ABSTRACT
The common human tendency is to think in black-or-white terms, especially where people's values and emotions are involved. The subtle questions about science and human values surely deserve a more discriminating response. Philosophers have debated the nature of values for more than two millennia - and there is today an explosion of publications on the subject. Science explains an event by exhibiting general connections between some of its properties and properties of other events. Creative scientists often find inspiration and great beauty in what others see as dreary or threatening. Physicist Richard Feynman saw great value in the scientific worldview that can lead one "to imagine things infinitely more marvelous than the imaginings of poets, dreams of the past". What many critics find lacking in science is ultimate explanations, that is, explanations in terms of purposes. Socrates concern was to emphasize that some reasons for human actions are not a matter of mere physiological causation.
