Robert S. Morison

The biological limits on autonomy.

Morison contends that an ethics based on the maximization of autonomy is doubly fallacious, pragmatically because it weakens the individuals sense of responsibility to the human community, and philosophically because of inherent problems in defining the concept. He finds it essential for some purposes to think of individuals as free to make choices and for other purposes to think of these choices as simultaneously determined by a host of different factors. After reviewing the thinking of determinists of both the sociobiologist and the orthodox Calvinist camps, and considering how current-day bioethicists have incorporated the concept of autonomy into the doctrine of informed consent, he focuses on the implications that the science of human behavior has for understanding the paradox that the individual becomes more autonomous as the number of determinants of behavior increases.

Where Is Biology Taking Us

hectare would represent only ninetenths of 1 percent of the total. This suggests a remarkable ability of these undisturbed systems to entrap and hold nutrients. However, if these calculations were based on actual amounts of calcium circulated each year rather than on the total, the percentage losses would be higher. On its completion, the Hubbard Brook study will have yielded estimates, for individual elements, of many of the parameters and flux rates represented in the nutrient cycle shown in Fig. 1. These data will increase our understanding of fundamental nutrient relationships of undisturbed northern hardwood forests, and they will provide baseline information from which we can judge the effects on nutrient cycling of such practices as cutting, burning, and the application of pesticides. Studies similar to these at Hubbard Brook could be established elsewhere in the United States. There are thousands of gaged watersheds operated by private and public interests (17), and

On Ethics, Gyroscopes, and Radar Sets

E thics and regulation are quite different things. Each has an important role to play, but I believe current efforts to substitute public regulation for personal ethics are likely to be disastrous. In order to defend this position, I will give a brief, biased, anecdotal review of personal experience in a changing world. One of the very great differences between the way the world was when I was growing up and the way it is now is to be found in the attitude toward the state of man. When I was young, the prevailing view was that man had fallen from grace when he listened to that silly wife of his in the Garden of Eden. Even though one was skeptical of some of the details of that particular myth, everyone knew that it was easy to be tempted into evil ways and very difficult to lead a good life. Ethics was regarded as a set of rules or guidelines that everyone ought to have once he or she decided to try to live a good rather than an evil life. It was recognized that there were a number of different rules, but in the circles in which I grew up everyone knew that the unexamined life was not worth living. It was also known that in the ancient world the Stoics had come up with one set of rules that seemed quite consonant with the behavior of the later Christian sects, while a person named Epicurus, about whom a good deal less was said, had somewhat more latitudinarian views. For Christians, the paramount set of rules was to be found in the Bible, specifically in the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount. Even to the very young-perhaps even more than to