GYANOPROBHA

SCIENCE AND RELIGION - UNITED IN A MÖBIUS STRIP?

Religion is often taken to mean "blindly following a belief system". Religion is regarded as what motivates people to kill others, or be dogmatic and closed minded. I acknowledge that this is what people often do in the name of religions, but does that define what religions are? Can't religions also help people to live together peacefully and work towards building a better world. Doesn't Islam have a strong emphasis on social justice and welfare? Doesn't Buddhism make us aware of human suffering and how we can change our own psychology that reinforces it? Doesn't Christianity enjoin that we should love even our enemies?

Why don't we consider the possibility that religions are the systems of belief that help people to make sense of the spiritual aspects of one's experience, just as science helps us to make sense of the natural world. And the two worlds may not be as separate as they seem to be. For most of man's existence on earth, they have not in fact been seen as separate, and the latest findings in neuroscience may yield the links between the world of the spirit and that of nature that the ancients took for granted. But this is still controversial.

Notice that when traditional religions are abandoned, then substitute religions appear to take their place, complete with rituals and ideologies and institutions. And dogmatism is by no means the monopoly of the religious.

I agree that religion is open to abuse. But then which system of ideas is not? Some would say that even science is: notice the billions of dollars spent on developing weapons and other means of doing deliberate harm to human beings. Notice how much we have allowed the products of scientific research to destroy the planet. But that is not science at its best.

I think religion at its best is a system of beliefs that expresses - i.e, imagines, tells stories about - the best that human beings are capable of, and is based on systems of inner examination that have been around for a long time. The question is: should religion (understood in this sense) be something that should be confined to the individual/private sphere and not be allowed to enter the public sphere? I am not at all sure that this is possible, or even a good idea. No one claims that science ought to be restricted to discussion among scientists in laboratories. A similar demand should not be made of religion.

Religion, like science, needs to influence our values. It needs to inform public policies such as in economics and education (NOT as in countries where religious or other ideological dogmatism has been allowed to dominate political discussion). And religion ought to be subjected always to public and critical scrutiny by vigilant citizens, just as scientific research should always be discussed by an educated public as well as by scientists themselves. We need religious ideas to understand our inner selves just as much as we need scientific ones to discover and understand the outer world.

Religion originally began as a quest to understand the world - both inner and outer. With the development of scientific understanding, science has provided the tools and concepts for understanding of the outer world. Religious ideas began to be replaced by scientific ideas in our understanding of the world outside our selves. But in the inner world - the world of mind, soul and spirit - science has been able to make very little progress so far. Psychology - in some forms, at least - represents attempts to apply scientific concepts and tools of understanding to areas where they are inappropriate or of limited use. They are about as effective in understanding the inner world as religious ideas have been in understanding nature. But I think the scientific exploration has just begun of a journey which many religions have mapped a long time ago through rigorously empirical methods. Through research in neuroscience, scientists may at last begin to say something significant about matters that have been understood in religious systems of beliefs for a long time through methods of inner exploration.

Ultimately, I don't believe in a conflict between science and religion. One goes outward and tries to understand nature. The other goes inward, and tries to understand the human soul and spirit. I think they are both equally important, but represent two opposite journeys that originate in the human mind, but also meet back in the mind, like a Moebius strip. But unless we understand both clearly, they both cause enormous trouble!

The inclined plane of morality

It seems almost a truism that doing the good or the right thing is often more difficult than doing the opposite. Acting to do right or good seems to require more effort than doing wrong – the effort being spent in trying to overcome one’s own inertia, or the hindering pull of consensus, or the desire for some sensual or emotional gratification. It may be that doing good also has its own payoffs, but these have to be counterbalanced again the “drag” exerted by the choices not to do good, or to actually do evil.

It is for this reason that I have often regarded our efforts to act morally as analogous to moving an object up an inclined plane. Just as objects placed on an inclined plane more “naturally” roll down the plane than up it, so do we human beings more naturally tend to be dragged down the plane of morality by our natural biological and psychological endowments.

