Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Liberalism and science are methods, not ideologies

Democracy’s Laboratory by Michael Shermer.
But, I protest, aren’t all political claims types of beliefs? No, Ferris responded: “Liberalism and science are methods, not ideologies. Both incorporate feedback loops through which actions (e.g., laws) can be evaluated to see whether they continue to meet with general approval. Neither science nor liberalism makes any doctrinaire claims beyond the efficacy of its respective methods — that is, that science obtains knowledge and that liberalism produces social orders generally acceptable to free peoples.”

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