Bernard Davis (1916-1994) was a leading figure in biology, with his major contributions in microbial physiology and metabolism. Davis was a prominent figure at Harvard Medical School in microbiology and in national science policy. Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. ... Microbiology (in Greek micron = small and biologia = studying life) is the study of microorganisms, including viruses, viroids, prions, prokaryotes and simple eukaryotes (e. ...

He was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, where his parents, immigrants from Lithuania, had settled.

Moralistic fallacy

Davis coined the term "moralistic fallacy" after calls for ethical guidelines to control the study of what could allegedly become "dangerous knowledge." The term is intended as a converse to the naturalistic fallacy, coined by David Hume in the 18th century, which occurs when reasoning jumps from statements about what is to prescription about what ought to be. George E. Moore The naturalistic fallacy is an alleged logical fallacy, identified by British philosopher G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica (1903), which Moore stated was committed whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition of the term good in terms of one... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: David Hume Online editions of Humes work: Works by David Hume at Project Gutenberg Free eBook of A Treatise of Human Nature at Project Gutenberg Free eBook of The History of England, Volume I at Project Gutenberg Free eBook of An...

An example of the naturalistic fallacy would be approving of all wars if scientific evidence showed warfare was part of human nature, whereas an example of the moralistic fallacy would be claiming that, because warfare is wrong, it cannot be part of human nature.

References

• "The Moralistic Fallacy," Bernard Davis, Nature, 1978 Mar 30.[1]

Nature is one of the oldest and most reputable scientific journals, first published on 4 November 1869. ...

External links

• "Faculty of Medicine -- Memorial Minute", December 16, 1998, by Harold Amos, Porter W. Anderson, Jonathan Beckwith, Edmund Chi Chien Lin, Jack Strominger, Morton Swartz, Phang-Cheng Tai, and Edward O. Wilson.