Devilstower on Priestley

Devilstower over at Daily Kos has an interesting book review of The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. The book is about Enlightenment era scholar and writer, Joseph Priestley.

Priestley was apparently very much a man of the Enlightenment, committed to the free flow of information and following ideas wherever they might lead. He was a religious man, but apparently saw science as a way of revealing God. And, if science and religious texts were in conflict, perhaps it was the religious texts that were wrong. This notion is anathema to a nontrivial number of conservative religious types for whom control over an individual’s proper relationship to God represents temporal power.

In our era, commitment to the scientific method as the best way to understand the world around us seems to be more of a liberal ideal than a conservative one. During the Bush administration there were any number of efforts to subjugate scientific findings to political doctrine. Meanwhile, during the same period, the liberal “netroots” has strongly embraced Enlightenment ideals with respect to the value of the scientific method, free flow of information, and the proper placement of political power in the citizenry. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will embrace these ideals as fully, though initial signs appear good that it will at least do better than the Bush administration on these matters.

Anyway, Devilstower’s review is worth a read and the book seems to be as well.