“Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.”

— Edward O. Wilson

Source: The Future Of Life

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Edward O. Wilson 83

American biologist 1929

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 1-2; as cited by David Byrne (1999) in: " Complexity and Postmodernism: Book Review http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review1.html" in JASSS Vol 2 (2)

“Science vs. Technology: We should know why things must act as they do, to make them act as we want them to.”

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

Source: Self-Annihilating Sentences, 1992, p. 14

“Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose (1980)

“We need to ask ourselves not only what computers can do, but what computers should do.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

The Seattle Times: " Microsoft Build: Data privacy must be protected, CEO Satya Nadella tells technologists https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-build-data-privacy-must-be-protected-ceo-satya-nadella-tells-technologists/" (7 May 2018)

“I agree … that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Comment on establishing the University of Virginia, in a letter to Thomas Cooper (7 October 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol VII, p. 200 http://books.google.com/books?id=jrSgJGp-B64C&pg=RA1-PA200&dq=%22A+professorship+of+theology+should+have+no+place+in+our+institution%22&ei=u65FR562EpqCpwLkk9XxBg
1810s
Context: I agree … that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best. Those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.

“Good deeds do not wait for time or opportunity. We must do what we should do.”

Titon Rahmawan

“Could we forbear dispute, and practice love,
We should agree as angels do above.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Canto III.
Of Divine Love (c. 1686)
Context: Could we forbear dispute, and practice love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Where love presides, not vice alone does find
No entrance there, hut virtues stay behind:
Both faith, and hope, and all the meaner train
Of mortal virtues, at the door remain.
Love only enters as a native there,
For born in heav'n, it does but sojourn here.

“We should weigh out the consequences of everything we do, we should consider whether what we are doing is permissible or not. Habit has a big part in reformation of practice.”

Mirza Masroor Ahmad (1950) spiritual leader of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

Eid and Friday Sermons
Source: Self-reformation: Breaking Bad Habits https://www.alislam.org/friday-sermon/2013-12-20.html, Friday Sermon December 20th, 2013

“I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

“[I]f we should find about us only bodies as hot as our furnaces, how can we condense steam? What should we do with it if once produced?”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

“Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.”

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Edward O. Wilson 83

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