Science and ethics topic at Chairs Dinner

Science and ethics topic at Chairs Dinner
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BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

Moral anxiety
nearly always accompanies scientific progress since new
discoveries challenge the narratives people use to give
meaning to their lives, former Princeton President Harold
Shapiro told an audience of 170 faculty chair holders, deans
and trustees at the ninth annual Distinguished Chairs Dinner
Oct. 16.

Shapiro drew
from his experiences as former chair of the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission (1996-2001) to address the issue of
technology and ethics.

Saying that an
appropriate title for his presentation might be “Science,
High Anxiety and Meaning,” Shapiro explored the challenges
of creating public policy in a pluralistic liberal democracy
where “people make decisions in a very morally contested
area, where there isn’t a single moral high ground.

“Anxiety
connects the world of science on the one hand and the world
of meaning on the other,” he said, explaining that
all human societies construct narratives, or stories, that
help them make sense out of a world over which they have
no control and give meaning to their efforts and very existence.

He said that
as chair of the National Bioethics Commission, he was taken
aback by the public anxiety that was generated by advances
in the biomedical frontier — the most notorious ones
being nuclear transfer cloning and human embryonic stem
cells. On the other hand, he didn’t think it was wise
to dismiss this anxiety.

“Anxiety
and change are constant companions,” he said. “In
a world of rapid change, even if we only deal with the change
that takes place in the scientific frontier, we’re
going to find ourselves bobbing around in a turbulent moral
sea.”

Shapiro outlined
three major problems in dealing with technology. First,
an ancient problem — as old as the written record —
is the worry about the impact of new technology on people’s
lives. Then there’s a newer problem of dealing with
morally contested issues in a liberal democracy. But he
said the newest problem is the truly radical nature of developments
in human genetics — “radical in the sense that
many feel these discoveries require some significant change
or adjustment in our human narratives as we understand them.”

Shapiro concluded
that scientists have to help people adapt those narratives
in ways that are meaningful to them and to their lives.

“Both those
driving the biomedical frontier ahead and other thoughtful
citizens share a common concern with finding a way to deploy
this new knowledge in a manner that not only gives it moral
content and human meaning, but relieves certain anxieties
about the future.”

Shapiro joins
a long list of distinguished academicians who have spoken
at the annual dinner, including Henry Rosovsky, professor
emeritus of economics at Harvard; Gerhard Casper, then-president
of Stanford; David Baltimore, president of Caltech and Nobel
Prize-winning biologist; and George Rupp, president of Columbia
and former president of Rice.

Rice President
Malcolm Gillis created the event in 1994 to honor all holders
of named faculty chairs at Rice and to encourage greater
interaction among faculty across disciplines.

“The faculty
is the core of any great university,” Gillis told the
116 gathered chair holders. “The faculty is the repository
of academic values, the articulator and guardian of these
values. Faculty who achieve special recognition for themselves
also lend further distinction to their universities,”
he said.

Every year, each
new recipient of a chair receives a scroll during the event.
Duplicates of the scrolls also are permanently displayed
in Fondren Library, alongside those for all the other named,
endowed chairs, past and present. This year, 10 new chair
holders were recognized:

In the Wiess
School of Natural Sciences, John B. Anderson holds the W.
Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography; Robert F. Curl, the
Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Chair in Natural Sciences;
Huey W. Huang, the Sam and Helen Worden Chair in Physics;
and Ronald L. Sass, the Harry Carothers and Olga Keith Wiess
Chair in Natural Sciences.

In the George
R. Brown School of Engineering, Steven C. Currall holds
the William and Stephanie Sick Professorship in Entrepreneurship
and Michael Deem, the John W. Cox Chair in Biochemical and
Genetic Engineering.

In the School
of Social Sciences, Eli Berman holds the George and Cynthia
Mitchell Chair in Sustainable Development and Simon Grant,
the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Chair in Economics and
Finance.

In the School
of Humanities, Masayoshi Shibatani is the Deedee McMurtry
Professor of Humanities.

In The James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Edward P. Djerejian
holds the Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly University
Chair for Senior Scholars in the James A. Baker III Institute
for Public Policy.