Of course, the characterization of anger, lust, greed as “evil” and a “drag” down the inclined plane is itself a “construction” of our minds – they have no objective existence as part of the fabric of the world, except to the extent that our minds themselves are part of the universe. Nor do the concepts of good and right. So shorn of this imposed grid of moral judgment, the inclined plane is simply a recognition that we have certain tendencies to behave in certain ways (that we call wrong or evil) as a result of the evolutionary inheritance of our biological or psychological programming. To behave and act in certain other ways (that we call right or good) is also potentially available to us, but these ways require a conscious choice and effort of overcoming our natural programming.

What we have naturally is, on the one hand, a set of forces dragging us “down” towards “wrong” and “evil” – the forces of “gravitation” and “friction” if you like - that act on the object lying on the moral inclined plane. On the other hand, we also have a mind and a brain that allows us the potential to act “rightly” and to do “good”.

This may seem an elaborate and pretentious way of saying something that is well recognized in certain religious traditions – that humans are naturally evil. But I am suggesting that our potential capacity for goodness is also natural. For instance, most of us, unless we are psychopathic, probably have a natural resistance to hurting or killing our own kind, and do so only under somewhat special circumstances, even if their frequency makes it seem as if we kill naturally. Similarly, we also seem to have the natural capacity to recognize the distress and happiness of others, including other beings, and we regard it as a mark of psychopathology when we fail to do so.

This natural potential for goodness, or at least the forbearance to do evil, resides in our capacity to transcend and override our biological and psychological programming. It is probably part of what is referred to in religious language as the divine spark hidden in human beings. All religious traditions that I know of may be regarded as elaborations of the ways in which this divine spark can be lit. The urge to go up the inclined plane of morality is a manifestation of this divine spark, this desire to transcend one’s merely human limitations and reach out towards divinity. The effort required for this transcendence is what makes it difficult, and much religious teachings and disciplines are about the development of the potential capacity for transcendence.

What I am also suggesting is that the religious impulse in human beings – the impulse to discover the divine spark, the impulse for transcendence – may also be a feature or a consequence of our consciousness that flows from certain of our neurological features, and therefore part of our natural inheritance. This also implies that our capacity to spin out notions of good and evil, of morality, of transcendence and divinity, may - much like the spider’s capacity to spin webs in different places - be a reflex of our natural inheritance. The recognition of divinity – an ontological extrapolation of our humanness to a being higher than ourselves – may be inherent in the way in which our minds work. This may not be reflected in an explicit recognition of God: even humanists and atheists are known to strive to exceed their own human limitations, and so struggle up the inclined plane of morality.

I have speculated here about the natural origins of morality and religion, but not, I hope, in a reductive way that suggests that they are nothing but the manifestation of something more fundamental. I have for some time been increasingly impatient of attempts to reduce religion and morality to false consciousness, a desire for a father figure, a product of memetic evolution, and goodness knows what else. I find these reductions misleading and insufficiently respectful of the complexity of what the reductions seek to explain. But I nevertheless find increasingly fascinating both the attempts to search for a perennial philosophy, and finding links between it and the worlds of neuroscience and psychology.

Some reflections on science

Science has come to have a certain authority in the popular mind as a source of reliable facts and certainty, and as an unfailing guide – even the only one - to truth. According to some commentators, scientists have become the priesthood of a new religion which holds science and scientific truths to be sacred and beyond criticism – a role rejected by many honest scientists. I would like to devote this post to a critical reflection on the claims for authority, objectivity and truth made on behalf of science.

It might be helpful to begin by clearing up a number of misconceptions about science.

THREE MEANINGS OF ‘SCIENCE’

Let us start with the meaning of the word ‘science’ itself. It is used to refer to three distinct sets of ideas:
a) bodies of knowledge (e.g., Newton’s laws of motion) – I shall call this SBK.
b) methods of enquiry (asking questions, observing or collecting objects and classifying them, designing experiments and instruments, guessing or constructing hypotheses, performing measurements and calculations, judging error, testing for reliability, predicting, etc) – call this SME
c) social practices (science is whatever scientists do as scientists – apply scientific knowledge developed by others, share data, hold seminars and conferences, judge their colleagues’ work, seek funding for their projects, try and convince other people of the value of what they do, publish results, settle arguments between themselves, sometimes fudge or conceal or steal data, etc.). – call this SSP.

It is often helpful to keep these distinctions in mind to avoid confusion.

