Has science cost or saved lives?

[Jonourd]

Science has advanced radically in the last 200 years and continues to do so, has it saved lives or cost lives?

[YT2095]

it`s Saved Loads more than it`s it`s harmed or killed!

[Phi for All]

Both, but science doesn't care about what people do with what they learn. Science provides the mechanism for learning, not a road map for what do do with the knowledge.

[Jonourd]

OK well if we weigh it up though, all that has been achieved by the greats of science say in the last 250 years all that knowledge that has been put to use, has it been put to use for the furtherment of man in the context of good and preservation in the longterm or has science been used largely by generations for the short-term and generation after generation has had to struggle with how scientific knowledge is appropriated.

[swansont]

What is the population today, and what was it 200 years ago?

[YT2095]

you can learn the art of making a Good or a Bad Axe, something that will or will not keep your family warm over winter with plenty of chopped wood for the fire.

so Now you can make a Good axe after learning what works and what does not.

 

you share this info with a neighbor, he makes one and kills someone with it!!!

 

is it the Guy who used it, the Axe, or You, or even the technology at fault?

 

well I`de say it`s Not the yours or the technologies fault, and certainly not the Axes fault.

 

so no, Science hasn`t killed many folks.

the misapplication of the data has killed them!

[Phi for All]

OK well if we weigh it up though, all that has been achieved by the greats of science say in the last 250 years all that knowledge that has been put to use, has it been put to use for the furtherment of man in the context of good and preservation in the longterm or has science been used largely by generations for the short-term and generation after generation has had to struggle with how scientific knowledge is appropriated.

I think your terms are too ambiguous to provide you with any meaningful answer. "... the furtherment of man in the context of good and preservation in the longterm"? If I develop a bomb that protects the people of my country by destroying yours is that good? I would be preserving the long-term goals of *my* culture even though it might be a little hard on yours. Whose POV are we considering here?

 

Most scientific advancement has yielded knowledge with the potential to be both weapon and shield, bomb and balm, destroyer and preserver. I think you are asking for a definitive, objective answer to too many subjective questions.

 

Or you could look at it this way: Science hasn't destroyed us all yet and it's saved the lives of many who would have died 250 years ago. If we continue on this path we will most certainly reap more benefit than destruction.

[Jonourd]

I think language will always be a problem and I could have made my points clearer. I understand your points and they are very relevant, it is not that science is at fault but then again we have made the term and we have made the process of research within the term, we are science if you like. We have also made that process in the full knowledge that when good men associate, bad men conspire. That is fact. So, what has science done to deter this inevitable situation where good intellect is re-appropriated for something in the negative? How can we protect the abuse of science?

[YT2095]

we can`t, it`s Pandoras box each time something new is discovered.

 

it`s Impossible to predict what uses someone May put it to.

[Mr Skeptic]

I'm pretty sure that disease and famine have killed far more people than have wars. Wars would happen anyhow, with or without technology, whereas medicine depends heavily on technology. So I'd say the advances of science have overall been used to save lives.

[CDarwin]

Science has advanced radically in the last 200 years and continues to do so, has it saved lives or cost lives?

 

"A truth which destroys human life is no truth at all. It is error." -Nietzche

 

Is that your thrust?

[swansont]

I'm pretty sure that disease and famine have killed far more people than have wars. Wars would happen anyhow, with or without technology, whereas medicine depends heavily on technology. So I'd say the advances of science have overall been used to save lives.

 

Technology makes killing more efficient, but I refer back to the question I posed earlier. If one posits that science killed more than it saved, how would one account for a tremendous increase in population?

[doG]

If I had to guess I would say that the average lifespan in America has doubled over that last 200 years, an increase resulting directly from advances in medical science.

[YT2095]

and of course the Medical prime directive is "Do no harm".

[waitforufo]

One can always take a pessimistic view.

 

Science and technology have enabled the human species to expand to 6.6 billion persons. About 56 million people die per year. That is about the entire human population in around -1000. Vast sum are spent keeping people alive for the last few months or days of their lives. Is that quality living? In fact, much of the rat race of modern living is enabled by science and technology. Then there is the entire global climate issue and what to do about it. What is a sustainable human population and how will it be achieved. Science and technology will play a part in that too. That might not be too pretty. A pessimist could go on an on.

 

Personally, my life has been great and full of all kinds of fun and interesting toys. History has proven to me that human beings just keep making things better and better.

 

But I’m an optimist.

[ecoli]

Guys, this is easy to calculate using the following formula:

 

# people science has saved - # of people science has killed = X

 

If X is positive, science is good. If X is negative, science is bad. I expect most of the people who have been saved have recovered from diseases, benefited from lifesaving technology, raised the standard of living, etc.

