Science and Christian Ethics

The scientific reproducibility crisis is a crisis of character. Stoic and Christian spiritual exercises build virtues that address these problems.

Paul Scherz (Author)

9781108482202, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 May 2019

240 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'This book will be of interest to Christian scientists who wish to combine their academic work and Christian discipleship, as well as those interested in professional ethics.' Aaron Klink, Religious Studies Review

There is a growing crisis in scientific research characterized by failures to reproduce experimental results, fraud, lack of innovation, and burn-out. In Science and Christian Ethics, Paul Scherz traces these problems to the drive by governments and business to make scientists into competitive entrepreneurs who use their research results to stimulate economic growth. The result is a competitive environment aimed at commodifying the world. In order to confront this problem of character, Scherz examines the alternative Aristotelian and Stoic models of reforming character, found in the works of Alasdair MacIntyre and Michel Foucault. Against many prominent virtue ethicists, he argues that what individual scientists need is a regime of spiritual exercises, such as those found in Stoicism as it was adopted by Christianity, in order to refocus on the good of truth in the face of institutional pressure. His book illuminates pressing issues in research ethics, moral education, and anthropology.

1. The crisis in science
2. The scientist entrepreneur
3. Teleology and the craft of science
4. The practices that shape the entrepreneurial subject
5. Reshaping the entrepreneurial subject
6. Acquiring the virtue of truth-speaking in science
7. Subjectivity, truth, and theological anthropology.

Subject Areas: Bio-ethics [PSAD], Anthropology [JHM], Christianity [HRC], Religious ethics [HRAM1], Religious issues & debates [HRAM], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]