For instance, it is often asked whether science is in some sense culturally neutral. After all (it is claimed), Newton’s laws of motion are not culture-specific; they operate equally everywhere, in all cultures. It isn’t as if they are especially effective in England, and less so in Xian, China or Mobile, Alabama; nor is it the case that Newton’s laws began to work only in the 17th century when Newton formulated them. This suggests that science is universal and culturally neutral, not specific to time or place or culture.

There is a sense in which science is universal, but there is also a sense in which it is bound to a specific historical and cultural context. As always, one must be very careful when making statements for which one is claiming universal validity. Let’s use this three-fold distinction to unpack this claim.
a) As a body of knowledge, Newton’s laws are a set of claims about the behaviour of bodies acting under the influence of certain forces, and in certain conditions. Newton’s laws of motion are not an accurate picture of the world at the macrocosmic level – i.e., for astronomical or cosmological bodies like stars or planets or galaxies. Nor are they of much use at microcosmic levels of matter – i.e., at molecular, atomic or subatomic levels. They are a pretty good description of the behaviour of bodies in the middle range between these extremes. The laws are therefore valid over time and space but for a restricted range of phenomena.
b) Strictly speaking, the laws of Newton do not constitute a method of enquiry. However, they offer very powerful ways of explaining many phenomena in the middle range. It may be more useful to ask what method of enquiry led Newton to those laws. To the extent that those methods were historically contingent, this aspect of Newton's laws are not universal.
c) Newton’s laws do not constitute a set of social practices. On the other hand, it is useful to ask how scientists use the laws, or why scientists do not divide themselves into Newtonians and Einsteinians and Bohrians in seeking to explain natural phenomena (as economists have often been doing between Keynesians and Monetarists – to mention just two camps - in explaining economic phenomena!). Do scientists regard Newton’s laws as inviolable truths or limited but compelling generalizations? Do scientists generally concern themselves with truth, or only with the most convincing explanation which explains the widest range of phenomena with the fewest theoretical concepts? The same scientists who agree among themselves about Newton’s laws (and about so much else of their knowledge), disagree more or less over a wide range of questions in which the laws are applicable, such as whether the missile shield is a reliable and effective form of defence, or whether sending out weapons into space is a good idea.

It should be clear that something as “solidly” uncontroversial as Newton’s laws of motion are reliable and predictable only over a range of phenomena where they are applicable. Scientists themselves do not claim more for these laws (or any other laws) than this.

Bauer’s ‘Ethics in Science’ is particularly helpful in sorting out what is reliable in what passes for scientific knowledge, and why. The filter described in this article is a corrective for the misleading exaggerations about science that one often encounters in the popular media, and in the essays of students whose only encounter with science has been from a textbook (this is not to be harsh on students, but to understand the source of their misconceptions).

THE VALUE-NEUTRALITY OF SCIENCE

The other great misconception about science is that it is removed from the realm of values, and that it is in this sense objective. This debate in The Ecologist is an argument between a believer in the value- neutrality of science (Wolpert) and an environmentalist critic of the idea of value-neutrality in science (Goldsmith). Although the arguments range widely over a number of issues, Wolpert’s claims to the neutrality of scientific knowledge seem to be based on several arguments.
a) Scientific knowledge is neutral because it consists of what he, along with other scientists, regards as well-established ‘facts’ – “If we are not at the centre of the universe, and genes are responsible for determining some of our behaviour, [or that “…we are made of cells or that the heart pumps blood or that DNA is the genetic material”] that is the way the world is - it is neither good nor bad.”
b) The problems that Goldsmith says are created by science and technology are created not by scientific knowledge (SBK in our distinction), but by its application by “large and rich industrial companies” (SSP). Wolpert seems to attribute a certain moral purity to scientists when they are engaged in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, as opposed to the application of that knowledge.
c) The moral values of scientists have no influence on his/her scientific ideas, and the scientists’ personal morality should not influence the application of their work.

Notice that there is a confusion here between different sorts of values: moral and aesthetic values, and values which determine the relative priority or importance between different courses of action. When scientists decide that they wish to focus on certain aspects of a problem rather on others, do certain kinds of research rather than certain others, they are making a judgment of priority. Polanyi gives examples from his own scientific career of decisions he made that emanated from moral concerns about the consequences of certain government actions. Scientists and mathematicians are often concerned about the aesthetic aspects (e.g., elegance and beauty) of their work. So the claim that scientists are value-neutral when it comes to science is one which is valid only in some fairly restricted senses, e.g., when “science” is used in the sense of SBK, understood as a body of facts. But scientists are not neutral in the sense of how these facts are established, or what standards of acceptability scientists agree to work with i.e., in the sense of SME or SSP.

