Technique vs. Ethics of Science

Ellul's claim is the harder one to sit with: technique is not a tool that can be wielded ethically or unethically, because technique *is* the method of its own application. "There is no difference at all between technique and its use." You don't get to drive the car wrong and call it a moral choice — you're just not driving. Weizenbaum, approaching from the other side, shows that scientists treat value judgments as invisible infrastructure, buried inside the selection of statistical methods and research questions, never acknowledged as choices at all. Put these two together and something ugly emerges: ethics of science assumes a deciding subject who stands apart from the process and chooses well or badly, but Ellul has already dissolved that subject into the process itself. The ethics board convenes to govern something that, by Ellul's account, cannot be governed without ceasing to be what it is. Weizenbaum's contribution is showing that scientists *know* this — the tension he describes when "ethics" enters the room is not confusion but recognition.