I guess I should clarify what I was trying to say!
I'm not claiming that scientists are not part of society; that would be silly. I'm saying that a person in the role of a scientist should be seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake. This is not to say that they don't or won't have a personal interest in the results of their research and what is done with it afterwards. But if the scientist is worried about those things during research, then they may purposefully or unintentionally skew their data to acheive their own ends.
I guess that was a little tangential to your point.
I personally believe that all knowledge is worth having. As you pointed out, knowledge is not in itself good or bad. So it's not the concept of knowledge for knowledge's sake that you're actually questioning, but the application of said gained knowledge. For example, it's not the fact that splitting an atom releases tons of energy that's problematic, but the fact that people then chose to use that knowledge to create a devastating bomb.
The point I'm ultimately trying to make is that acquisition of knowledge is not the true problem, but application of knowledge.
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Date: 2008-09-10 08:36 pm (UTC)I'm not claiming that scientists are not part of society; that would be silly. I'm saying that a person in the role of a scientist should be seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake. This is not to say that they don't or won't have a personal interest in the results of their research and what is done with it afterwards. But if the scientist is worried about those things during research, then they may purposefully or unintentionally skew their data to acheive their own ends.
I guess that was a little tangential to your point.
I personally believe that all knowledge is worth having. As you pointed out, knowledge is not in itself good or bad. So it's not the concept of knowledge for knowledge's sake that you're actually questioning, but the application of said gained knowledge. For example, it's not the fact that splitting an atom releases tons of energy that's problematic, but the fact that people then chose to use that knowledge to create a devastating bomb.
The point I'm ultimately trying to make is that acquisition of knowledge is not the true problem, but application of knowledge.