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Wayne Ambler The Herbst Program of Humanities for Engineering University of Colorado at Boulder 437 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0437 Tel: 303-492-2009 Fax: 303-735-1783 wayne.ambler@colorado.edu

Wayne Ambler is Associate Professor and Director of the Herbst Program of Humanities for Engineers. His eagerness to be associated with the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research is based on questions of the following sort: CU’s own Eric Cornell recently wrote that science can “teach us nothing about values, ethics, morals, or, for that matter, God.” To illustrate his point he added that “science can try to predict how human activity may change the climate, but science can't tell us whether those changes would be good or bad.” But if we learn not to pose such questions to science, to what discipline should we pose them? And if the answers to these questions are not themselves scientific, what authority do they have? Cornell seems to leave it at saying we all will have our own individual values, but he does not indicate whether and how it is possible to weigh and choose among values that are, inevitably, seriously opposed to each other. Cornell’s view is widespread but problematic: Is there no better solution to this problem?

Ambler’s PhD is in political science, but he has taught in departments of history, classics, and literature. His current work is on Xenophon, that student of Socrates seemingly content to spend posterity in Plato’s shadow; his best work was on Aristotle and, in particular, on his troubling understanding of the relationship between nature and human institutions.

Please visit Wayne's homepage at the Herbst Program of Humanities.