States Reduce Violence

So did Hobbes get it right? In part, he did. In the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel: gain (predatory raids), safety (preemptive raids), and reputation (retaliatory raids). And the numbers confirm that relatively speaking, “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war,” and that in such condition they live in “continual fear, and danger of violent death.” But from his armchair in 17th-century En...

 Changing Spelling has Happened in the Past

Objection to simplified spelling has been made on the supposition that it "wil cut us off from the literature of the past," meaning that those taught in the new way wil be unable to read the books red today. This can not be so, because the present spelling wil be no more difficult to read by one who has learnd to spel the new way, than is the new spelling by one who has learnd the old way. Children who hav learnd to spel in the simplified way wil, in fact, read the books printed toda...

 Science is Disconnected from the Needs of Man

A plain, reasonable working man supposes, in the old way which is also the common-sense way, that if there are people who spend their lives in study, whom he feeds and keeps while they think for him—then no doubt these men are engaged in studying things men need to know; and he expects of science that it will solve for him the questions on which his welfare, and that of all men, depends. He expects science to tell him how he ought to live: how to treat his family, his neighbours and the men o...