Friday, January 19, 2024

The Function of Science

     The function of science today is a very significant one-and in this definition of its uses no criticism of it is implied, for everything is science, in one sense, that is effective. Science is often described as the religion of industrialism. It is said to have provided man with "a new world-soul." Its public function is actually, however . . . to conceal  the human mind that manipulates it, or that manipulates, through it, other people. For in its impersonality and its "scientific detachment" it is an ideal cloak for the personal human will. Through it that will can operate with a godlike inscrutability that no other experience can give. It enables man to operate as though he were nature on other men. In the name of science people can be almost without limit bamboozled and managed.

Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 1989, pg. 47 

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