Moral tradition and medical science

Abstract

Summary Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) is considered to be the foremost Jewish jurist-theologian ever. He was also a distinguished scientist-physician. One of the problems he faced in this dual role was when the Jewish ethical tradition assumed a particular state of affairs to be factual, but contemporary scientific consensus assumes otherwise. According to whose factual assumption is a specific norm to be applied? For example, what constitutes an immediately terminal medical condition? To whom is one to listen: to the tradition or to science when deciding what is to be done or not done in the case at hand in a morally cogent way? Maimonides concluded that science trumps tradition in such cases. Although the tradition, not science, supplies the norms, a norm can only be properly applied in the physical world most accurately described by science. As such, science best describes a patient's condition, while an ethical tradition like Judaism best prescribes what is to be done for a patient in that condition. Maimonides’ stance on the juncture of tradition and medical science follows from his theological understanding of the proper relation of revelation and reason. His stance is also helpful today in countering the kind of fundamentalism that ignores scientific evidence in making normative decisions. And it is equally helpful in countering the ideology called “scientism,” which assumes that science can prescribe moral norms based on its descriptions of the physical world around us, instead of accepting the truth that moral norms come into that world from somewhere else, but do not come to us from that world.