Why Science is no help in quest for the "good life".

Another article I feel represents my interests in the search for the "good life" is provided for your reading and your comments. ks

Science No Help in the Search for the Good Life

By Kenneth Spoto, Ph.D.

   Living the “good life” is basically to pursue it - not necessarily to make it big as a millionaire or celebrity but as an avatar of good character, change, and/or leadership.

   According to Peter J. Gomes, in his book entitled The Good Life (2002), virtues are the important things in life and people do not (and more than likely will not be) need to be reminded of this by the physical sciences. Although we may know them as character, the virtues of life (and we often violate them) are what matter in the human condition. This condition may be said to be the social, cultural, and personal make up of humanity that is present in each of us, regardless of race, sex, class, etc. Basically stated, it includes the human search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, and the fear of death. In comparing the human condition to science and technology Gomes says, “…the truly unimportant things hardly seem worth the trouble and are left to discovery by large industry and abysmal (scientific) knowledge.”

   So why can’t large industry with the aid of science and an unlimited amount of accumulated knowledge help the human condition? An answer may be in the definition of science. The term “science” has evolved over history to specifically mean, more or less, the quest to harness and manipulate the laws of the “physical” world. Science, by this definition, has enabled man to develop machines that can be used to macro-explore the solar system and micro-explore particles of the atom. There are no machines that can be used to explore the human condition; therefore man is left to his own, non-science devices.

   Indeed, scientific study on the human condition would be very difficult to conduct because there are so many variables that affect humans. Identification of which variables caused an effect would be suspect. Once again, the physical sciences have machines to explore many causal events in the physical world; the human condition has none. If social and other scientists delve too deeply and closely to causal events in the human condition, “their fingers get in the way and thus observations are clouded”.       

   When seeking the good life, Gomes offers many considerations, some of which are the following: happiness can be more correctly defined as a “flourishing” or “wellbeing,” rather than just pleasure or contentment; we do not do virtuous things in order to be happy - rather, we are happy because we do virtuous things; discipline and freedom are “means to an end” of living a good life; prudence is the practice of always choosing the good, even if it does not always stand on the side of the status quo; fortitude enables us with all necessary strength to contend against that which threatens our perseverance in the good; reputation is what the world knows of you, but character is what God knows of you; faith, hope, and love are the content and expression of the good life.

   The author of The Good Life was not a philosopher or a scientist; he was one of the official interfaith chaplains of a great American university noted for its high quality of students. His desire in writing this book was to equip those students for the realities of the human condition in their personal quests for the good life. Read the book, and I trust it will equip you.