Science, virtue, and moral formation

Understanding virtue in practice

Virtue and ethical excellence have been topics of growing interest in moral education and moral development research (e.g., Annas, Narvaez, & Snow, 2016; Battaly & Nichols, 2016). This work seeks to engage philosophers, theologians, and social scientists in a productive dialog to enrich scholarship and share knowledge and expertise, moving toward a richer understanding of virtue and its development. However, scholars have yet to integrate this renewed and multidisciplinary interest in virtue with research on professional excellence and formation. We believe that the study of science provides a promising venue for this integration, bringing together research on virtue with scholarship on professional development and formation. For example, existing literature that explores some of the ethical dimensions of excellence in science (e.g., Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001; Nakamura, Shernoff, & Hooker, 2009) illustrates the potential for bringing virtue theory to bear on the study of professional formation.

The working conception of virtue for this special issue stems from Aristotelian perspectives, emphasizing virtue as a disposition to behave in a way that advances human flourishing (e.g., MacIntyre, 1984). The forms that such flourishing take can be captured in traditional conceptions of values and transcendence, such as advancing human knowledge, the good of communities, or creating and appreciating beauty. Thus virtues are dispositions that facilitate the realization of moral values as they contribute to human flourishing. Further, according to MacIntyre (1984) virtues are cultivated in particular practices, activities oriented to the realization of particular aspects of human flourishing.

Moral formation here entails a specific view of moral development more broadly. This view asserts that within a community of practice certain values and dispositions need to be shared and maintained by members of the community in order for it to flourish (see Lave & Wenger, 1991 for more on communities of practice). This view does not necessitate that the members of a practice all agree on the precise meanings and dispositions needed, but rather that they share an interest in a common end and that they share enough knowledge to maintain and develop the community of practice. This perspective is similar to that developed in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s work on Preparation for the Professions, especially in their writing on formation (e.g., Colby & Sullivan, 2008; Walker, Golde, Jones, Beuschel, & Hutchings, 2009).

A brief history of virtue and the scientist

Though scientists today rarely talk about their own work and pedagogy in terms of virtue or moral formation, that disjuncture is relatively recent. From antiquity through the mid-nineteenth century, European scholars routinely linked the creation of systematic knowledge (epistêmê in Greek or scientia in Latin) to the cultivation of moral virtue (e.g., Jones, 2006). Not only did the proper pursuit of knowledge demand such virtue, careful study of the natural world in particular could build moral virtue in the devoted practitioner. Even the birth of the modern research university itself in nineteenth-century Germany kept these ties intact: Wissenschaft (the creation of specialized, scientific knowledge) was for these early advocates a form of Bildung (moral formation; see Wellmon, 2015).

By the early twentieth century, however, that common vision had been replaced by what Steven Shapin (2009) has called the ‘moral equivalence’ of the scientist: even the best scientists were morally ordinary human beings. Of course, scientists recognized moral boundaries for their work (such as don’t lie about your results), and even developed new standards over the twentieth century (don’t sexually harass your colleagues, don’t pursue research on human subjects without informed consent, etc.). But these set minimums for acceptable behavior, not models of excellence. Moreover, these standards were typically formulated as rules governing behavior; indeed, the common approach to ethics training for scientists has been heavily deontological (e.g., Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2009).

Over the last decade, however, the deontological approach to scientific ethics has come under heavy pressure. Even as sociologists and historians have documented the ways in which character, habits, and dispositions are essential components of how scientists create trust and establish working communities (e.g., Bellon, 2014; Daston, 1995; Daston & Galison, 2007; Hicks & Stapleford, 2016; Kohler, 1994; Shapin, 2009), a series of high-profile scandals and a sharp increase in retractions (Fang, Grant Steen, & Casadevall, 2012) has reinforced a growing sense that current approaches to training in research ethics are limited and that new strategies are needed. Thus, for example, the US National Science Foundation (2018) has created a new Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) funding program on ‘Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM’ that seeks to move beyond delineation of principles or rules by considering ‘what constitutes ethical STEM research and practice, and which cultural and institutional contexts promote ethical STEM research and practice and why?’

New perspectives on virtue and the formation of scientists

In September 2016, with support from the Templeton Religion Trust, we gathered a multi-disciplinary group of scholars (representing theology, philosophy, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and neuroscience) to reflect on the relationships between science, virtue, and moral formation. The articles for this special issue represent the core talks given at that colloquium and take up a range of questions and perspectives. Three of the five articles (written by theologians) are more conceptual in nature and push us to think more broadly about ways of understanding the role of virtue in science and scientific training.

First, Emily Dumler Winkler explores Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of ‘genius’ to argue that far from being an archaic notion, genius as Emerson understood it is central to moral formation. At its core, Emersonian genius involves self-reliance, surprise (the ‘capacity of receiving just impressions from the external world,’ p. 7), love, and representation (an illumination of our world and ourselves). Self-reliance explains why ‘genius cannot be taught’ according to Emerson (p. 1), for genius demands going beyond imitation to genuine novelty. And yet, self-reliance is not mere egoism either, for genius-as-surprise insists that the inspiration and guidance for genius arises externally, from the world and (for Emerson) ultimately from the divine. Genius is essential to moral formation because true moral action is neither mere imitation (as though merely repeating the actions of a mentor could make us virtuous) nor egoistic self-determination. The key to moral formation is thus fostering the proper environment, for though genius cannot be taught, it can be ‘cultivated, nurtured, and tended,’ and indeed inspired (p. 13).

