November 10, 2008

Science and the Future of Democracy

Yuval Levin, Ph.D., is the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Director of the EPPC's program on Bioethics and American Democracy. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous prestigious papers and publications, he's a senior editor of EPPC's journal, "The New Atlantis", as well as being the author of a new book entitled: Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy.

According to Dr. Levin, the intersections of science and public policy, science and morality, and science and democracy, are increasingly complicated from a moral perspective and our elected officials are increasingly shying away from dealing seriously with these issues. What elected officials often do is tell us that we are not to worry about science and that it must be allowed to move ahead. Any attempt to stand in the way of certain scientific techniques that might raise moral concerns are taken to be an attack on science rather than an argument about ethics.

This raises some interesting questions: Does this mean science is morally neutral? In our pluralistic, polytheistic society, is the concept of scientific neutrality even possible? Find the answers to these and other questions as Ingrid and Dr. Levin discuss where science and the American democracy are headed, particularly with regard to the issue of life.

More Information

The Ethics and Public Policy Center website:
http://www.eppc.org

To read the article, "Science and the Left" by Yuval Levin:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/science-and-the-left

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