Virtue

Intellectual humility. What a wonderful concept to encounter in today’s climate, where it is precisely the inflated, overvalued ego that seems to dominate everything. Expressing doubt, remaining open to a different perspective, admitting that you don’t know something, or revising your opinion in light of new insights — these are not things we do in this age of the Great I. That’s for weaklings and losers.

Fine, whatever, but all that hollow, radical screaming coming at you from every direction is really starting to get on my nerves. Which is why, whilst browsing through Nature Chemistry, I sat up straight at a contribution in the Thesis section entitled The making of virtuous chemists. Now that’s a different kettle of fish. For once, not an excellent, brilliant, disruptive chemist, but a virtuous one.

Not to be confused with a chemist who is a decent sort, although there’s obviously nothing wrong with that either. The latter does sound somewhat more convivial, but that says more about my own associations with ‘virtuous’, which in common parlance also carries connotations of being well-behaved, moral, and exemplary. And which, for me at least, also comes across as rather humourless.

‘Not to be confused with a chemist who is a decent sort, although there’s obviously nothing wrong with that either’

But we are digressing, and besides, that is not what the authors of this warmly recommended piece are getting at. Environmental biologist Dominic Chaloner, philosopher Ryan Beverly, and theoretical chemist Michelle Francl have long been grappling together with the question of what baggage we ought to equip students with in order to operate later in a rapidly changing, unpredictable world. What do we want them to still remember, years down the line, from the lectures we give them now? Must these be exclusively dry facts and laws?

To ask the question is to answer it. For this trio, that is simply not enough, and they suspect they are not alone in thinking so. After all, we all want students to develop first and foremost into capable, independent thinkers and researchers. In the authors’ words, into ‘good’ chemists, or even ‘virtuous’ chemists. That is why they make a case for greater attention to these virtues in education — and not by outsourcing such topics to colleagues in philosophy or ethics, or by cramming yet another standalone module into the curriculum, but by integrating them into regular lectures and practical sessions.

With that old paragon of virtue Aristotle as their inspiration, they therefore offer a handy translation of classical virtues and values into the practice of modern chemistry studies. In that list, for instance, ‘courage’ means resisting scientific hypes; ‘honesty’ means actively sharing your data; ‘openness’ means being willing to consider new interpretations of your results; and ‘humility’ means publishing null results or paradoxical findings as well. Even when doing so diminishes your intellectual standing.

In short, it means trying, as a lecturer and supervisor, to be that good, virtuous chemist yourself. All that remains now is to write a juicy, witty script for The Good Chemist. Hopefully coming soon to Netflix.