Ethics: Holding Science Accountable to Humanity

Here's a bit on the round table I will be leading next summer:

I'm leading the Science and Ethics round table with Giff, who was, incidentally, my Japadele Buddy during JASC 59. He is, as I have mentioned previously, a medical student deeply concerned with the humaneness of medicine and science in general. I have quite a bit of respect for his moral concern, particularly because I lack moral principles. I hope that our divergent (hah! understatement) approach to the round table will foster many lively discussion.


Giff wants to looks at case-studies: the A-bomb, cloning, stem cell research, euthanasia and so forth. He asks: "How do we relate science to the true figure of humanity".

I'm interested in a theoretical approach: what is the culture of science, and how do we bridge the gap between the culture (the framework, the mindset, insert other abstract synonyms of your choice) and the culture of humanities?

Ideas of the moment:
1) The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray: how one might use statistics to tell the devil's lie
2) British physicist and writer C. P. Snow (1905-1980): "The Two Cultures", his 1959 lecture on the breakdown in communication between the two cultural camps of modern society -- the scientists and the literary intellectuals

Thoughts welcome!