‘A scientist, in this sort of situation, behaves like a trained elephant made to face an obstacle. He uses the strength of his intellect the way the elephant uses its muscle – on command – which is most convenient, because the scientist can agree to anything if he is responsible for nothing. Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the ‘superior knowledge’ that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic. Today’s evil turns out to be tomorrow’s good; ergo, the evil is also, to some extent, good. Our reason no longer heeds the intuitive promptings of emotion; the ideal is the harmony of a perfectly constructed mechanism, an ideal that civilisation as a whole, and its every member taken separately, must meet.’
— Stanislaw Lem, ‘His Master’s Voice’
