バートランド・ラッセル「科学の功罪」
* 原著: Sceptical Essays, 1928, chapt. 3: Is Science Superstitious?* 出典：牧野力(編)『ラッセル思想辞典』
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現在存在している科学は、人間に環境を支配する力を与え、少数ではあるが重要な人々（マイノリティ）に知的満足を与えるという理由で好ましい（agreeable 心地よい）。科学は －我々はその事実を隠そうとするかも知れないが（気づかないふりをするかも知れないが）－ 理論の上では、人間の行為を予測する力を（必然的に）含んでいる決定論を仮定しており、人間の力を弱めるという理由で好ましくない（disagreeable 心地よくない）。・・・中略・・・。
科学上の発見を求める衝動から世界を理解しようとする欲望を枯死させないという複雑な問題に至るまで、もっと満足できる解決が欲しい。
( Science as it exists at present is partly agreeable, partly disagreeable. It is agreeable through the power which it gives us of manipulating our environment, and to a small but important minority it is agreeable because it affords intellectual satisfactions. It is disagreeable because, however we may seek to disguise the fact, it assumes a determinism which involves, theoretically, the power of predicting human actions; in this respect it seems to lessen human power.
Naturally people wish to keep the pleasant aspect of science without the unpleasant aspect; but so far the attempts to do so have broken down. If we emphasise the fact that our belief in causality and induction is irrational, we must infer that we do not know science to be true, and that it may at any moment cease to give us the control over the environment for the sake of which we like it. This alternative, however, is purely theoretical; it is not one which a modern man can adopt in practice. If, on the other hand, we admit the claims of scientific method, we cannot avoid the conclusion that causality and induction are applicable to human volitions as much as to anything else. All that has happened during the twentieth century in physics, physiology and psychology goes to strengthen this conclusion. The outcome seems to be that, though the rational justification of science is theoretically inadequate, there is no method of securing what is pleasant in science without what is unpleasant. We can do so, of course, by refusing to face the logic of the situation; but, if so, we shall dry up the impulse to scientific discovery at its source, which is the desire to understand the world. It is to be hoped that the future will offer some more satisfactory solution of this tangled problem.)