Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. Ethics is a discipline that deals with questions of morality – what is good and evil or right and wrong. It is one of the most abstracted areas of knowledge; aloof from other areas, instead of evidence what matters most are our opinions and beliefs. Thus, what is moral for one may be immoral for another. Innovation in the field of cloning is an example. Moralists condemn and reprehend the practice of making a clone of anything, as it is tantamount to usurping the ultimate power of God. It is an abominable sin in their eyes. However, those with scientific inclinations maintain a different dimension. In their opinion, cloning is a revolutionary invention as it satiates the lap of a barren mother with joy and love. Moreover, it is conducive in the treatment and diagnosis of genetic diseases. Which view should we doubt? Which notion should we agree with? In my opinion, we should not follow the steadfast dictates of the moralists blindly, as doubting them will certainly give us a better perspective and a broader outlook on the things that some consider indisputable.
For centuries, the maxim that a person’s black sin was due to sins committed in his/her previous lives was accepted blindly. Nonetheless, this claim too, was placed on the anvil of doubt by scientists, who revealed that the colour of one’s skin was attributed rather to the amount of sunlight received and a pigment called melanin contained in one’s skin.
The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning ... For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at truth. The key to most of the incomprehensible mysteries of the world is frequent questioning. Jennifer Michael Hecht, a well-known historian, celebrates doubt as an engine of creativity and as an alternative to the intellectual dangers of certainty. She views doubt as a means of making attempts in progression that have forever changed the world for the better. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty – some unsure, a few nearly sure, none absolutely sure. This gives birth to and makes room for doubt and leads to the expansion of knowledge. The only way a human being can acquire knowledge about what’s real and have any confidence in it is by using his or her reason to determine the best explanation with the facts available, i.e., by “doubting”.
If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance. We have been able to reach the existing phase in science largely due to our inquisitiveness. There can be no compromise or complacency in the true spirit of our quest for knowledge. Scientists and doctors have found cures to scores of ailments, and perhaps, the world is a better place because of it today. Had the scientists no doubt in their minds that cancer or AIDS were incurable; there would have been no attempt to find the cure for the same. If people refuse to question thereby raising a doubt, there will be meager scope of advancing in the world. Martin Luther King was right when he emphasized that knowledge and doubt were inseparable to man.
Philosophers and scientists are always drenched in doubt. It is uncommon to allow any theories to pass unchallenged. Be it the Babylonians, who thought that the earth was hollow, or the Egyptians, who thought it to be square - all the claims had to be justified and proved by factual evidence backed by sound reasoning; but above all, only because someone somewhere doubted the claim. Aristotle argued for a spherical earth and Eratosthenes set out to prove that the earth is round. Newton hypothesised that the centrifugal force of rotation caused the earth to flatten around its poles. Three cheers for the doubt that continued to arise in man’s mind! Further exploration of the shape of the Earth and the use of high-ranking precision in the modern decades led to the discovery that the earth was neither ‘round’ nor ‘flat’; rather, it was in the shape of a ‘Geoid’.
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. According to Karl Popper’s principle of falsification, the hypothesis (without assuming it to be true) of the natural world is created to be tested and falsified. If this hypothesis is not falsified, it can be provisionally accepted, till the time future tests falsify it. Studying chemistry through middle school has “undoubtedly” proven to be a blessing in disguise while writing this essay (though not in improving my overall academic grade!) – I’d like to trace the life of an atom. Until the late nineteenth century, the conventional model of the atom was thought to be a shape and structure similar to that of a billiard ball, i.e., a small-sized spherical solid figure; but doubt emerged around this belief when Thomson performed the cathode ray experiment that further gave credence to the idea that the atom was not indivisible as previously thought. It was eventually uncovered that the atom itself was not the smallest substance but was made up of even smaller particles like electrons and protons, as opposed to the original belief. Once again, doubt propelled the later theory.
Ethical axioms are found and treated not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of time. Axioms are self-evident truths that come beyond any proof and are accepted universally. Challenging these may lead to infinite regression and a failure to come to a reasonable conclusion. For instance, Euclid’s axiom that one and only one line can be drawn through two given points has been universally accepted and is considered indubitable from time immemorial. Thus, axioms and assumptions are such where the instinct of doubt is rendered ineffective more often than not. However, subjecting them to the spirit of doubt may sometimes give them a new dimension and a new meaning.
Science resurrects itself and beliefs change over time, but each new premise is closer to the truth than the previous one. The scientific spirit that is opposed to the uncritical acceptance of dogma has been responsible for the enormous growth of knowledge. We should not forget that if necessity is the mother of invention, doubt is its father. It is clear from the continual endeavors of man in the twenty-first century that what was claimed to be an innate truth has often been challenged by the seeds of doubt. We construe that in almost all fields of knowledge, the role of doubt cannot be underrated under any circumstances. Will you not agree when I say that doubt should also be a ‘way of thinking’? It can be amicably concluded that the more a person doubts the higher will be the levels of pursuit in seeking knowledge, which can then be called a “universal truth”.
William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1910