Rational Magic
Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo
On the Modern Project
Uncovering the political and philosophical aspirations of the scientific enterprise
Uncovering the political and philosophical aspirations of the scientific enterprise
Several of the best stories by the great American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) touch on the moral meaning of modern science. The New Atlantis is publishing a series of essays devoted to Hawthorne’s stories about science, technology, and progress. With every essay but one, we are publishing online a critical edition of the corresponding Hawthorne story. Each essay is accompanied by illustrations by Elliott Banfield.
Symposium | Summer 2011
Symposium | Spring 2011
From stem cell research to global warming, human cloning, evolution, and beyond, political debates about science have raged in recent years — and, to the chagrin of most observers, have increasingly fallen into the familiar categories of America’s culture wars. In Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy, Yuval Levin explores the complicated meanings of science and technology in American politics and contends that the science debates have a lot to teach us about our political life. These debates, Levin argues, reveal some serious challenges to American self-government, and put on stark display the deepest strengths and greatest weaknesses of both...
Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel....
