“The ideal of value neutrality is not a single notion, but has arisen in the course of protracted struggles over the place that science should have in society.”

—  Robert N. Proctor

Source: Value-free science?: Purity and power in modern knowledge, 1991, p. 262

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The ideal of value neutrality is not a single notion, but has arisen in the course of protracted struggles over the pla…" by Robert N. Proctor?
Robert N. Proctor photo
Robert N. Proctor 14
American historian 1954

Related quotes

Charles Mackay photo

“The over-bearing insolence of ignorant men, who had arisen to sudden wealth by successful gambling, made men of true gentility of mind and manners blush that gold should have power to raise the unworthy in the scale of society.”

Charles Mackay book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

W. H. Auden photo

“Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"The Virgin & The Dynamo", p. 62
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

David Easton photo

“Political science is the study of the authoritative allocation of values for a society.”

David Easton (1917–2014) Canadian academic

The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (1953)

Mao Zedong photo

“In the ideological field, the question of who will win in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not been really settled yet. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957), 1st pocket edition, pp. 26-27
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

Theodore Kaczynski photo

“Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letter to M. K.
The Road to Revolution (2008)

“When we come to think about the several benefits in regard to their cause, how have they arisen? Have they arisen out of hate of others and injuring others? Of course we should say no. We should say they have arisen out of love of others and benefiting others. If we should classify one by one all those who love others and benefit others, should we find them to be partial or universal? Of course we should say they are universal. Now, since universal love is the cause of the major benefits in the world, therefore Mozi proclaims universal love is right. And, as has already been said, the interest of the magnanimous lies in procuring benefits for the world and eliminating its calamities. Now that we have found out the consequences of universal love to be the major benefits of the world and the consequences of partiality to be the major calamities in the world; this is the reason why Mozi said partiality is wrong and universality is right.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 4; Universal Love III
Mozi

Henry Jacob Bigelow photo

“Anti-cruelty societies should be encouraged. The progress of science has suffered little by their existence, and humanity has gained much.”

Henry Jacob Bigelow (1818–1890) American surgeon

Source: Surgical Anaesthesia (1894), p. 372

Leon R. Kass photo

“The truths modern science finds—even about human beings—are value-neutral, in no way restraining, and indeed perfectly adapted for, technical application. In short, as Hans Jonas has put it, modern science contains manipulability at its theoretical core—and this remains true even for those great scientists who are themselves motivated by the desire for truth and who have no interest in that mastery over nature to which their discoveries nonetheless contribute and for which science is largely esteemed by the rest of us and mightily supported by the modern state.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 8

Mao Zedong photo

“What is knowledge? Ever since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the struggle of production and knowledge of the class struggle. Natural science and social science are the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, and philosophy is the generalization and summation of the knowledge of nature.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Original: (zh-CN) 什么是知识？自从有阶级的社会存在以来，世界上的知识只有两门，一门叫做生产斗争知识，一门叫做阶级斗争知识。自然科学、社会科学，就是这两门知识的结晶，哲学则是关于自然知识和社会知识的概括和总结。 note: "整顿党的作风"
Source: "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" (1942)

Related topics