Essay Prize of the electronic journal hartismag

How is it that, in the era of the triumph of science, an ever-growing number of people are surrendering without resistance to the most extreme forms of irrationality and pseudoscience? And how is it that the most successful scientific theory of all time—quantum mechanics—is today being used as a prime tool for manipulating and deceiving hundreds of millions of people around the world under the banner of the so-called New Age movement and the Eastern mysticism that accompanies it? Furthermore, how is it that this entire “industry” enjoys the active support of an increasing number of university professors in the United States and beyond?
How did it come to happen that while the scientific revolution of the 17th century led to the Enlightenment, to the abolition of “divine right” regimes, and ultimately to the establishment of democratic systems, the scientific revolution of the early 20th century now finds itself confronted by a growing wave of hostility directed at the very spirit of science? A deep hostility akin to that of the Catholic Church toward everything Galileo stood for: the reliance on experience and rational thought as the only valid sources of knowledge about the natural world?
And is it truly a coincidence that this intellectual hostility toward basic science and the Enlightenment—now intensifying in democratic societies—and the mass appeal of irrationality and pseudoscience bear striking similarities to phenomena that dominated interwar Germany?
Ultimately, why did fundamental science flourish—according to the historian of science Thomas Kuhn—”only in cultures that originate from ancient Greece”? That is, only in cultures that embraced the challenge of democracy and carried it forward to the present?
And if science and democracy have indeed always gone hand in hand, might the hostility toward science—not toward its technological applications, but toward its very spirit, its radical anti-dogmatism—have always been a troubling sign for the future of democracy itself?
This book was written primarily to support the validity of these questions—with the necessary evidence—and merely to suggest possible answers. It is addressed to every concerned citizen of our time.

The cover design alludes to the Vienna Circle—as the highest expression of the spirit of science—and the Nazi darkness that surrounded and eventually crushed it.