STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 ¢ (415) 321-1200

 

STANForD UNrversiry SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

29 August 1972

Dr. John _La

School of English Studies
Macquarie University

New South Wales

Dear Dr. Lambert:

This is in response to your letter of August l6th, which was in
response to my article in the S. C. Law Review.

If you are worried about hubris, you will have to refer that to the
gods. For my own part, I, can find a lot of fault with that article. I
don't know whether you got a copy of an erratum which I thought to send
along with a very few reprints. In any case, twe-verstons-ef-this are t,;
enclosed.

{1 am sorry to see that you are falling victim to the Australian
syndrome, a partly real, but in part, imaginary sense of being cut off
from the rest of the world. I doubt that you are missing very much. (

I have to regret a number of things that were not made sufficiently
clear: above all, the autonomy of value principles, which can in no
way be derived from science or from tooklogic. Monod may be making much
out of little in talking about the ethic of knowledge, or authentic
discourse, but there certainly is an important principle in the overt

JA@AIWD Ybv7

commitment to that autonomy. I understand what you say in referring to .
the "lack of center" and the "vortex leading to another dimension" that
afflicts my writing. I do not have a constructed ethical system to Q)

offer at this time and the principle of autonomy is of course only a
process step towards the evolution of a coherent system. J But the para~
graph that you quoted about unavoidable/impossible strikes me as being wut,
sloppy writing./ We have to make some efforts at the redefinition of
personal rights but I would not expect too much to come out of them.
agnor

As to your diagram, are we really at odds about "do" vs. "know"?

Their roots are indeed inextricable. But, we really should have no

difficulty in categorizing many large scale activities as belonging to

vial

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Dr. John Lambert 2. 29 August 1972

technology, or action, rather than science, or knowledge. And, while I
have no difficulty in seeing the development of social policy to
civilize@ technology, the side effects of efforts to control science
would soon run athwart many of our liberal and humanistic values. I
don't see in your diagram even the exhibition, much less any evidence,
of a priority of technology over science. Do you mean that primitive
technology was closer to the reality principle, prior to the development
of experimental methodology, than was primitive science? Primitive

man made tools, used fire, planted grains while adhering to anemistic
theories of nature, which we now reject as’ bad science. But, his tech-
nology was often,faulty at least as judged by the overt purposes of
rain-making or warding off contagion. So, if you really mean priority,
I will have to ask you for some further explanation. About the synthesis,
I have no quarrel.

I don't feel quite as futile as you do in attempting technology
assessment. I thihk that the problems are much larger than the authors
of the Office of Technology Assessment Act™“and* the worst sin may be to
cloak common sense policy judgements with unwonted scientific rigor.

One of these days, I will attempt a more coherent statement of the
ideas that were sketched out in the S.C.L.R. article and I appreciate
your bringing home to me, whether you intended it or not, the importance
of saying just what such an article does and does not attempt to cover.
If the utopias of every citizen must coincide, indeed we might as well
not waste our time on technology assessment. If axiological ethics
means an effort to construct a system of argument from autonomous axioms,
without having to define just what these are, perhaps this is really
what I am groping for.

Sincerely yours,
oshua Lederberg

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