I came across this gem a couple of weeks ago. The impact with which the late Professor Bronowski asserted his “personal view” on science versus dogma cannot be overstated:
There are two parts to the human dilemma: one is the belief that the end justify the means. That push-button philosophy. That deliberate deafness to suffering that has become the monster in The War Machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit. The assertion of dogma that closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts [camera zooms into an open iron door to a human-sized oven]: obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn then into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself [zoom out, new scene: narrator walks toward, and into, a pond outside of a complex perimeter.]: this is the crematorium and concentration camp at Auschwitz; this is where people were turned into numbers.
Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And it was not done by gas; it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance! When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the very brink of the known. We always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: think it possible you may be mistaken!”
I owe it as a scientist to my late friend Leo Szilard–I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here–to stand here as a survivor and as a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.
[Slowly leaning down toward the pond, the narrator swoops in with his right hand and scoops up muck from the bottom, slowly bringing it up…]
We have to touch people.
Bronowski, J., The Ascent of Man, Episode 11, BBC, 1973