Science: a Threat to Society?

Talking of ‘playing God’, aside from assuming the existence of a deity that many people in this day and age do not believe in, implies a violation of set boundaries. What boundaries ? Set by whom ? Any attempt to define them runs into problems of definition. In actual fact, the proposition is simply afraid of things it knows nothing about. There is nothing wrong with the principle of scientific advance; the accusation that we are meddling in areas we do not understand is a call for better regulation of scientific enquiry, not its abolition.

Science does not kill; man does. Science cannot be blamed for the flaws in human nature, and suffering cannot be attributed to it any more than religion or philosophy, both of which have caused wars. In fact, the example used by the Proposition illustrates how science brings with it accompanying responsibility; Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) ensured that wars such as the Cold War were bloodless events.

On the contrary, science has greatly increased the ability of people to communicate. Telephones and email enable people on opposite sides of the world to stay in touch where before they would have had no possible way to do so. The Internet allows people unprecedented access to information – anything from sports scores to debating crib-sheets. And any study of pre-industrial society will show that computer games appear to have taken the place previously held by recreational violence.

Any consideration of the modern world will reveal the fallacy of the proposition’s argument. Modern medicines have more than doubled our life expectancy, and enabled children to be vaccinated against diseases which before hand had ensured a massive rate of infant mortality, whilst the population could not be fed without fertilisers and pesticides to increase yields and machinery to collect them efficiently. Science and technology are essential to modern existence. Like any of mankind’s inventions, it must be treated with care and not abused, but it is ludicrous to condemn it in itself as a menace.