Book Review: Brave new bioethics: Life as It Is: Biology for the Public Sphere

April 10, 2008

Science’s task is to explain the natural world: what it is, how it works and why it is the way it is. Ethics is about the oughts and the shoulds. Most ethicists — religious and secular — agree that knowledge of the natural world helps us make better, or at least better-informed, ethical decisions. But, as David Hume, Thomas Henry Huxley and G. E. Moore have noted, a particular understanding of nature does not dictate a unique moral stance. For every Alexander Pope declaring “Whatever is, is right,” there is a Rose Sayer (from the film The African Queen) retorting, “Nature … is what we are put in this world to rise above!” (Nature)