Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
Interpretation
Science alone cannot determine our moral values or ethics.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that while science provides us with knowledge about the world, it does not offer guidance on ethical principles or moral behavior. Ethics, which dictate how we should act and what is right or wrong, require insights beyond scientific reasoning, drawing upon philosophy, culture, and individual beliefs.
In practice
In a debate on the role of science in society, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for a moral framework.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.
It is not surprising that liberals believed in progress. The idea of progress justified the entire transition from feudalism to capitalism. It legitimated the breaking of the remaining opposition to the commodification of everything, and it tended to wipe away all the negatives of capitalism on the grounds that the benefits outweighed, by far, the harm.
Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)
Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
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