Re: J.D. Bernal

From: scerir (scerir@libero.it)
Date: Wed Feb 28 2001 - 14:51:15 MST


Max More asked:
Is this URL the best source, or are there others with commentary
and context?
The World, the Flesh & the Devil
An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul
at: http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Bernal/
__________

Not orders, but advice, determines action. Each man knows
that only by advice, honestly and disinterestedly given,
can his work succeed, because such advice expresses as near
as may be the inexorable logic of the material world, stubborn fact.
Facts cannot be forced to our desires, and freedom comes by
admitting this necessity and not by pretending to ignore it.
These are things that have been learned painfully and incompletely
in the pursuit of science. Only in the wider tasks of humanity will
their use be found.
    - John Desmond Bernal
[The Social Function of Science,
MacMillan, New York, 1939
Cambridge MA, MIT Press 1967]

Much more at
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v5p511y1981-82.pdf



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