Science and Democracy are Synergistic

The values of science and tha values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it. Science thrives on the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adeguate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and hones...

 The Lunar Society

In 1764, the Lunar Society (so named because they met for dinner on the Monday night nearest the full moon; they called themselves the "Lunatics") was formed it in Birmingham and promoted new scientific and technological ideas. The original founders included Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin's grandfather), William Small (Jefferson's mentor), and the industrialist Matthew Boulton. Soon the "Lunatics" included many of the great minds in Britain (including Benjamin Franklin when he visited). In Sc...

 Silencing Opinion is a 'peculiar evil'

In his celebrated little book, On Liberty, the English philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that silencing an opinion is 'a peculiar evil'. If the opinion is right, we are robbed of the 'opportunity of exchanging error for truth'; and if it's wrong, we are deprived of a deeper understanding of the truth in 'its collision with error'. If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that; it becomes stale, soon learned only by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth. Mill ...

 The Light of Science Defines the Rights of Human Beings

All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born ,with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others.

 Jefferson's Intention with “The Philosophy of Jesus of ...

In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall ...