Applying Science To Social Issues

There's a danger to applying science to social interactions and economics. You might end up with technocrats trying to use Tinkertoys to build society, when people on an individual basis have the ability to form themselves into useful social structures without imposed, utopian, artificial order. But the quest for truth in science can inform our quest for truths about the human condition.

Brian Cox, during his TedTalks: Space Trek episode, "Why We Need Explorers," closed with this about Humphry Davy, English inventor and chemist:

The argument has always been made, and it will always be made, that we know enough about the universe. You could have made it in the 1920s; you wouldn't have penicillin. You could have made it in the 1890s; you wouldn't have had the transistor. And it's made today, in these difficult economic times. Surely we know enough. We don't need to know anything else about the universe.

Let me leave the last words to someone who is rapidly becoming a hero of mine. Humphry Davy, who did his science at the turn of the 19th century. He was clearly under assault all of the time. We know enough at the time of the 19th century. Just exploit it. Just build things ...

Wikipedia.org

"Nothing is more fatal to the progress of the human mind than to presume that our views of science are ultimate, that triumphs are complete, that there are no new mysteries of nature, and no new worlds to conquer." Humphry Davy (1778-1829).

So to paraphrase Davy:

Nothing is more fatal to the progress of the human condition than to presume that our views of life, freedom, and property are ultimate, that triumphs are complete, that there are no new mysteries in society, and no new evils to conquer.