The people killed is most likely people killed from warfare tech and disgruntled graduate students.

 

Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification. We cannot understand the cost-benefit ratios of scientific advancement. Yet, I am compelled to think that we are evolutionary hardwired for scientific achievement... so we better get used to it.

[YT2095]

SCIENCE itself has killed very few!

 

Marie Curie would be one of the more Notables ones that died in the persuit of Science.

 

Yes she Died for it.

[ecoli]

A professor told me that researchers working on the bubonic plague sometimes accidentally expose themselves and die from it. Not a lot of people, just more then you'd think.

[John Cuthber]

It seems to be a matter of definition. After all, since we all die, nobody gets saved by science.

It's unlikely that anyone dies from bubonic plague after lab accidents simply because it's treatable with antibiotics.

Even in the case of the atom bomb it's hard to say it killed anyone insofar as a much larger number of people might (and by many accounts would) have been killed if the war hadn't been essentially ended by the bomb.

[Mr Skeptic]

It seems to be a matter of definition. After all, since we all die, nobody gets saved by science.

 

So if you are drowning nobody should bother pulling you out cause you're gonna die anyhow? Though I do think it is more appropriate to measure number of years added to the life versus number of years subtracted, rather than "lives saved" vs "lives lost".

[CDarwin]

Guys, this is easy to calculate using the following formula:

 

# people science has saved - # of people science has killed = X

 

If X is positive, science is good. If X is negative, science is bad. I expect most of the people who have been saved have recovered from diseases, benefited from lifesaving technology, raised the standard of living, etc.

The people killed is most likely people killed from warfare tech and disgruntled graduate students.

 

Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification. We cannot understand the cost-benefit ratios of scientific advancement. Yet, I am compelled to think that we are evolutionary hardwired for scientific achievement... so we better get used to it.

 

I don't know if that's the best method of analysis. Is really hard to look an extended period of time and say "how many people died?" since everyone dies eventually, and the number of deaths has more to do with population levels than anything elsenore people died in AD 2000 than died in 2000 BC, simply because there were a lot more people to die in AD 2000 than in 2000 BC.

 

I think it might be better to just take a specific slice of time and look at how conditions were at that moment.

[Jonourd]

"A truth which destroys human life is no truth at all. It is error." -Nietzche

 

Is that your thrust?

 

Yes pretty it is the jist, apologies for long delay had to drive a few hours.

 

Technology makes killing more efficient, but I refer back to the question I posed earlier. If one posits that science killed more than it saved, how would one account for a tremendous increase in population?

 

Whether or not our discoveries in science has created life is not the question, has it saved life for the greater part. Our discoveries have also created many diseases as well as prevented them.

 

It seems to be a matter of definition. After all, since we all die, nobody gets saved by science.

It's unlikely that anyone dies from bubonic plague after lab accidents simply because it's treatable with antibiotics.

Even in the case of the atom bomb it's hard to say it killed anyone insofar as a much larger number of people might (and by many accounts would) have been killed if the war hadn't been essentially ended by the bomb.

 

Intersting point but many suffered from cancers that developed after the event. So if the planet is threatened from pollution as a result of scientific discovery invention is this not an issue or am I being too simlistic here. If the practice of scientific investigation did not exist we would not have carbon emmissions would we?

[Phi for All]

So if the planet is threatened from pollution as a result of scientific discovery invention is this not an issue or am I being too simlistic here. If the practice of scientific investigation did not exist we would not have carbon emmissions would we?

Without scientific investigation we all go back to nomadic hunter / gatherers (can't farm or raise livestock since that takes too much observation and science). Is that what you're saying? That the Earth would be better off without science?

[Jonourd]

Without scientific investigation we all go back to nomadic hunter / gatherers (can't farm or raise livestock since that takes too much observation and science). Is that what you're saying? That the Earth would be better off without science?

 

We may very well end up at that point shortly, full circle based on our sientific achievements to date, isn't that why our countries are passing ecological laws world wide right now? Based on what we have achieved we are under threat because our ideas fell into the wrong hands of responsibility? Where is the responsibility of science and scientists in how their findings and into whose hands do the findings fall are regulated?

[swansont]

Whether or not our discoveries in science has created life is not the question, has it saved life for the greater part. Our discoveries have also created many diseases as well as prevented them.

 

Name two.

 

I wasn't talking of creating life, I was talking of extending (saving) it, allowing people to live longer. Given that the population was much flatter before the rise of science, if science took more lives than it saved, the population should go down, not up. Unless you can think of another influence on population.