Summary of Patrick J. Michaels & Terence Kealey's Scientocracy

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The priestly class in classical Greece was not as powerful as the scientists who emerged in medieval Europe, and so the writings of Francis Bacon still have the power to startle. Bacon was the first great philosopher of science, and he wrote that science was a gateway to the sublime.

#2 While science has flourished in the modern era, it has lately come to be captured by the state. Scientists have long sought state funding, and as a result, they have long aligned themselves with state doctrines.

#3 The argument that science is a public good is false because it ignores the principle of opportunity benefit, which is the converse of opportunity cost. If there is a choice between doing A or B, and if A is chosen over B, the opportunity cost is the forgone benefit from B. But if A is more valuable than B, it is rational to choose A for its additional or opportunity benefit.

#4 The linear model, which looks like this: was proposed by Bacon, and it was believed that academic research was the source of industrial technology. But modern scholarship shows that it is advances in industrial technology that stimulate academic research.

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Release date

Ebook: 14 May 2022