This may also be the appropriate place to address the distinction made by some between the "text" and the "context" of science on the way to suggesting that they are independent. Facts within the context of science (SSP in my terminology) are supposed to have little influence on the text of science (SBK or SME). For instance, it is claimed that the occasional dishonesty of individual scientists, or the fact they work on defence or commercial projects (SSP), does not affect the knowledge create by their research (SBK). It is probably true to say that scientific knowledge as a set of claims about the natural world (SBK) is independent of the uses to which it is deployed (SSP). But this is not the same as claiming that claims about the workings of the natural world are indpendent of how (SME) and in what context (SSP) such claims are established. It should not be difficult to acknowledge the pressures that are created on scientists nowadays by their almost universal dependence on corporate or government funding, and by the association of much scientific work with the prestige and competitiveness of corporations and of nations (all aspects of SSP). Nor should it be difficult to see how such pressures can influence the questions that are raised by scientists (SBK), the methods (SME) that they adopt in addressing them, and through them, the content and reliability of scientific knowledge itself (SBK).

THE MYTH OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The title of this section forms part of the title of a book by Bauer titled Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method in which he undermines the notion that science is about objective truth (‘facts’), sought according to some standard procedure known as the scientific method. The basis of his claim can be clearly seen in the filter model that he develops.

The so-called scientific method is supposed to consist of a cycle of observation =>hypotheses formation =>testing of hypotheses => verification or falsification => prediction => testing the prediction => further observations. But this assumes that scientists know in advance what to observe, whereas the observations themselves pre-suppose a theory. A theory in turn embodies a set of perceptions – of patterns in data, or of similarities or analogies with more familiar phenomena, or a model constructed by selecting some particular features of a phenomenon. Secondly, if a prediction generated by a hypothesis is not confirmed, it is far from certain whether it is the hypothesis that should be rejected. An error could have occurred in the measurement, or in the interpretations of the observation, or in the instruments used for conducting the observation or experiment. So the process of observation, or of interpreting the results of an experiment, unavoidably relies on subjective elements of judgement and perception (seeing something as one thing and not another – as a ‘duck’ instead of as a ‘rabbit’).

The history of science shows that scientific understandings change when new and better explanations are found. This suggests that scientific theories are very rarely final and conclusive, but can be improved. The criteria for judging theories are given in reading 1. Notice that none of the criteria suggests that scientific theories need be true. Even a flawed theory can successfully predict phenomena, so that successful prediction of a limited range of phenomena does not necessarily imply that the theory is true. However, if a theory is consistent with a large number of known facts, and can successfully predict a wide range of events, scientists usually tend to regard the theory as “true”, but what that means is that the case for accepting it over other theories is very compelling. It does not mean that the search for a better theory is over, particularly if observations emerge later which cannot be explained by the current theory.

PARADIGMS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

The absence of any fixed method in scientific work led Thomas Kuhn to propose, in his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the idea that most scientists work within a particular framework of ideas which suggest ways of framing a problem, methods of dealing with it, and standards for acceptable theories. This framework is itself the paradigm, and the history of scientific ideas shows that paradigms change in response to various changes in the intellectual climate. A change in paradigm is also brought about by a radical (but not necessarily sudden) change in perceptions.

An example of a paradigm change is the replacement of the geocentric paradigm (with the earth as the center of the planetary system) with the heliocentric one (the sun as the center). The current view of the universe of the universe has long abandoned even the heliocentric view when other planetary systems were discovered, and indeed other sections of the universe. The universe is currently regarded by most astronomers as expanding from the moment of its origin in the Big Bang, but this superseded a “steady-state” view of the universe which was prevalent till the 1960’s.

Another example of paradigm change is the replacement of creationist theories of the origins of life by the evolutionary perspective originated by Charles Darwin, and developed and systematized by Huxley, Mendel, Maynard-Smith, Dawkins and others.

