Postby Technomancer » Fri Jan 30, 2004 4:33 pm
I don't think the lesson of prohibition can be applied to this all that well. It's fairly easy after all to make booze. Admittedly, a handgun ban would be difficult to implement in the US; it would take many years to take the existing supply out of circulation. And all this of course has implications for us here, given our shared border.
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov