Control Over Experiments - Is Physics Innocent?

There are several deficiencies in the arguments which have been used to wash physics' hands entirely of all responsibility for the abuses of power over people and nature which have arisen in modern times. Those arguing for the innocence of the scientific method emphasize science's search for knowledge, and make a sharp distinction between those searching for knowledge (scientists) and those using it (everyone else.) There are other very significant deficiencies: (a) A lot more time and excitement is given to knowledge per se than to nature, almost as if nature itself were less interesting than our ideas about it. (b) Faith in Progress (advances of science, discovery, technology, paradigm shifts, frontiers) - faith that progress is happening, that science is (the) key for carrying it forward, that progress is a good in and of itself, and that progress is sure (the provisos vary) to help the human race ("quality of life".) (c) A tendency to take full credit for the glory of the modern age while downplaying the broken-ness and horrors. (d) Underemphasis, lip service to, or neglect of the liberal arts, humanistic, religious, and social values, as if science were the cornerstone of all learning and intellectual pursuits. (e) A very simplified and even neutered perception of nature. (I remember an intelligent colleague arguing at length that animated movies are steadily looking more and more like real life, and that pretty soon it will be impossible to tell the difference between an animated movie and a filmed one! One glance out my window at the snow melting off winter trees is enough to disprove that thesis.) There can also be a tendency to accuse anyone with a less black and white attitude of being anti-science.

Control Over Experiments - Respect For Nature?

Physicists are saying to nature "Surprise me, tell me something more about yourself, but do it while following these rules." (If you were asked for the same question, how much would you tell?) And the surprise that nature gives us, the gift of new knowledge - it then becomes "ours," and gives us new power over nature. At least one writer compares scientific experiment to "putting nature on the rack" to force her to divulge her secrets. It is possible to pursue the scientific endeavour in a way that really respects and treasures the nature that is being studied, but for many researchers the attitude has been more a pursuit of dominance, an effort to conquer nature and bend her to our will. If the truth be told all too many individual scientists, like so many other hard workers in today's competitive economy, are obsessed with their own personal success, and nature is their tool for getting there. This tendency is magnified by the current alignment between the scientific community and the power centers of government, business, consumer markets, and military machines.

If there is an analogy between love and the experimentalist's attentive observation of the world (as I claimed earlier in this blog), this analogy has its limits, because all too often the end result has been something that looks a lot more like rape than like peaceful harmony. In the small it looks like plastic wrappers in the trash and children and old people alike wasting away in front of TVs; in the large it looks like a planet whose species are devastated, whose hidden treasures are excavated, pumped, and burned, and whose peoples destroy and enslave each other with the most advanced technologies.

Is this tendency for science to result in the abuse of persons and of the environment something external to physics (as many scientists would like to think) or built into physics from its very foundations?