Philosophical Perspectives on Trustworthiness and Open-mindedness as Professional Virtues for the Practice of Nursing: Implications for he Moral Education of Nurses

describing phenomena. Nursing as a practical activity with normative and evaluative
ends is to be distinguished from science with its general aim of description (Edwards
2001).

One response to this failure might be that the description above is unnecessarily
focussed on the natural sciences. The traditional view that science comprises of these
three natural sciences effectively prevents the inclusion of any other discipline into the
class of science. However the general perception of science as biology, chemistry, and
physics fails to account for the status of other disciplines that have become known as
sciences in their own right. The fact that these other disciplines are known collectively
as the social sciences (and hence are to be differentiated from the natural sciences) does
not detract from the perceived legitimacy of their claim to be part of that class of
disciplines known as the sciences. Psychology and sociology are among the disciplines
generally accepted as part of the social sciences. Proponents of nursing as a science
might well claim nursing to be a social science.

This claim (that nursing is a social science) is another class inclusion claim and as such
requires that we define what we mean by a social science before considering whether or
not nursing can be so classified. As with the natural sciences, the social sciences have
description as a primary purpose. This helps to explain the general acceptance of
psychology and sociology as sciences. In describing the social world, rather than the
natural world, the social sciences have a more difficult task. There may be no
counterpart in the social sciences for what in the natural sciences are termed the laws of
nature. Nevertheless, it is the descriptive nature of the social sciences that provides
legitimacy for their position as sciences. On this account nursing would once again fail
to be a candidate for inclusion as a science and for the same reason. Nursing has
normative and evaluative ends whereas the primary task of the social sciences is to
describe the social world.

A further response to this failure might be to say that the portrayal of science as
primarily descriptive activity is to accept an impoverished view of science. It is a view
that is too narrow because part of what we understand science to be includes the
practical applications of the results of science. This is to say that while biology,
chemistry, physics, psychology, and sociology might be considered as pure sciences
they form the basis of a range of activities that are known as applied sciences. While it

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