Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)
Context: I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality as it is accessible to human reason. Wherever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism. … I cannot accept your opinion concerning science and ethics or the determination of aims. What we call science has the sole purpose of determining what is. The determining of what ought to be is unrelated to it and cannot be accomplished methodically. Science can only arrange ethical propositions logically and furnish the means for the realization of ethical aims, but the determination of aims is beyond its scope. At least that is the way I see it.
Letter to his friend Maurice Solovine (1 January 1951) p. 120
“Ethical judgments can be [should be] included in the scope of science”
Cited in: John P. van Gigch (2006) Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management. p. 2
1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948)
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C. West Churchman 64
American philosopher and systems scientist 1913–2004Related quotes
Source: Philosophy of Education, p. 86.
Source: 1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948), p. 256; cited in Douglas, H.E. (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal
“The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance.”
Source: The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari (1997), Chapter 10, “Lifetimes of Chance” (p. 201; quoting Hegel)
“Incoherence is a common hazard for journalists who dabble in ethical judgments.”
"Scotty: All the news that's fit to schmooze," The Weekly Standard, 24 February 2003
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine. And not only other human life, but all kinds of life: life above mine, if there be such life; life below mine, as I know it to exist. Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. But that is a limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.
Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §6 (p. 63–64)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
Context: Tolerance among scientists cannot be based on indifference, it must be based on respect. Respect as a personal value implies, in any society, the public acknowledgements of justice and of due honor. These are values which to the layman seem most remote from any abstract study. Justice, honor, the respect of man for man: What, he asks, have these human values to do with science? [... ]
Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not.
2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)
“Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
"But the One on the Right" in The New Yorker (1929)
Context: That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 7 : Nature