"Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question "How?" but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question "Why?""
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A scientist praising science by drawing a bright line around its limits is a particularly pointed kind of honesty. Chargaff’s jab lands because it’s aimed at his own tribe: the laboratory can be dazzlingly competent at mechanism, measurement, and replication, yet oddly at sea when people smuggle in purpose. “Wonderfully equipped” sounds like a proud inventor admiring a finely made tool; “terribly confused” follows like the same inventor watching someone use a microscope as a compass.
The intent isn’t anti-science. It’s a boundary marker against category mistakes: treating “why” as if it were just “how” with better instruments. In Chargaff’s framing, “how” belongs to explanation in terms of causes and processes; “why” is the realm of meaning, value, intention, and ultimate ends. Science can tell you how a gene is expressed; it cannot, by its own methods, tell you what that knowledge should be for, or what counts as “progress,” or why a human life ought to be edited rather than accepted.
The subtext carries mid-20th-century unease. Chargaff lived through an era when biology’s new powers arrived alongside history’s grim demonstrations of what “scientific” rationalization can justify. He also worked in genetics close enough to the birth of molecular biology to see how quickly discovery becomes ideology: a successful method expands into a worldview, then into an alibi. The quote works because it punctures scientism without cheap mysticism. It’s a reminder that precision about means is not the same as wisdom about ends, and confusing the two isn’t just a philosophical error; it’s a cultural hazard.
The intent isn’t anti-science. It’s a boundary marker against category mistakes: treating “why” as if it were just “how” with better instruments. In Chargaff’s framing, “how” belongs to explanation in terms of causes and processes; “why” is the realm of meaning, value, intention, and ultimate ends. Science can tell you how a gene is expressed; it cannot, by its own methods, tell you what that knowledge should be for, or what counts as “progress,” or why a human life ought to be edited rather than accepted.
The subtext carries mid-20th-century unease. Chargaff lived through an era when biology’s new powers arrived alongside history’s grim demonstrations of what “scientific” rationalization can justify. He also worked in genetics close enough to the birth of molecular biology to see how quickly discovery becomes ideology: a successful method expands into a worldview, then into an alibi. The quote works because it punctures scientism without cheap mysticism. It’s a reminder that precision about means is not the same as wisdom about ends, and confusing the two isn’t just a philosophical error; it’s a cultural hazard.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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