If Dumler-Winkler argues that genius, a term increasingly associated with science and technology, is essential for moral formation more broadly, Nathaniel Warne emphasizes that moral formation through engagement with the liberal arts is essential to proper training even in science and engineering. Warne uses Josef Pieper as a guide to the longer tradition of Aristotelian virtue ethics which places prudence at the intellectual center of the moral life. Prudence, in Warne’s depiction, is ‘the capacity to correctly visualize and experience reality’ (p. 2) such that we understand how to act appropriately. Such prudence can only arise through philosophy, not in the narrow sense of the modern academic discipline, but in the broader notion of philosophy from the ancient and medieval thought. In that tradition, to philosophize is to strive to integrate knowledge: ‘directing one’s gaze to the totality that confronts us,’ as Pieper puts is (p. 9). Prudence demands such a holistic view, which is why advocates of a virtue ethics perspective have seen liberal arts education as critical for moral formation; not that liberal education preaches moral dictums which students would not encounter otherwise, but that a holistic view of knowledge underlies the proper cultivation of prudence.

Paul Scherz, who has doctoral degrees in both genetics and moral theology, likewise highlights the importance of prudence for modern science, though from a different angle. Scherz demonstrates how contemporary biomedical research is fraught with risk through its constant engagement with mutagens, toxins, and pathogens. Yet despite published safety protocols and risk training, the daily practices of laboratory technicians tend to undermine their sensitivity to the hazards of their own work. Scherz sees virtue ethics, and especially prudence, as offering a valuable perspective for confronting this challenge. However, that also requires a novel development in virtue ethics itself, for the modern concept of risk—an assessment that combines the probability of various outcomes with a quantified evaluation of their extensive and at times unknown hazards—did not exist prior to the seventeenth century. Scherz’s article thus attempts to bring prudence to bear on such questions and considers how such a revitalized view of prudence can guide the training of biomedical researchers.

Our final two articles (written by two psychologists and an empirical ethicist) remind us that there is a burgeoning ‘science of virtues’ which can itself be turned to good account to help understand the function and development of virtuous characters in scientific practice. While virtue is generally understood as a quality of agents, it is nevertheless formed in concrete contexts. Jeanne Nakamura and Michael Condren present a systems model for considering such formation. They consider both leading scientists accounts of their own formation and understanding of the practice and the way that exemplary mentors pass on the practice. This mentoring component is especially helpful in understanding the way that exemplars can function, not just through direct example but also through the creation of contexts fostering the formation of others in their practice. The authors also provide a cautionary note, drawing from an exploratory study demonstrating that the central ‘memes’ of good mentors may not be widespread.

While practices are all enacted within specific contexts, like those of the laboratories of exemplary scientists, the formation of scientists also takes place against the macro-context of a broader culture of scientific values and beliefs. Markus Christen’s exploration of cultural and domain specific differences in values provides some insight into this broader culture as it informs formation. The structure of values is important both in considering who may be drawn to each domain (as individuals with values matching those of the domain may be more likely to practice within it) and in understanding how practitioners are formed, with their particular understandings of values in the domain. Further, the organization of values in a domain can point to particularities, such as the different meanings of creativity and precision in art and medicine.

Taken together, these five articles suggest a range of possibilities for future work on the interconnections between science, virtue, and moral formation. As Dumler-Winkler reveals through her study of Emerson, reflections on science can spark new ways of identifying and articulating virtues relevant to moral education more broadly. Simultaneously, Warne and Scherz push us to pay greater attention to the moral formation of scientists and engineers, not merely though promulgation of rules and guidelines, but through the cultivation of the central intellectual virtue of the moral life, prudence. Part of that task, as Scherz shows, must involve bringing traditional virtue concepts into dialogue with modern practices and idioms. Meanwhile, Nakamura, Condren, and Christen illustrate two of the many possibilities for empirical investigation of moral formation among scientists and other professionals. Such a dialectic between the theoretical and empirical dimensions of virtue ethics matches Pieper’s understanding of ‘philosophy’: an ongoing attempt to integrate various domains of knowledge with an openness to the revelation of reality. In that respect, the holistic study of moral formation in the sciences and elsewhere becomes part of the construction of prudence itself.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the participants at the Science, Virtue, and Moral Formation workshop and the reviewers for the articles in this special issue for their contributions to this work. We would also like to thank the editorial staff of the Journal of Moral Education for their guidance throughout the process of coordinating this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work and the workshop which served as the source of this special issue were supported by the Templeton Religion Trust under Grant TRT0088.

Notes on contributors

Timothy S. Reilly

Timothy S. Reilly is a psychologist interested in the intersection of developmental psychology, moral psychology, and the learning sciences.

Thomas A. Stapleford

Thomas A. Stapleford is a historian of science interested in the intersection of virtue ethics and epistemology.