PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE FATE OF OUR HUMANITY IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Abstract

The goal of research is to enhance human development by adding value to the environment. Against this backdrop, any scientific research that irredeemably lacks human face is a worthless exertion that is fit only to be cast aside, regardless of its novelty and innovativeness. The purpose of most research in the sciences is to investigate real-life phenomena, to understand their problems, and to proffer possible solutions therein. However, recent breakthroughs in science and technology in the 21st century, particularly in the areas of social media and artificial intelligence, have been impactful on human social life and development. Climate change and dissipation of life expectancy cannot be divorced outright from the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the recent past. If calculated steps are not taken now to re-inject some human face into scientific research and breakthroughs, human civilization may be heading towards a definite end or self-destruction. Considering the long-term traumas of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific Nazi experiments performed on imprisoned Jews in concentration camps between 1942 and 1945, and the 40 years Tuskegee syphilis study between 1932 and 1972, there is need to reopen the channels of interplay between the natural sciences and the humanities cannot be overemphasized. This paper employs the philosophical methods of conceptual and critical analysis to interrogate the relevance of human face in contemporary innovative research in the pure sciences, and argues for the indispensability of the humanities in establishing possible solutions. The paper analyses the implications of some groundbreaking scientific research that are detrimental to human development. By being critical, the paper does not play down the benefits that accrue from these scientific breakthroughs, but brainstorms on ways of guiding subsequent scientific innovations to enable them accomplish their set objective of reducing human misery. The paper concludes that innovative research in the sciences must take cognisance the fact that human development does not consist merely in physical development, but also involves the mental and the spiritual. It therefore recommends that every scientific research, no matter how innovative they are, should be accompanied by ethics and human values in order to improve and add value to the human condition.