Science and wisdom

Theology Today, Jul 2001 by Moltmann, Jurgen

Where does the responsibility of scientists for their scientific knowledge-and for what they or other people make of it-begin? How far does responsibility go? If wars between nations become crises of humanity as a whole, and if in these wars the survival or annihilation of humanity itself is at stake, are people not then responsible, not just for the application of the instruments of mass extermination, but already for their actual construction and manufacture, too? In 1958, German nuclear physicists accepted this responsibility and refused to cooperate in manufacturing instruments of mass extermination, to the considerable annoyance of a number of politicians. Of course, this responsibility is not just a question for the scientists and technologists involved. It is a problem for the whole of society, for every one of us, and-because it is humanity that is under deadly threat-for humanity as a whole. The community of nations must rebel against its role as the passive object of possible total extermination through ABC (atomic, biological, and chemical) weapons, and it must become an active determining subject of common survival. It is going to do just that or will disappear.

Experiences such as these with the application of scientific knowledge in our own time make us ask: Is there such a thing at all as a disinterested delight in "pure knowledge" of "the knowable world"? Are scientific developments and the financing of scientific research not always preceded by economic and political interests? The first scientific theories of the modern world maintained that the acquisition of power for the purpose of dominating nature was the "knowledge-constitutive interest" prompting the sciences. "Knowledge is power," declared Francis Bacon. Science restores to human beings their sovereignty over nature, the role conferred upon them with their creation in the image of God but lost through sin. Through the sciences, the human being becomes "master and possessor of nature," maintained Descartes in his scientific theory, at about the same time.

If human beings cannot control the power over nature that they acquire through science, they have still not yet learned wisdom. If the conquest of nature-the subjugation of the earth and other created beings-is the goal of scientific and technological civilization, then it is not surprising that all other living things should encounter human beings with fear and trembling. Those who set themselves up to be nature's masters and possessors, and forget that they themselves are merely part of nature, destroy nature and, in the end, annihilate themselves. The harmony between the human side of nature and its other elements gives way to the struggle in which the weaker part is defeated. The community of creation shared by human beings and their "fellow creatures" (as they are termed in the German Animal Protection Act of 1986) is replaced by the exploitation of the fellow creatures who have been subjugated.

The fear of God is a blessing, in that it can free modern men and women from the God-complex that has made them drunk with power and induced the mad illusion that the ascendancy they have acquired over nature makes everything possible. The fear of God can beget the wisdom that lends human beings moral power over their own physical power. We do not have to do everything we are able to do. "Can" does not imply "ought." The power we have acquired can be used for what furthers life, so as to exclude what kills it. Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice had learned from his master the formula for putting the broom into motion but, unfortunately, not the formula for banishing it again to its corner. When shall we learn this second formula of power? The fear of God can ultimately engender the knowledge-constitutive wisdom, which has no desire to dominate its object and take possession of it, but wants to commune with it and live with it in a life-furthering commonwealth.