Democracy and Science

I propose to share with you a few reflections about the nature of scientific inquiry and its importance for public life. At a superficial level one could say that I will be addressing some aspects of the relation between science and society; but as I hope will become clear, my aim is to discuss the…

None of the seventeenth-century founders of modern science – Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, Hooke, and Newton – could have imagined the peculiar world of contemporary anti-science polemics. They thought that having some control over nature, particularly over human health, was – however desired – almost an unimaginable goal.  They believed that certain methods – experience, experiment,…

I By midsummer 2099, as yet more record temperatures were reported from an ever wider collection of places, the intergovernmental office of environmental studies finally announced the answer to a long-debated question.    Many figures for the rise in the mean temperature of the Earth during the twenty-first century had been predicted, but it turned out…

Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy When I was thirteen, my mother died suddenly.  On the rebound, my father married again to a German woman, whose family were great enthusiasts for the thinking of the Croatian-born seer and polymath, Rudolf Steiner.  To that point, I had never heard of Steiner (my family, English, were Quakers), but in…

Building a new country is hard work. Plato had interesting ideas about the model city-state, but his plans never got beyond the thinking stage. The American Founders, on the other hand, faced with the opportunity — indeed, the necessity — to do more than dream up theoretical blueprints for a new political system, actually constructed…

Part One – Special Interest Democracy Democracy has a very positive connotation for most modern peoples.  It suggests that the individual citizens are important and that their opinions will be paid attention to by those they elect to political office. In a modified fashion, this is true.  Take, for instance, democracy in the United States. …