Being scientific is being humane too!

Q: Do scientists believe that being scientific is more important than being humane?

Krishna: Who says being scientific is not being humane?

A humane person is one who shows great compassion and caring for other living beings and who tries whenever possible to alleviate another's suffering.

When the pandemic broke - when confronted with the incredible suffering caused by disease on one hand and faced with the ability to challenge such maladies on the other, humans can feel morally compelled to act. And scientists did act to save humanity by developing vaccines and the best treatments. Isn’t that being humane?

If I say science has a moral dimension too?

To be frank science is a neutral study of the universe without any biases and prejudices. It exactly shows what reality of our universe is. And if that helps in human culture moral judgements?

Like DNA fingerprinting helps in finding the culprits in forensic science who cheat others (1)?

Anyone who knows how a nervous system works during pain processing can do no physical harm to any living being. And anyone who knows how the brain really works at the emotional level will never try to harass another living being. Any person who has seen how the scientific rules are followed universally in a given set of conditions, and understood its beauty can never think in local terms and can never come under the influence of artificially created races, castes, groups, communities or citizenships. He sees all the living beings as his own images - following universal rules of life and as citizens of this universe.

So far science has described how various social animals work in their groups, using various mechanisms to interact collectively. Bees use pheromones. Humans use emotions. And morality is just a word for emotional responses for how people do or do not behave according to 'rules' of the group they identify with. And science described it in spite of centuries of claims of mystical magical forces that made people behave as they do.

Unlike what several people think, science deals with moral ( derived from reasoning related to...empirical evidence) issues too and can be a good guide to life's journey through the checkerboard of blacks and whites (2)!

Human emotions - including humaneness - themselves are scientific and are governed by a complex mixture of chemicals and electricity.

Emotions, like fear and love, are carried out by the limbic system, which is located in the temporal lobe. While the limbic system is made up of multiple parts of the brain, the center of emotional processing is the amygdala, which receives input from other brain functions, like memory and attention.

Based on discoveries made through neural mapping of the limbic system, the neurobiological explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain.

Defined as such, these emotional states are specific manifestations of non-verbally expressed feelings of agreement, amusement, anger, certainty, control, disagreement, disgust, disliking, embarrassment, fear, guilt, happiness, hate, interest, liking, love, sadness, shame, surprise, uncertainty and humaneness.

If distinguished from reactive responses of reptiles, emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which neurochemicals (e.g., dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures, and postures (1).

So the sum total of all our emotions is the biochemical balance of our systems. And morality is just a word for emotional responses for how people do or do not behave according to 'rules' of the group they identify with.

Isn't that evidence enough?

Do humans have knowledge of what they're doing?

Yes, all human beings with sound minds have awareness of what they are doing.

But ‘knowledge’ of what they are doing is a contentious issue.

That depends on each individual’s thinking, analysis, perception, and the knowledge people have about the work.

Several men think what they are doing is right. But others who are watching them might think the person is wrong in doing it.

Who is correct here? There are some general parameters to judge things. And those parameters are usually morality based and morality is just a word for emotional responses for how people do or do not behave according to 'rules' of the group they identify with. Morals differ from culture to culture.

Therefore, even judgements too might differ. ‘What’ you are analysing with might not be knowledge at all. It can be your baseless belief, perception based ignorance, your group’s morals, your culture’s rules, and all things irrational.

When evidence based facts, genuine knowledge, changing sets of morals depending on situations and incidents become rare parameters to analyse deeds, you might be aware of what you are doing but might not have full knowledge of what is actually happening (3).

Some people complain that science also brings with it a few bad things like commercial GM crops, nuclear bombs etc. along with the good it does to the mankind. But according to the scientific community – science is like a knife. A knife can be used to cut throats and spill blood. It can also be used for good purposes like cutting fruits and vegetables. It depends on the person who uses it. Likewise science can also be used for the benefit of living beings in a humane way as well as for their destruction. Which way it goes is in the hands of the person who uses it. The choice is definitely yours, Homo sapiens (4).

So if you think being scientific is not being humane, it just is your perception not the truth.

Scientists very well know what they are doing and why they are doing it. If you cannot understand it the right way, it is your headache, not science’s.

Science is humane! More humane than most other fields.

Footnotes:

1. Can science explain or deal with emotions and morals?
2. Science and Spirituality
3. Qs people asked me on science and my replies to them - Part 168
4. Choice is Yours