Few of us have any better grounds for believing in germs than for believing in witches. – Professor Gordon Childe. IN the relationship between science and daily life two distinct and complementary tendencies can be observed. On the one hand the products of science are coming into an increasingly intimate relationship with our everyday activities…. read more »
A large part of the argument about feminism turns on the question whether present sex-linked tendencies such as the greater warmth, gentleness and passivity of women and the greater aggressiveness exhibited by men, come from biological or social sources. If biological they will remain constant, if social they will change with social conditions. From early… read more »
People interested in ethics tend to maintain that one cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is.’ The Editor of The Ethical Record, for example: ‘There is no way that, starting from an “is” or purely factual statement, one can rigorously deduce from it an “ought” statement or a moral imperative.’ A writer in the Financial Times (25… read more »
Although nobody has been rude enough to raise the question, readers must have wondered why IC should speak so often in favour of familiar capitalism, with the market and the state; the system does have substantial disadvantages. An explanation appears when one notices a similarity between capitalism and getting old: bad as each of them… read more »
Will we give England back to the oak trees? Probably not, yet until we do we stand on shaky ground when agitating for conservation of the Amazonian rainforest. Will we give up industry and agriculture, return to scratching the ground with a hoe, use nothing more sophisticated than the bow and arrow? Probably not, yet… read more »
Nigel Barley’s personal observations lead him to a refreshingly astringent view both of anthropological cliches and of lay misconceptions. Members of the profession disapproving of something encountered in the field risk charges of ethnocentrism; not so if they express delight in it, although this response shows just as much lack of proper detachment. [1] Laypeople… read more »
MUST remember not to call the SW4 section the Clapham Sect; that was founded back around the 1790s and the (A)-SP have not been failing to get their majority that long. – – – CLAIMING to be concerned with social problems, and to offer solutions to them, members of this party accuse IC of indifference…. read more »
IC56 bore on its cover a stepped pyramid, IC57 a straight-sided one; the change indicates recovery, if not from an error then at least from an imbalance. It also illustrates the importance, when theorising, of striving to formulate assumptions, bringing them out where they can be seen and criticized. The stepped pyramid suggests that each… read more »
Roger Scruton comes closer to providing a theory of the Right than do most of its supporters. Presenting a society of the Right as: ‘a spontaneous order… rich in institutions and replete with motives other than the lust for gain’ he approves its repudiation of goals, such as liberty, equality and fraternity, which derive a… read more »
A talk delivered to a meeting organised by the Libertarian Alliance, on 25th June. By George Walford. (The version given here has been lightly edited in the transition from speech to writing). People who write books about doing talks offer several approved ways of beginning. You can start off with a BANG! to grip your… read more »