In his book-length history, “The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason and the Laws of Nature,” Timothy Ferris makes a compelling argument that the freedom of exchange of liberal democracies is a crucial component of effective scientific research. But in making the point, he’s more sure-footed talking about science than politics.
A central issue is the shakiness of Ferris’ terms. He defines liberalism as being oriented toward promoting individual freedom—a freedom to participate, if you will. But as he pursues this point, it can be hard to follow whether he’s advocating a traditional view of liberalism or a hard-edged contemporary approach.
The former, which could be called a constitutional view, would still have the government acting to promote the common good, through roadways, education and means of information exchange, the like the Post Office or current world wide web. The latter would offer more of a libertarian approach, with limited government ensuring equal treatment under the law and little else. (Both are matchbook definitions, obviously.)
Ferris argues for government funding of universal public education as well as dedicating 2 percent of GDP to scientific research and development, so it appears he leans toward the former view. But his political definitions aren’t always clear as he applies them to his examples, which is problematic for a book that holds politics so close to its thesis. Near the end, he argues for a Totalitarian-Liberal axis that operates independently of a Conservation-Progressive axis. It still isn’t entirely clear, but this example would have been more useful toward the beginning of the book.
Still, it’s interesting to follow Ferris as he explores the history of science as it relates to the political context surrounding great discoveries. He touches upon the Vatican’s censorship of Galileo, John Locke’s flight into exile and the regressive nihilism of the French Revolution, the Soviet State and Mao’s Communist China. There are some detours on the way, especially a chapter-length denunciation of academic postmodernism, which feels like a faded target—and one that’s inspired the personal ire of the author.
Quotes:
Some think that tolerance means treating all opinions as equally deserving of respect, but the point of liberalism is not that all views are equally valid. It is that society has no reliable way to evaluate opinions other than to let everybody freely express and criticize them—and, if they can garner sufficient support, to try them out.
If the world is relatively anti-intellectual today, it is because the world got a bellyful of the communists’ pseudoprophetic intellectualism and turned its broad back on the lot of it. [I’m not convinced of that one.]
