His Father The Engineer

Ian Hacking

  • Understanding the present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man by Bryan Appleyard
    Picador, 272 pp, £14.95, May 1992, ISBN 0 330 32012 2

There’s widespread distrust of science and technology abroad in (at least) the prosperous English-speaking countries. It shows up where it hurts most. I don’t mean in lack of national funding for research, especially research for its own sake. There is, even in Britain after Thatcher, an amazing proportion of national treasure invested in the sciences. It may be spent unwisely on weapons or on grandiose enterprises like the human genome project. It may be necessary to do a lot of toadying about practical applications of pure research when asking for patronage. But public and private money is still being spent lavishly compared to any era of human history before the Manhattan project. No: where it hurts is in lack of students. Young people, we hear on all sides, are voting against science.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions