Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy by Yuval Levin

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Recommended: Liberalism and conservatism in modern history

Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy

Reading Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, by Yuval Levin, is an educational experience because the book challenges liberal values effectively and offers a unique historical analysis of American political values. Unfortunately, Levin’s errors of omission lead to logical errors throughout Imagining the Future.

Levin’s biggest problem is that he painstakingly avoids the mention of religion in relation to American politics. In a book about the values of American liberals and conservatives in the specified context of biotechnology policy (Levin, 2009, p. 1), he first mentions religion on page 85. It says only that when science was new it had a, “capacity to offer an alternative to tradition, especially religious tradition (Levin, 2009, p. 85).”

He equates the left with science, which liberals Erik Parens and I agree is fallacious (Parens, 2009). Levin also shuns equating the right with religion, or even considering the religious views of either camp at all, so he has to equate the right with something else.

So he frames his arguments with “The Two Cultures,” a 1959 lecture by scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. The Two Cultures is about actual scientists, though, not American liberals who admire them. The other culture, “the larger culture (Levin, 2009, p. 39),” originally in the context of British science education, not American politics, refers to the literary intellectuals who argued that the humanities were valuable subjects in British education half a century ago. Snow, in contrast, promoted a focus primarily on science (Whalen, 2009).

Levin makes leaps from this literary culture in Britain 50 years ago to his notion of “the anthropology of ge...

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...9, February 09). Does science threaten democracy. Retrieved from http://scienceprogress.org/2009/02/does-science-threaten-democracy/

5. Park, A. (2012, August 20). George w. bush and the stem cell research funding ban read more: George w. bush and the stem cell research funding ban. Time, Retrieved from http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/21/legitimate-rape-todd-akin-and-other-politicians- who-confuse-science/slide/bush-bans-stem-cell-research/

6. *Poulos, J. (2009). Scientific americans. First principles: ISI web Journal, Retrieved from http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1304

7. Whalen, R. (2009, May 05). Fifty years on, cp snow's 'two cultures' are united in desperation. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows-Two- Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html

*Book review

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