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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
What I am going to say here may be thought by some to be more appropriate to science as a whole, rather than “what sociology has to offer to the physical sciences.” The main point of my remarks has to do with objectivity and values in science. Great masses of people are today in doubt as to whether science is a friend or an enemy of theirs. They do not see it as a means to continued material progress, as objectively measured in such things as the level of living, and morbidity and death rates. To them it is, for example, a means for spreading mass misery through depressions due to technological unemployment. Or, it is the means for the production of ever more destructive weapons in continually more destructive wars.
1 Cf. Ramsperger, Albert G., Philosophies of Science, Chap. XVI, New York, 1942.
2 Richard Chace Tolman, Professor of physical chemistry and mathematical physics, in “A Survey of the Sciences,” Science, Vol. 106, No. 2746, August 15, 1947, asserts this neutrality for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology. The reason why I cite Professor Tolman is because this is the most recent statement of this position which I have seen. This claim has, of course, been made literally hundreds of times.