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Article Potter's Notion of Bioethics
Article Potter's Notion of Bioethics
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Volume 22, Number 1, March 2012, pp.
59-82 (Article)
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ten Have • Potter’s Notion of Bioethics
Henk A. M. J. ten Have
ABSTRACT: In 1970 Van Rensselaer Potter was the first to use the term “bioeth-
ics” in a publication to advocate the development of a new discipline to address
the basic problems of human flourishing. This article analyzes Potter’s notion
of bioethics in order to understand its origins, sources, and substance. In early
publications, Potter conceptualized bioethics as a bridge: between present and
future, nature and culture, science and values, and finally between humankind
and nature. In later publications, disappointed by a predominant focus on indi-
vidual and medical issues, and with a wish to underscore the need for a broader
perspective, Potter introduced the new term “global bioethics,” meant to tran-
scend ethics specialties and integrate them into a new interdisciplinary endeavor
to address global problems. A growing interest in global bioethics today means
that Potter’s original insights are more timely than ever.
B
ioethics, as a discipline combining scientific and philosophical
knowledge, originated forty years ago. It is not clear how the word
“bioethics” came into existence. Warren Reich concludes that it
had a “bilocated birth” in 1970–1971 with Van Rensselaer Potter and
André Hellegers, while Hans-Martin Sass attributes the origin of the word
to Fritz Jahr in 1927 (Reich 1994; Sass 2008). The controversy over the
coining of the term notwithstanding, the American cancer specialist Van
Rensselaer Potter was indisputably the first to publish a book on bioethics
(in 1971), using a bridge as a metaphor for the new discipline. In this book
and in subsequent publications he elaborates the notion of bioethics, a
notion that is different in many ways from the way bioethics is sometimes
conceived of today. The aim of this article is to analyze the substance of
Potter’s theory and the intellectual inspiration for his ideas.
Van Rensselaer Potter (1911–2001), son of a farmer in South Dakota,
was educated in biochemistry. After he obtained his PhD in 1938, he re-
ceived a postdoctoral fellowship and traveled to Sweden to work in the
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 22, No. 1, 59–82 © 2012 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
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ten Have • Potter’s Notion of Bioethics
A New Discipline
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In the opening sentence of the preface of his first book Potter empha-
sizes that he wants to contribute to the future of the human species. He
observes that part of the reason why the future is in danger is that the
two cultures of modern society, namely, the sciences and the humanities,
are not communicating. This concept had been developed by C. P. Snow
in his widely read 1959 lecture “The Two Cultures.” In modern Western
society common culture had been lost, and with his book, Potter intended
to answer this challenge: the new discipline of bioethics could build a bridge
between the two cultures and strengthen future-oriented problem solving.
In the preface he remarks that he had noticed that during his thirty years of
cancer research a growing philosophical concern about the future was “a
constant thread of unity in my extra-curricular activities” (1971, p. viii).
He also mentions that his concern about the future was in fact instigated
by the publications and activities of Margaret Mead (1901–1978). She
was one the first anthropologists to use anthropological analysis to study
the future of human civilization, arguing for the importance of assessing
possible cultural outcomes on the basis of adequate information and
knowledge. If we want to be able to determine what ought to happen in
human society, we must determine what could happen and what is likely
to happen under controlled circumstances. In developing these visions of
the future, we must use two methods of approach, that of the humanities
and that of the sciences. Usually, Mead notes, negative visions are stronger
than positive ones, so to reverse this trend we need to deliberately develop
“vivid utopias” to guide our thought. In an age when the survival of hu-
manity is threatened by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
the possibility of nuclear war, and the danger of ecological catastrophes,
this need for positive visions of the future was all the more pressing. Mead
even advocates that universities have special scholars—“chairs of the fu-
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The future, argues Potter, cannot take care of itself. Human beings
need to take their destiny into their own hands. Only by bridging the gap
between the sciences and the humanities can we hope to build a bridge
to the future (1971, pp. 150–51). This bridge between the present and
the future enables the creation of another bridge. Bioethics, as the science
of survival, can also forge connections between biological and cultural
evolution. Between these two processes many parallels and analogies
exist; both are directed toward survival; both are susceptible to external
guidance (see Potter 1975b). Potter elaborated his ideas in a publication
on human progress in a 1962 essay (included in his 1971 book) in which
he questions the general assumption, especially in the American context,
that progress toward a worthy social goal will take place on its own.
