Icarus, or the Future of Science

Answers

• Q26CONTROL

  Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?

  No. harm lies with those who wield science, not with science itself. Argues science only lets the holders of power realise their purposes more fully; whether it does good or harm depends on those purposes, which at present are mostly evil.

  Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth-century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard. Science enables the holders of power to realize their purposes more fully than they could otherwise do. If their purposes are good, this is a gain; if they are evil, it is a loss. In the present age, it seems that the purposes of the holders of power are in the main evil, in the sense that they involve a diminution, in the world at large, of the things men are agreed in thinking good. Therefore, at present, science does harm by increasing the power of rulers. Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

  OCR corrected

  Closing section · Internet Archive 'icarusorfutureof00russ' text; closing passage read (p. 57).