Two important quotes mentioned in the book JD Bernal: the sage of science by Andrew Brown
“The scientists are not masters of the destiny of science; the changes they may bring about may, without their knowing it, force them into positions which they would never have chosen. Their curiosity and its effects may be stronger than their humanity.”
(1920s?)
Later in his life he gave this remark:
“One of the great problems in the whole of science is to what degree is science to be considered as a criminal activity? There is a big criminal activity and small criminal activity, and through the whole science – it does not matter on what scale – the scientist is forced to do something. He has two problems: how to do it, and how to raise the money for it, which consists – and this is why I call it criminal – in finding some way of dressing the thing up so as to extract money from the people who have it, by persuading them that it is going to do something quite different from what it is really going to do … “
I point these out in relation to the view that technology/technological development should be within the domain of moral philosophy, and not science (as mentioned in the book John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death from 1980).
Related link:
78 questions to ask about any technology
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