We need, argues Potter, the new discipline of bioethics to safeguard the
survival of humankind.
In this connection, Potter distinguishes between three concepts of prog-
ress. The religious concept considers progress as transcendent; it is the
transition from this world to the world to come. The materialistic concept
of progress is immanent; it focuses more on what already exists and on
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knowledge of the sciences and of the humanities that we can bridge nature
and culture and therefore build a bridge to the future.
Teilhard de Chardin
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ten Have • Potter’s Notion of Bioethics
going into details (1971, pp. 80, 113, 135). An influential philosophy
during the first half of the twentieth century, pragmatism is perhaps best
understood as an ambitious effort to synthesize scientific knowledge and
methods with ethical judgment, an attempt to integrate knowledge and
values long before Snow’s lecture (Thayer 1973). Pragmatism is centered
on several ideas that are seminal in Potter’s thinking: rejection of dualisms,
orientation toward the future, and a concern with notions of progress
and responsibility.
Pragmatism anticipated the midcentury angst over the division between
“cultures.” It envisaged itself as a mediator between what William James
(1842–1910) called the tough-mindedness of science and the tender-mind-
edness of religious and moral values. In his history of modern philosophy,
John Passmore actually refers to James’s devotion to “bridge-building”
(1968, p. 104). John Dewey (1859–1952) was even more outspoken in
his rejection of dualisms in all the forms that they have occurred: science
versus values, acting versus thinking, theory versus practice, mind versus
body, human beings versus nature, organism versus environment. In the
view of these pragmatists, the separation of moral values and scientific
knowledge had been characteristic of modern thought since the seven-
teenth century. The historical mission of pragmatism was to “reconcile”
or “bridge” these separations. This is the main thread in Dewey’s long
philosophical career: “Certainly one of the most genuine problems of
modern life is the reconciliation of the scientific view of the universe with
the claims of the moral life” (1931, p. 43).
The task of philosophy is thus reconstructive: to bridge the separation
between science and values, to forge continuity. The pragmatist solution to
this apparent gap was the theory of knowledge as valuation. Both valuing
and knowing are logically common modes of intelligent action; knowing
is itself an evaluative activity. Scientific knowledge is a paradigm of moral
activity. For Potter, this intrinsic link between thinking and acting is at-
tractive as a bridge between science and values. Ethics, in Dewey’s view,
is nothing more than the placing of physical, biological, and historical
knowledge in a human context as a means of guiding human activities.
Ethics is not different from science; both use the same methodology.
Bridging the gap between knowledge and action allows us to use scientific
knowledge in the formation of moral standards and ideals. That is why
Potter argues that bioethics must be based on modern concepts of biology
and not on unsupported introspection (1971, p. 4).
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Global Bioethics
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Potter expresses the hope that bioethics will create “a worldwide move-
ment” (1971, p. 194). However, there was a specific reason why Potter in
the late 1980s and 1990s promoted the new name of “global bioethics.”
Potter’s Dissatisfaction
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he drew from it (see Potter 1988, 2001). Potter passionately believed that
environmental and future-oriented concerns could not be separated from
a medical perspective, since all are necessary to secure for human health.
Bioethics cannot be reduced to biomedical ethics (see Potter 1987).
Reich (1995) offers several explanations as to why Potter’s ideas about
bioethics were marginalized, some of which relate to Potter’s own work.
For instance, the 1971 book is actually a compilation of mostly journal
articles published during the previous nine years. The connection between
the chapters in the book is not always obvious, and so it is difficult for
the reader to summarize Potter’s theory by the close of the volume. The
writings are complicated and eclectic; they are a mixture of components
from various theories and scholars, difficult to articulate in a coherent
and systematic way. This eclecticism means that his expositions have little
appeal as a vision. One also gets the impression that he at times seems
to present his own ideas through the work of others, using long quota-
tions, leaving the reader to implicitly assume that they reflect the thinking
of Potter himself. Reading Potter’s early work produces a kaleidoscopic
feeling. The various bridges that he wanted to construct are the result of
“bricolage”; they are the outcome of trying, testing, and tinkering rather
than the result of a conventional, analytical style of solving problems.
