Science looms as large as any aspect of the contemporary world, with multiple moral and political engagements on its own as well as through its associations with technology. Both as a positive feature of the human world and as a phenomenon against which there are many reactions, science is a distinguishing feature of the contemporary ethical and political landscape. An overview of this landscape is facilitated by distinctions between science as a body of knowledge and as a human activity. As an activity science may be further examined as both a cognitive and a social process. Ethics is implicated in all three senses: knowledge, cognitive activity, and social process.

Body of Knowledge

In the public mind relations between science and ethics are commonly associated with the ethical and religious challenges from certain types of scientific knowledge—about the origins of life or the cosmos, about brain...