selective account of scientific practice. (Superficial: spending several precious pages passing judgment on Kuhn, when it would have been far easier and more credible to simply refer to post-Kuhnian literature and take a stand there. Selective: what about all the interpersonal aspects of scientific practice?)

"One must give oneself over to the facts," the author writes of Plato's advice for starting on the path to virtue, "receiving and discovering rather than producing or imposing one's own views." The book suffers from the analytic philosopher's classic vice of taking an armchair view of a subject, producing and imposing idiosyncratic views. The analysis does not appear to be grounded in a strong understanding either of actual scientific practice or of the extensive and nuanced science studies literature.

In a nutshell, the book shares the virtues and vices of the analytic philosophy genre. Well enough argued, but unmoored from reality. (Thankfully the obligatory pseudomathematical formulas are relegated to an appendix.)