Science and ethicsIk citeer het begin van het tweede hoofdstuk van Freeman Dyson's "The Scientist as Rebel". "One of my favorite monuments is a statue of Samuel Gompers not far from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Under the statue is a quote from one of Gompers's speeches: What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails, More books and less guns, More learning and less vice, More leasure and less greed, More justice and less revange, We want more opportunities to cultivate our better nature. Samuel Gompers was the founder and first president of the American Federation of Labor. He established in America the tradition of practical bargaining between labor and management which led to an era of growth and prosperity for labor unions. Now, seventy years after Gompers's death, the unions have dwindled, while his dreams - more books and fewer guns, more leisure and less greed, more schoolhouses and fewer jails - have been tacitly abandoned. In a society without social justice and with a free-market ideology, guns, greed, and jails are bound to win." |