Modern science and social responsibility

Abstract

My introduction on ethics must be a poor substitution for the originally scheduled papers. In fact I am still less an ethicist than a philosopher, I am just a physicist. As a physicist I am continually confronted with many kinds of special ethical problems of for example vocation, education and future of scientists; of scientific research, collaboration, communication and publication; of personal and social responsibility in scientific practice. In this introduction I shall confine myself to social responsibility, which badly needs to be an urgent topic of open discussion in scientific education. I find it gratifying that recently in particular younger generations become profoundly interested in these problems, even though I do not always support the way in which it is expressed.