Why Science and Politics Don’t Mix

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Steven Pinker, professor ofpsychology at Harvard University and author of such popularscience books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essayfor the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right,he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals,science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity andnarrowness of vision.

Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says,science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking invitality or any real purpose of their own, and the intrusion isresented. Far from deriding science as a campaign to diminishand oversimplify -- to reduce beauty to brain chemistry, say, orethics to natural selection -- the humanities should welcomescience as a source of new inspiration: “Surely our conceptionsof politics, culture, and morality have much to learn from ourbest understanding of the physical universe and of our makeup asa species.”