Morals, Science and Sociality

This book is the third volume of a planned four volume series being produced by The Hastings Center, Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences. The point of the ambitious project is to investigate 'the foundations of ethics and its relationship to science' (Preface, p ix). The first volume came out in 1976 and was concerned especially with medical problems, as its title Science, Ethics and Medicine indicates. The second volume (1977) was concerned in particular with ethics and religion, and the present one is concerned in particular with the effect of science on ethics and with various other inter-connections and mutual influences of science and ethics. In view of its subject-matter the present volume is of less interest to readers of this Journal than the first volume. The authors are highly distinguished in their fields, for example, there are contributions from the philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre, Stephen Toulmin and Gregory Vlastos, and from the molecular biologist Gunther Stent, to name just a few, and they do all make an effort to understand each other's points of view. Moreover, the editors attempt to give the book unity by dividing it into four parts, concerned with the moral roots of science, the foundations of ethics, the scientific roots of morals, and the roots of ethics and science; but the overall impression is one of fragmentation rather than of unity. One also suspects that many of the authors are giving us summarised versions of what they have said or are going to say elsewhere. But to those readers of this Journal whose interests are strongly philosophical the book has something to offer, although it is more a book for the library or piecemeal consultation than for personal purchase or continous reading.