ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to subvert two obvious caricatures. The first is that the role of modern science has been almost uniformly positive, enormously enhancing our knowledge and understanding as well as making possible all sorts of beneficial technologies, and that in the few exceptions to this rule the scientific community has itself been innocent. The second is that the main effect of science on the modern world has been to potentiate human capacity to inflict harm, both on other humans and on the biosphere. Science gave rise to the Green Revolution in agriculture, but also to the ethically highly ambiguous effects of genetically modified crops. The chapter shows that the sciences reveal the character of evils in ways that may not have been obvious, or even detectable, by other aspects of human wisdom. These evils may be engendered, or exacerbated, by humans, but science also helps us see more clearly the character of natural evil.
