Preprints
Envoi
Being an extract from the final substantive chapter of
Collins, Harry, (2010 forthcoming) Gravity’s Ghost: The Equinox Event and Science in the 21st Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Abstract: The state of science in the 21st Century is considered and a division is made between those characteristics that are `derived’ from other cultural institutions – such as hero-worship, the worship of obscure texts, a religious anti-religionism, and an adherence to capitalism – and those which enable science to give leadership because of its special qualities. This division is related to that required for an elective modernism. Science, if it were describe itself as a gradual and fallible uncovering, rather a series of point discoveries, could give leadership in the right way to make difficult, technologically-related, judgments.