Democracy v.S. Science:Who Turned Out The Enlightenment?

Paul Starobin, National Journal(via 剑虹评论):

A fascinating, if somewhat frightening, societal experiment is under way. The question is whether democracy naturally advances science, or whether modern progress in science actually has less to do with heralded forms of government than with the fruit born of a special moment in historical time, the modern European Enlightenment, from which America, courtesy of the Founders, greatly benefited.

Jefferson, the ultimate optimist about progress in science and democracy going hand in hand, died in 1826, at the dawn of what became known as Jacksonian America, a raucous new era of muddy-boots rule by "the people." Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat who toured this America in 1831 and was its most perceptive chronicler, worried about the prospect for science in the new Republic. "Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences or of the more elevated departments of science than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society," Tocqueville observed in "Democracy in America."

For a very long time, this appeared to be the rare Tocqueville insight that was off the mark. Our current age, though, seems bent on proving him right after all.

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