ABSTRACT
As a philosopher, I take the liberty of beginning with a commonplace remark. It is the dialectics of any extension of our practical knowledge and technology that some old problems are solved and some new problems are generated. Adding to our possibilities of explanation, prediction and control means that the mastery of nature is pushed one step farther. It also means that we are confronted with new problems of decision-making and with the problem of giving these decisions a sound ethical foundation. Ethics has to take over where nature is no longer sovereign. With any increase in the number of choices we can make, there is also an increase in accountability, and once we can change the course of nature, it is inevitable that non-intervention stands in need of justification no less than intervention. We are no longer on the safe side, ethically, by ‘letting nature take her course’.