It would be a mistake to regard paradigms as relevant only to the natural sciences. Marxism provided a powerful paradigm to historians and economists and other social scientists for a long time, and still continues to do so. The example of Marxism shows that paradigms themselves are far from fixed.

Some would say that there are now several very large change in paradigms occurring with
• the new sciences of chaos, which study random behaviour in systems which were thought to be deterministic (e.g., the effect of predator-prey interactions in populations of animals, changes in weather patterns, etc.);
• the deeper understanding of the physics and chemistry of the brain influencing ideas about consciousness;
• ideas from mathematics and computer science being applied to the study of life and intelligence.

These new directions in science are creating a new awareness of nature and of ourselves as conscious beings within it. For further information, see the Serendip and Calresco websites among many others. For further discussion of Kuhn, start with the excellent introduction to philosophy of science by A F Chalmers titled What is this thing called Science?

SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

Finally, a word about Science in the sense of SSP and SME. There are many critics who claim that it has become the new religion. Scientists and experts are the new priesthood, enjoying the power that previous priesthoods enjoyed. The large financial investment that much scientific work now requires has made scientists dependent on governments and private corporations which have an interest in the outcome of scientific research for reasons of profit or power. This poses a problem in democratic societies, since it puts public policies regarding the applications of scientific knowledge outside the range of open scrutiny by the ordinary citizen who will be affected by such public policies. This problem has been discussed in Bauer’s essay cited earlier.

This problem becomes particularly acute when the experts themselves do not agree, or when there are large uncertainties in their predictions, or when the experts themselves (either openly or secretly) represent one side or another in a debate, and therefore cannot be relied upon to be independent. This has recently attained a great deal of prominence in various controversies about global warming, about the effects of human activities on the environment, about the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment, about the causes of “Mad Cow Disease” and Aids. What all of these issues have in common is the uncertain extent of harm which is expected to flow as a consequence of certain kinds of scientific policies. What some have proposed is a Precautionary Principle which requires scientists and governments to take action to prevent potential harm even before the full extent of the harm can be determined accurately. Among the questions which this principle raises are:
• How certain do we need to be about the possible harm before we take preventive action?
• How much harm would be unacceptable?
• How long should we wait before conclusive evidence of harm emerges?

In his essay Testart (Download file) makes a plea for supplementing expert knowledge with citizen’s perceptions. The expert’s response to this would be to claim that this would effectively put a stop to any scientific endeavour, since popular perceptions of harm would be treated as evidence of potential harm. On the other hand, the “precautionists” like Testart would claim that the absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of absence of harm.

This controversy is not easy to resolve, but it is clear to me at least that what is an acceptable degree of harm is not a decision that can be left to scientists alone. Paradoxically, the answer to this uncertainty is not a turning away from science, as some scientists who are against the precautionary principle claim, but more careful science that is frequently debated by a scientifically educated and politically aware public.

CONCLUSION

This discussion has suggested that the common view of science as an infallible guide to certainty and truth, and the view of scientists as value-neutral, impartial seekers after truth, are both mistaken. However, I have also tried to reinforce the need for open and critical debate within a rational community about all scientific matters, in order that science should retain its compelling power as a guide to understanding the natural world and our place in it.

The contradictions of technology

I want to ask a set of provocative questions about technology, to point to a paradox about our pursuit of it, and to explore a solution - possibly not very original and certainly only a partial one!

Whose values do technological innovations embody? If they weren't our values, how do we come to use them so readily?

The overwhelming consensus in most modern societies is on values such as speed, efficiency, convenience - basically, the compression of time and effort - and freedom and comfort (the creation of the sybaritic individual). Our notion of "the good life" is determined by these values.

These values are "seductive" in the sense that they bewitch and entrap us into ignoring the consequences of our pursuit of them. We seem prepared to sacrifice other values at the altars of these goddesses. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that while worshipping at their shrines, we seem unaware of the sacrifice that they are exacting from us, because we are utterly entranced by them, until it is too late, and sometimes not even then.

We claim we use them because they enable us or free us up to do other things we want to do, but we seem unaware of the hidden costs that we incur while using them. Our parents - and later we ourselves - devote more and more time to earning more and more money, to be able to afford the speed, efficiency, convenience, freedom and comfort for the ones we love, but for whom (as we one day discover) we have no more time.

