Essay on Science and Morality

What is more important: science or morality? New products are pleasing, new discoveries are helpful, and big businesses are efficient, but should these be prioritized over beauty, ethics, or nature? Not only can these seemingly contrasting virtues coexist, but they must coexist. Science and innovation must exist in society under the compelling restraint of morality.

Consider how innovation greatly benefits society. New and better inventions improve the quality of life and a variety of products increases happiness and stimulates healthy competition (Bacon 69). Innovation also leads to new discoveries and increases human knowledge of various topics (62-64). These discoveries and improvements are only possible if society encourages it. Thus, incentives for scientific innovation must exist, but this incentive must not be stronger than the desire to conduct science with good ethics.

Why should science be restrained by ethics? Despite all of the benefits present in Bacon’s New Atlantis, it lacks morality. When knowledge is preferred over morality, there is no limit to how far an experiment can go. Should humans be harmed for the sake of knowing more? There must be a guiding principle and strong enough force that prevents experimentation from crossing the line. Furthermore, valuing innovation and productivity over morality will increase theft, colonialism, and destruction as humans will believe they are improving society by taking from less efficient people. In short, violence and immorality is often used as a means to achieve innovation and productivity, but these methods can never be used to achieve good morality. Therefore, good morality must always be the final goal of society. For morality to restrain science, there must be both an objective law and educators of morality in society.

First, society must establish a common objective law higher than everybody in the society, including the ruler, to ensure no one is favored above others (Locke 71-73). While this law can reform over time, it must be slow to change or else it will become no different than a lawmaker having absolute authority over the rest of society. This law must only change when it either prevents good deeds or allows for the harm of another (70). For example, the law must prevent theft, preserve the environment, and stop immoral experiments, but it should not be designed to prevent disbelief in God, disagreements with the law, divorce, or other actions that have little to no negative harm on someone else’s rights.

Consider how an objective law that holds each person to the same standards creates equality, but also how the lack of regulation of belief permits freedom of individualism. A law that holds all people to be equal allows all people to be their own judge as there is no absolute monarch to do all of the judging for them (Locke 12). Additionally, while the law protects people from others, recall that it does not prevent people from believing wrong or immoral ideas. This imposes a heavy requirement on educators of morality in order to keep people choosing the correct moral decisions and holding truthful beliefs. Therefore, there must be a high incentive to this profession and to this study. 

On the contrary, Francis Bacon argues that professors who make additions to their field of study are much more useful than those who solely preserve known ideas (Bacon 10). However, this is not the case with morality. First, most truth is eternal and old ideas are often relevant today. Therefore, morality does not need to be innovated. Second, despite Bacon’s claim, humans cannot understand morality solely through their observations (16-17). In fact, each person judging morality based solely on their observations will create disorder as subjective experience is not always grounded in truth (Locke 12). Third, given that much of morality cannot be observed or studied via Bacon’s experiments (Bacon 27-31), it is also impossible to always begin with doubts and never start with certainties (9). In other words, if the search for morality always began with doubts, it would consequently always end in doubts as much of morality is not testable. Therefore, morality cannot be learned solely through an empirical philosophy. Thus, morality must either be innately within people or taught via moral education. The lack of morality in New Atlantis indicates that it is not innately within, thus society requires moral educators, and these professors of morality must be dedicated to the preservation of thoughts more than the additions of thought. 

To clarify, this is not a suggestion of brainwashing the public, but rather a dedication to the study of morality and a rejection to learning morality solely through the scientific method. Original thinkers must not be “made dictators” by blindly assuming everything they say is correct, but students must be taught their ideas and be able to explain why they are right or wrong (5). Bacon is correct to fear an overly dogmatic education system. Therefore, testing true morality against other forms of opinion should still be encouraged, however radical changes of moral laws must be slow to prevent anarchy and a takeover of power.

Other virtues, like beauty, also get lost within a Baconian society. Everything, including gardens, statues, nature, and buildings are purely dedicated to productivity and innovation in Bacon’s New Atlantis (61-64). Since things that are beautiful are typically not the most efficient, it is not difficult to assume that there will not be much room for beauty at all. For example, why protect a beautiful landscape when it can be used to grow food? Why make a garden beautiful when it just limits the space that could be used for more plants to research? Why make a building’s architecture have more meaning and beauty if it costs more money? When innovation and efficiency are viewed as the most important goal of society, beauty is lost. This is tragic. Beauty allows for emotion. Much of morality, namely love, is centered around emotion. Beauty expresses goodness and truth in ways no other virtue can. Art in churches connects humans with the divine in a unique way. Natural beauty displays the power of both the world and the divine creator while inspiring onlookers to be charitable. Beauty breeds cheerfulness, motivation, and learning. It encourages emotion, love, and gentleness. Beauty propagates morality in society in ways no other virtue can replicate and society must preserve it.

The last piece of the puzzle is the protection of property. Society must respect individuals' property of land as this is the most efficient way for land to be cultivated (Locke 21, Bacon 61). A society that respects other people’s property will limit theft, colonialism, and destruction because of human awareness of their sin and government enforcement. If society itself does not protect property, aesthetics would have to be sacrificed for practicality and defensibility. It would also allow for bigger and more powerful members of society to harm the less powerful. People will also be less inclined to take or destroy something that they know is immoral to do so. In short, protecting property rights is the best way to “preserve the good that comes by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt” (Bacon 51). It still may be possible that the protection of property and the individual freedom of defining ‘useful’ may create instances, for example, where farmers may buy out beautiful land, destroying the natural beauty in order to create more ‘useful’ crops. However, innovations in science will discover better ways to do things that will require less expansions and destruction of land. Most importantly, this again stresses the importance of educators of morality. Society must be taught the importance of the preservation of beauty and all other virtues. 

On a separate note, protection of intellectual property also preserves subjective beauty, allowing for various forms of art and emotional expression. Ensuring that the law does not prevent thought allows for all sorts of innovation both in science and in art. However, this again stresses the importance of educators of morality to ensure people do not stray too far off the moral code. Thus, it is important for society to allow for freedom of thought while having educators dedicated to the preservation of moral thought. Therefore, it is possible for all virtues to exist in an innovative society.