"A scientist's political opinions, it is assumed, his opinions on sociological questions, on morals, on philosophy, perhaps even on the arts, will be more valuable than those of a layman. The world, in other words, would be a better place if the scientists were in control of it. But a ‘scientist’, as we have just seen, means in practice a specialist in one of the exact sciences. It follows that a chemist or a physicist, as such, is... politically more intelligent than a poet or a lawyer, as such. And, in fact, there are already millions of people who do believe this."
"But is it really true that a ‘scientist’, in this narrower sense, is any likelier than other people to approach non-scientific problems in an objective way?"
The essay. It's short and highly readable.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/science/english/e_scien
Part of a series on Science, Technology, and Society.
https://m.facebook.com/pages/Modern-Intellectual-History/986713261343222
No comments:
Post a Comment