Science and Ethics-The Never-Ending Story is a unique offering. Straddling the Sciences and The Humanities, the program has been part of the CSD curriculum for some 30 years. Each semester the students determine their grades by filling out a reading contract. The daily classroom is a seminar with open discussion of topics that are generated from readings, lectures, student presentations, and media reports.

There is an annotated Current Reading List that students can choose from without having their books cleared by me, and a Great Books List. If you click the Internet Classics Archive below you will access MIT's wonderful site for ancient literature where other readings are available. Project Gutenburg has the complete online text of hundreds of excellent works and is an incredible resource. Finally, the contract promotes the reading of Magazine and Journal articles. You have the option to read an extra book in place of the articles, but frankly I think that after you've examined the excellent choices of on-line zines you'll want to read their offerings to stay current on new information. Personally, I'm an information junky and Magazines and Journals are your best source for organized data. I think you'll find the list enticing and I strongly encourage you to become a browser and reader of Magazines and Journals.

Eclectic is the best way to describe this academic offering. It is never the same course in any two consecutive years or semesters. Though the curriculum stays within parameters the approach is very fluid. New readings and ideas move into an out of the daily instruction and students can take S & E more than once. The reading contract allows for this and the presentations change with the times.

Science and Ethics is dedicated to the notion that the unexamined life is not worth living and that reason is the single most important tool needed to navigate a sea of options when constructing a personal Utopia.

Ethos, the Greek word for character, is the root of ethics. What should one do? How should one live? These are questions that will be our directives in each separate area we investigate. Your purpose each day will be to heed the Socratic admonition, "that the greatest good of man is daily to discourse about virtue, and the other things that you hear me examining myself and others, and that the unexamined life is not worth living." Living a good life involves understanding the options available to you as a course is charted through life. Western civilization is more and more driven by science and an economic system that encourages using scientific principles to create technological solutions to human problems.

Confronted by choices each day that can alter our lives, we must be cognizant of the implications that each descision holds for our future. One should no simply let technology come roaring down on them, but should reasonably consider the cause and effect relationships of each new innovation as it enters our culture.

  We begin our studies with definition. Two in particular; truth and perception. The idea here is to have students recognize the necessity for a consensus on these two terms so our discussions may be authentic in that we all understand the meaning of the terms we are using. For want of a better definition truth becomes "what is." It is based on perception which is defined as the interpretation of the truth resting on an internal reality that governs the meaning we find in our sensations.

Armed with these two consensual terms we head down the road to Plato and "The Allegory of the Cave" to meet Socrates and begin moving up a Timeline of Western Philosophy

The reading of the Cave from Plato's Republic introduces Socrates as the personna of Plato's dialoques. "The Cave" addresses truth and perception in a way that no other written piece can. In hot pursuit of this work comes H.G. Wells' The Country of the Blind as an extension of Plato. We now investigate Socrates as teacher and philosopher through the dialogues The Apology, Crito and Phaedo. Socrates is the embodiment of the Humanities in Western culture and he is tempered by the scientific "intellect of the Academy", Aristotle. Aristotle is science. Together Socrates (Humanities) and Aristotle (Science) make up the dynamic duo of Western learning. On Happiness from the Nicomachaen Ethics is a guide to defining the one term in our traditions that seems to reflect the singular purpose in life for our actions. You must admit this is a pretty "down and dirty" introduction to the search for truth.

Ah, the truth. That is the issue. Science is the noble (my term) pursuit of the truth, based on the time-honored methods so familiar to most educated persons. The truth must be pursued from the sensory position of observation contextually bound to any previous knowledge of the problem at hand. The hypothesis must be posed to establish the experimental design, the linchpin of the process that leads from darkness to light. The controlled investigation of the components inherent in the problem will yield some sort of data that is then scrutinized to see if it reveals any conclusive insights. From this process the truth, as we can perceive it, emerges.

Now off to the future. A quick study into 20th century technology and society is futurist Alvin Toffler. We view the presentation Future Shock with the late Orson Wells narrating the visual highlights of Toffler's first best selling book. This thirty-seven year old view of the future gives us a perspective from which to view The Third Wave as Toffler explains the information age and its implications. Both of these programs emphasize the effect of science and its methods on world cultures and offers prophetic scenarios of the future.

If any of Toffler's predictions turn put to be correct, as some of his Future Shock predictions did, then it would behoove us to make note of said possibilities and plan ahead. Because most of the changes are driven by science there is a change in our old perceptions of the world and its operations. In particular the picture of man is being altered. We must consider the question, "What is man that Thou art mindful of Him?" from the Psalms. To do this we will use a collage of works as stimulants.

Genesis begins our search for a definition of man, followed by the story of Prometheus and Pandora. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein presents Victor's confrontation with his creation and the creature's lament that, "you my creator detest and hate me." The Smithsonian presentation on Man gives us a scientific perspective tempered with a humanistic view from the scientists involved in the researches. Then, it is your turn to synthesize an essay entitled, "What is Man?" With your impressions of man in hand, we will venture into the realm of sensory interpretation through the Occult and the Supernatural.

The future is where i intend to spend most of my life. We have looked at the thinking that has lead us into the 21st Century. Where do we go from here? What does the future look like for man?

Our search for truth will take the form of comparative studies of historical perspectives on specific topics versus our contemporary understandings of the very same topics. The discussions will concern our changing perspectives of these specific topics viewed through two different thought processes. The metaphors of the subjective and the expository explanations of science. A skeptical attitude will be explained and put forward as the position from which to judge the veracity of any of the topics examined. We have much work ahead of us, so let's begin: