Opinion | 2020’s year of anger at reason must give way to cooperation and hope
- It was a year of deep anger with ourselves, our fate, other people and the government, and while we were angry for good reasons, it was more with reason itself
- Our future depends not just on science and reason but also on our values, so if we value human life, we should cooperate for the future even as we compete
Science doesn’t provide all the answers. If rationality succumbs to irrationality, emotion and anger will shape our choices for the future.
We have been here before. In 1637, amid the horrendous Thirty Years War and outbreaks of plague, French philosopher Rene Descartes and his generation despaired over religion and human fate. They embraced logic and science that helped Europe to master technology.
Specialising in logic, mathematics and knowledge became successful as science stripped emotion and humanity out of the search for objective truth. The discovery of steam power and fossil fuels created industrial might. Power generated wealth. Wealth and technology generated concentration, inequality and more power.
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By 1776, economics had become the leading social science, with Adam Smith finding laws that revealed truths about the wealth of nations. Economics emulated the physical sciences. Politically, the French and American revolutions promised liberty, equality and fraternity.