In praise of science. As I said, science is a tool. It's neither bad not good. — Frank
Nuh. Knowing stuff is good. Science is about knowing stuff. — Banno
To the op, I know you believe science/knowledge can be assinged an attribute of good or bad but I guess we are going to just have to dissagree on this as I have not seen any argument that would force me to believe otherwise. It may be out there but I have not seen it.
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Science, like intelligence, is just a tool used to gather knowledge. If you imagine a set of all knowledge, there is a subset that can be defined as all knowledge known by humans. Science is one of the tools used to increase the size of the set of human knowledge.
I don't think knowledge can be assigned a moral attribute. With respect to knowledge, assigning the attribute of good or bad can only be used for the application of knowledge, which I define as wisdom. Like this quote in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade “He chose... poorly”. He chose (application of knowledge)… poorly (unwisely). The knowledge wasn’t bad or good but the application was subjectively defined as bad.
To those who believe that science/knowledge can't be assigned moral attributes then perhaps another way to ask the question would be: Can humanity handle (used in a way subjectively defined as good) the application of knowledge acquired by science?
Here is a thought experiment which I call "the black box of doom(BBD)": Imaging a group of people that are adult members in good standing in their civilization. For each of those people simultaneously put a black box in their hand with a red button on it. Tell them that If you press the button the entire universe would be destroyed. Estimate how long it would take before the universe was destroyed if at all.
I am guessing that there is a 50% chance that someone would press the button in less than one second. Does this mean that knowledge of the black box of doom is bad? No. Does this mean that the science that discovered the technology for the black box of doom is bad? No. Does this mean that humans are not mature enough to use this knowledge? Yes.
To your original post: I believe science/knowledge has had a tremendous impact and benefit for humanity as a whole UP TO NOW. There may be a time in the future where we may want to avoid technology classified as BBD technology until we evolve to the point where we can handle the application of this type of technology. You could define this as bad if you are referring to how humanity would use it.