Many of us want a car so badly that we are prepared to spend large sums to buy the latest model, because we have come to accept that the car will symbolize our status in society. We want the speed and the efficiency and the convenience - to say nothing of the pure individual freedom of going wherever we can whenever we can. We want them so much that we are prepared to spend hours stuck in traffic jams everyday because every one ELSE in the jams wants the same things we do, and we feel enraged that we have been cheated out of the speed, efficiency and convenience we so desparately craved!

We have more and more powerful technologies for communication (such as this blog!), but do we have more significant things to say to each other? Or has the blog and the internet generally become another channel for the banal and the trite? (Perhaps the questions I am raising are banal and trite!)

What is more paradoxical is that with all these powerful technologies, we feel powerless - both individually and collectively - to refuse the logic by which we imprison ourselves in them. We seem mute and helpless to do anything about the toll that they impose on us.

Is there something wrong with wanting hot water in our baths, mobile and ordinary telephones, electricity, browsers and e-mail, cars?

Is it possible to refuse to be a part of this consumerism? If we made a wrong turn on our way to freedom and happiness, can we turn back? Or is this a one-way street down which we all must walk without turning back? Whatever happened to the freedom that the sellers of these technologies promised us ?

So is there nothing in our technology-driven societies to feel happy about? To celebrate, and, as the ads say we should, to feel empowered and liberated?

A point to note is that the problem doesn't reside in the technologies, but in the minds that created them and the social context from which they arose. We create technologies to solve rather limited problems, and become too entranced by the neatness of our solutions to pay any attention to their unintended side effects, not all of which are bad, but most of which become apparent only in the longer run, and so could not have been predicted at the time they were introduced anyway.

I think we have learnt enough from the history of technology over the last say five hundred years to be able to make the above generalizations. The question I wish to address is: what do we do about this?

One possible answer is: Nothing! Doing nothing could be justified by a view that it's just the way our minds work - they focus on fairly limited aspects of our social environment, identify something as a "problem", create a "solution" to it and release the solution back into the environment - sometimes after testing it under limited and controlled conditions. This is how our minds have evolved to function, focusing on the short and at best the medium term, and we are psychologically incapable of transcending this limitation.

But all this assumes that there is just the one mind doing all the thinking, and even if there is a group of minds, they are inevitable affected by "groupthink", and therefore will tend to think as one. It also assumes that the mind is incapable of learning from experience and from mistakes in particular, and that there is no feedback into the mind from the effects of its output on the environment. Also, the consequence of doing nothing is that we shall continue to do the same thing: i.e., take each unanticipated "problem" created by our technological solutions to earlier problems as another one to be "solved" through further technology. That is indeed what the technophiliac optimists among us promise.

But what if the creators of technologies had to submit their creations to a "court" and an independent "jury", who would examine from various perspectives the arguments both for and against the solution, and indeed debate the very identification of the problem?

One possible objection is that the prospect of submitting new technologies to such a court would immediately dampen any creative impulses for innovation. My answer is firstly, that we know enough about the problem of unintended side effects to wish to find some novel mechanisms to deal with it, other than the rather weak ones we have now; and secondly, the prospect of answering to a jury would concentrate the minds of innovators on anticipating possible objections.

A second objection would be that it would be preferable to expose technology to competition in the market. The most beneficient technology would tend to win out in the end, since the market would simply reject, through the price mechanism, any others. This objections runs up against economic arguments about the imperfections of all real world markets: to mention just two - that prices do not reflect public costs and benefits, and that there are important information asymmetries preventing agents from making optimal decisions based on market prices. The latter is especially true of new technologies.

A third objection is that a jury is assumed to embody a social consensus about harms and benefits. But this consensus is often absent, and there may need to be legally defined standards of adjudication between different valuations of harms and benefits.

Finally, the jury would not be a means of removing the problem I posed at the beginning, but of mitigating it. A jury would also be open to the same kinds of abuses that courts are now. That brings me right back to one of my favourite anonymous quotations: No society can be designed to be so perfect that it relieves the individual from the obligation of being good.

Perhaps we should simply acknowledge that we need some mechanism of social control over technology. A jury is one far from perfect sytem, but better than no control at all. Surely we have learnt enough by now to acknowledge that technology is too important socially to be left to the ethical and political judgments of technological experts alone.