As knowledge-making regimes go, nothing is as successful or as respectful of diversity or as humane as liberal science. The trouble is that liberal science often does not look very humane. It uses sticks as well as carrots. The carrots are the respectability, frequent use, and public credit that it bestows on the opinions that it validates; the sticks are the disrespect and the silent treatment that it inflicts on the opinions that fail. Those sticks are nonviolent, true. But it is unconscionable not to admit that denying respectability is a very serious matter indeed.
- From Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought by Jonathan Rauch
[Photo by K. Mitch Hodge at Unsplash]
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