First, most of the societies to do so have not attempted to devise morality “by reason alone.” They’ve at most tweaked an existing, often religiously based morality–either out of sincere belief, respect for tradition, or simply “sticking with what works.” So we can have a free stable society which respects the scientific method, at least for centuries, if not forever. But it does not follow that we can build one, reasoning from first principles.

Second, as you point out, attempting to derive a morality from an atomistic view of mankind hasn’t worked well, and maybe can’t. Because you do have the problem of defining the good–an is/ought problem that can’t be talked around. I can, scientifically and objectively, observe that obeying certain rules has certain effects. I can observe that certain rules therefore cannot achieve certain ends. But science will not tell me what ends I ought to strive for, and even the most determined attempts to build a moral code from scratch seem to come to grief on that point.

But the teleological view has its own pitfalls. As you say, it’s not hard to derive a morality from that point in the Baltimore Catechism, but you would reject the fact (“God made me”) implicit in the question, and bring the whole structure down. You’re rejecting your “definition” as a divinely-created being. But the choice of definition determines the moral code, and it’s pretty easy to come up with a relationship definition whose logical consequences you wouldn’t care much for. In fact, we often do: obligations of service which justify slavery or extortion, definitions of utility which justify the slaughter of useless mouths or definitions of family which leave one with millions of infantilized followers under the parental leader. I don’t say this is an impossible method of deriving a moral structure, but I’d mark it “Handle with Care.”

I would also keep in mind the general danger of definitions and “proper” ends. We had an interesting time of “intellectual” only a few days ago, largely because you didn’t want to concede that people could be intellectuals by function and not be very good at it. You could define yourself into a corner in which there were no barbers in town, but hair was being cut nonetheless. Proper function may be even worse: any activity of which I disapprove can turn out to be an improper function. It’s amusing for an afternoon, but it doesn’t advance the argument.

Third, I’m not entirely convinced that an “atomistic” view of mankind is necessary for the advancement of science. What seems to me to be necessary is the ideology, if you will, of the repeatable experiment: that if two people do exactly the same thing, they will get exactly the same result. This runs together with an assumption of objectivity–that the six pound and the 12 pound cannonball fall at the same rate and strike the earth together for ALL observers–that there is not a Christian, a Muslim and a secular result, but a single shared reality. These two beliefs will get you, technologically, to where we are today. They have consequences for tribalism, but it does not seem to me they are incompatible with a relational view of humanity.

And at this stage perhaps I need to reread “The Eyes of Allah.”

As for science, perhaps we need to think of paradigm shifts and normal science. (See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Normal science is done by scientists working within the accepted framework. Paradigm shifts are caused by scientists such as Newton and Einstein who challenge the accepted framework. Perhaps they are more individual and less group oriented?

I just checked. Yep, they got lots of his books, including that one.

On a strictly off-the-top-of-my-head response, I can see quite easily why it is both irresistible and also (especially from a medical point of view) useful for scientists to apply the scientific method to the human being, and to treat each one as a kind of independent unit, like an atom. I’m not totally convinced that science will or would have stagnated totally if that particular aspect had not happened.

I also have a vague idea that there have been social scientists who have studied humans in groups, so to speak, and it isn’t all the study of mobs or Marxist nonsense either. But it seems generally agreed that the social sciences are years behind the hard sciences in terms of methodologies and coming up with really good predictive theories and tests of them. That is, as someone I once knew who had done PhD work on both sides of the divide said, why studying humans is much harder than studying chemistry.

I don’t think we’re anywhere near a scientific consensus on the nature of humankind, although at the more popular level, the idea of the self-centred individual as the epitome of humanity is firmly established.