Ode to a Grecian Atomist.

The ancient Greek atomism of Democritis and Leucippus was an attempt to reconcile observations of the physical world with the existing philosophical wisdom concerning change in the world. Although the methods of reasoning they used were not those of the modern scientific method, it is remarkable how close many of the properties of their atoms come to matching those of the atoms of modern science. At the very least, it seems from a modern viewpoint that atomism should have prevailed, if only as a good working hypothesis. Why was it so thoroughly rejected?

One of the most telling arguments used against the claims of the ancient Greek atomists is almost identical to that leveled against materialist, reductive science, and naturalism today: if the world is only atoms and the void, then why tell the truth and why fight for Athens? If there is no component of divine intention to be found in an atomist understanding of physical change, then how can there be any morality?

The answer to this "moral argument" against a godless scientific understanding of the universe has always been clear, but today it is seldom given voice: we tell the truth because it is only by trying to tell the truth as we see it that we came to even suspect that the world might be made of atoms; and we fight for Athens because, if we fail to defend the city-state that has allowed us the freedom of thought to consider such questions, where will we do our thinking in the future? If we value the scientific or philosophical finding, we must value the process that made that finding possible.

Today, it is to the modern process of science--and to our hopes for its continuation--that we must look for the beginnings of a humanist and scientific ethic. Too often science is seen as devoid of ethical content--a list of what "is" with no ability to provide any guidance as to what "ought" to be. But science is not just a looseleaf notebook of facts and experimental findings; it is a method of approaching questions about the world based on a personal commitment to a strict ethic. Those who value the knowledge to be revealed by the application of the scientific method--and who wish to understand the world through science--must agree to tell the truth, not only to each other but to themselves.

The ethical dimension of science was not always so obscure. It was forcefully stated forty years ago by Jacob Bronowski in his book Science and Human Values. Bronowski identified the spark that began the scientific revolution as the "habit of truth," which makes science not a search for concepts beyond challenge but a never-ending search for the mutual respect that can make us human. As he put it: "Theory and experiment alike become meaningless unless the scientist brings to them, and his fellows can assume in him, the respect of a lucid honesty with himself."

Now, at the end of the twentieth century, what was so clear at mid-century is forgotten, and the myth that science has nothing to tell us about moral values is so deeply entrenched that it goes almost completely unchallenged--so pervasive that even scientists and humanists unthinkingly promote it. In March 1998, it was the theme of an essay entitled "Oppressed by Evolution" by Matt Cartmill in the popular American science magazine Discover. Two issues later, not one dissenting opinion had been published by the magazine.

Bronowski recognized the signs of the popular distrust of science (the attitude that "scientists should be on tap, not on top," as Winston Churchill plainly put it) and identified its root cause. A decade after he had participated in the scientific inspection of the ruins of Nagasaki, Japan, Bronowski wrote:

   The dilemma of today is not that the human values cannot control a
   mechanical science. It is the other way about: the scientific spirit is
   more human than the machinery of governments.... The body of technical
   science burdens us because we are trying to employ the body without the
   spirit; we are trying to buy the corpse of science.

Science is misperceived by the public as being identical to its current "findings" and, even when its "method" is taught, that becomes a cold and meaningless algorithm rather than a commitment to an ethic. In today's market, the findings of science are strictly separated from the ethic that gave rise to them, which is buried as unwanted offal. The corpse--the raw meat of scientific discovery--is available in every store, and the skin is stuffed and on display in the museums and schools for our entertainment or poor education.

Those who benefit from the sale of the corpse do not value the knowledge to be revealed by the application of the scientific method and do not wish to understand the world through science. Science has become, at the same time, a cornucopia of high-tech toys and a part of the entertainment industry. Its role is to provide first the inspiration for dinosaur and meteor movies, then the special effects to carry them out.

Humanism has done no better. At the turn of the century and of the millennium, the greatest failing of organized humanism is that it has articulated no compelling answer to the moral challenge laid down millennia ago: if the world is only atoms and the void, then why tell the truth and why fight for Athens? Still mired in controversies between foundationalism and anti-foundationalism, still looking on the one hand for the absolute answers of religion and on the other for an evolutionary excuse for acting out of our pre-rational convictions of "intrinsic horror," humanism has missed the boat--both figuratively and literally.

Humanist morality isn't, and shouldn't be, bound either to unmoving foundations in logic or revelation or to the emotive flotsam of the last few million years of evolution. If we are to avoid drowning, we must recognize that we are all in the same ethical boat and that boat is constantly under construction. This is today as it has always been.

What is different today is what tools and materials we have available to aid the moral shipwrights in redesigning the craft to sail the rough seas ahead. Neither the stones of unquestioned revelation from a mythical God nor the iron-mongery of an unworkable exact moral calculus have proved seaworthy by themselves. Nor will we survive by lashing ourselves to the broken masts and planking, the tree roots and seaweed we find floating up from our past evolution and culture.

The future of humanity is ours to shape. We must use all the materials at hand, after careful inspection. The recently broken planking, along with the evolved and gnarled roots, can be smoothed and made to serve. The iron nails of logic can help to hold it all together-provided we remember that iron rusts! Even the dead weight of religion, if taken in moderation, can serve as ballast.

But the effort will all be in vain without a workable notion of how and what to build. Today science provides the best hope we have for devising a plan for a vessel that--constructed with honest labor--may see us through at least some of the coming storms before it must again be rebuilt under us.

In his article "Faith, Science, and the Soul: On the Pragmatic Virtues of Naturalism" in the May/June 1993 Humanist, Thomas Clark asks:

   If it were suddenly discovered that the whole edifice of science was
   fraudulent or misguided, would that significantly change what we want in
   life? Would we cease being humanistic in our approach to the problems that
   currently beset us? I strongly doubt it.

I strongly disagree with Clark in this. Such a discovery would and should profoundly change humanism's approach to life. If telling the truth cannot help us, then all we have left are lies and illusions. And anyone who thinks otherwise is simply out of touch with the lessons of the twentieth century. That such nonsense is still being entertained as humanist philosophy in 1998 is a shameful sign that organized humanism is woefully unready for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Norman F. Hall is the Southwest liaison officer for the National Ocean Data Center in La Jolla, California, and past president of the Humanist Association of San Diego. Reach him by e-mail at [e-mail] or on his website at www.godless.org.