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.
We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing,this seeing. -Aunt Beast
The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.
Monarchy is an outrage which even the blind of an entire people cannot justify... all men hold from nature the secret mission to destroy wherever it my be found. No man can reign innocently. The folly is too evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. Do kings themselves treat otherwise those who seek to usurp their authority?
The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining.
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!
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