FOIA on Martin Luther King

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# Virtue, in Spite of Erroneous Conceptions

J. P. Frankel Dean of the Faculty Harvey Mudd College Claremont, Calif. 91711

"We think of knowledge as knowing how-to-do-it, wisdom as knowing whether-to-do-it, and virtue (if the answer is yes) as doing-it."

In this article, I mean virtue in a much narrower sense than the theologians, and I mean erroneous conceptions in a much broader sense than planners of parenthood.

## Let me first speak of virtue.

We think of knowledge as knowing how-to-do-it, wisdom as knowing whether-to-do-it, and virtue as doing it. In this sense, at least in the universities, we think of scientists as knowing, the humanists as wise, and the engineers and other technicians (doctors, nurses, social workers and the like) as virtuous, that is, the do-ers.

## The World is Full of Problems

Now the world is full of problems where we need to know how to do it, whether to do it, and (if the answer is yes) to do it. Each of us can make his own list of pressing social problems: pollution, arms limitation, or population growth. Fortunately we are reasonably well supplied with scientists, humanists, and technicians. To understand why we still have these urgent problems, let us turn to erroneous conceptions.

The erroneous conceptions I wish to deal with here are:

That it is within the power of scientists and engineers to choose to work only on projects "in the public interest," and That the market place is where one discovers the public interest.

## Choice of Projects to Work on

Critics seem to assume that scientists and engineers are free to choose their projects, and complain that they fail to consider the real public interest. Scientists may be free to choose their work, but they Based on remarks delivered on Joseph C. Wilson Day, November 10, 1972, at the University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.

have no more to say about how their discoveries are used than Christopher Columbus did.

As for the engineers, they have more to say about the uses of science, since they are the ones who choose which of science's ideas will be applied, but they in turn have almost no way, at present, of identifying the public interest, and even less in determining which products or processes should be produced to serve it.

## A Moratorium on Science?

We will return to this matter of choice, but first let's eliminate from the list of reasonable alternatives facing society, the silly and dangerous notion of a moratorium on science.

The key notion in the moratorium idea is that if you can't control it, you shouldn't do it. Therefore, we are urged, don't do any more science until (presumably) the humanists devise suitable controls. The trouble with this kind of conceptual contraception is two-fold. In the first place, as Paul Saltman has pointed out eloquently, you can't forbid knowing any more than you can forbid writing poetry. Science can be slowed down, of course, by driving it underground, but even if we slowed it way down, there is no evidence that we have either knowledge or wisdom enough to control its application, unless we change some of our habits.

## Ignorance and Fear Lead to Irrationality

One habit that needs correction has to do with the thinking and feeling processes of the humanists the philosophers, if you will who presumably are to show us how to behave. Too often they are ignorant or fearful of science and engineering. What one is ignorant or fearful of, he cannot deal with in a rational way. There is no possibility that we can learn to control what we do by some non-rational process, such as satori, using mystically-fashioned playing cards, etc. Control over what we do will