Drawing upon future-oriented thinking, evolutionary science, pragma-
tism, and ecological philosophy, he further introduced ideas from systems
theory and molecular biology in order to address the pressing problems of
his time. The 1988 book is more readable but has similar heterogeneous
characteristics: many issues are discussed, but it is difficult to highlight
the main ideas. The book presents many practical issues and dilemmas,
but the analysis is often brief and inconclusive.
Another factor is that although both of his monographs are on bioethics,
the ethical component is rather underdeveloped. Potter says little about
ethics itself. The role of ethics is not articulated even as the need for a new
ethical perspective is continuously underlined. Rather than elaborating
the substance of a new ethics, Potter prefers to dwell on the procedures
that might be used to develop bioethics. This is perhaps consistent with
his image of the bridge. The important feature of bioethics is its inter-
disciplinarity. Bioethics is a kind of hyperscience; it should use scientific
methodology (generating new ideas, testing them in peer groups, in ex-
periments, and in discussion with the literature) while at the same time
crossing the boundaries between disciplines. The best way to proceed is
therefore to establish groups of experts from various disciplines in which
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ethics should broaden its mission has been gaining support (Brock 2000;
Daniels 2006; Holm and Williams-Jones 2006; Turoldo 2007; Dwyer
2009; Gruen and Ruddick 2009; Ross 2010; Verkerk and Lindemann
2011). In Global Bioethics, Potter argues that global bioethics provides
the bridge between medical and ecological bioethics; in the 1996 “Real
Bioethics” and the 1999 “Fragmented Ethics and “Bridge Bioethics,” he
includes agricultural ethics, social ethics, organizational, and religious
ethics.3 Echoing this shift, there has recently been much more attention
paid to global issues in bioethics, including issues such as global health
(Wikler and Cash 2009), population control (Callahan 2009), and global
justice and poverty (Pogge 2010).
Potter also had noticed that the search for a global scope for ethics had
been undertaken by world religions, especially through the activities of
Hans Küng (see Potter 1994, 1995). In one of his last publications, Potter
advocates for the involvement of the United Nations in bioethics and even
for the establishment of a “Bioethics Development Section” in the orga-
nization (2001, p. 29). Today, UN agencies as WHO and UNESCO have
sections for bioethics, and member states of UNESCO have unanimously
adopted the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (An-
dorno 2007; Ten Have and Jean 2009). Potter’s idea of global bioethics
is reflected in the principles of this declaration, which is concerned with
health care, the biosphere and future generations, and social justice.
The first drafts of this paper were written during a visit as the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Visiting
Professor in the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
Ohio. I am grateful for the support of the Greenwall Foundation and the assistance of my
colleagues in Cleveland. I would particularly like to thank my Duquesne colleague Gerard
Magill for helping to improve the text.
Notes
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References
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———. 2001. Moving the Culture Toward More Vivid Utopias with Survival as
Goal. Global Bioethics 14 (4): 19–30.
Potter, Van Rensselaer, and Potter, Lisa. 1995. Global Bioethics: Converting
Sustainable Development to Global Survival. Medicine and Global Survival
2 (3): 185–91.
Reich, Warren T. 1994. The Word “Bioethics”: Its Birth and the Legacies of Those
Who Shaped It. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 4 (4): 319–35.
Ross, Lainie F. 2010. Forty Years Later: The Scope of Bioethics Revisited. Per-
spectives in Biology and Medicine 53 (3): 452–57.
Sass, Hans-Martin. 2008. Fritz Jahr’s 1927 Concept of Bioethics. Kennedy Insti-
tute of Ethics Journal 17 (4): 279–95.
Segota, Ivan. 1999. Van Rensselaer Potter II: “Father” of Bioethics. Synthesis
Philosophica 14 (1–2): 169–81.
Snow, Charles P. 1959. The Two Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. 1975. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harp-
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———. 2004 [1964]. The Future of Man. New York: Doubleday.
Ten Have, Henk, and Jean, Michèle, eds. 2009. The UNESCO Universal Dec-
laration on Bioethics and Human Rights. Background, Principles and Ap-
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Thayer, Horace S. 1973. Meaning and Action: A Study of American Pragmatism.
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Turoldo, Fabrizio. 2007. La globalizzazione della bioetica. Padova: Fondazione
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Verkerk, Marian, and Lindemann, Hilde. 2011. Theoretical Resources for a
Globalised Bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics 37 (2): 92–96.
Wikler, Daniel, and Cash, Richard. 2009. Ethical Issues. In Global Public Health:
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