At the end of chapter nine in the book we are reading, The Calcutta Chromosome, Murugan and Antar are talking over lunch about Ronald Ross and his research in malaria. For this week I thought it would be interesting to discuss Murugan’s philosophical question to Antar.
“Do you think everything that can be know should be known?” as it relates to science or life in general. (Ghosh 59) Should we strive to know everything about anything no matter what the costs? How far is too far morally? Does it make it right if it is for the better good? For example, a lot of what we know about the limits of the human body can be traced back to the Holocaust.
http://www.remember.org/educate/medexp.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation (here's a link so you know I'm not making it up!)
Posts
I don't think that everything that can be known should be, especially if it is immoral. Not only that, but knowing everything takes the mystery out of life, and also gives the people with the knowledge way too much control over those who do not have it. This can be used to manipulate and control other people, to the point where every movement or thought could be predictable. Although we have advanced far in science, I don't think that we have advanced that far ethically, and this could lead to a situation in which man has an abundance of knowledge but uses it for negative means. Without the moral aspect, you just have a cadre of people who can enslave others through science.It's one of those questions where you really have to ask yourself; why do you seek to know everything? Is it for control?Sometimes, the more you want to know, the more you have to be willing to push boundaries. Is there a point of no return where you are willing to do anything for science? For what purpose? There's nothing wrong with curiosity in and of itself, but everything has limits, and people's lives and the integrity of their physical beings should not be sacrificed for the sake of science. If we accept this, then we also have to accept the same fate for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Bethaney. There is a point where you can take the quest for knowledge too far. There is a moral barrier that should not be crossed to for the sake of learning something new no matter how important it may seem. For example, Charles brought up the Holocaust. We did learn a lot about the human body that would have probably taken years to discover if the research was not done, but we gained that knowledge at the expense of thousands upon thousands of lives. Is it really worth it? To kill thousands of people for a meager page in a text book? There should never come a time when we start to sacrifice our moral standings in order to better our integrity. We lose our integrity as human beings by sacrificing our morals. Our morals are what separates humans from beasts.
ReplyDeleteI also agree, not everything that can be known should be known. Today experiments are used on rats and other animals. I think that experiments on animals should be done before experimentation on human beings. Of course what the Nazis did in the World War II was unnacceptable and should never be repeated. I also agree with corey that moral standards should never be sacraficed in order to better ourselves. Sure some sacrafice is needed to better human kind, we have trials today using different drugs to try and cure cancer and other diseases. The difference today is that we don't do experiments despite killing and hurting people. People try to cause little discomfort and save lives with little consequences. Then again the vaccine of the Swine Flu before this current outbreak killed more people than the actually flu did.
ReplyDelete