Science and Power

Abstract

“The means by which enlightened rulers and sagacious generals moved and conquered others, that their achievements surpassed the masses, was advance knowledge. Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits, inferred from phenomena, or projected from the measures of heaven, but must be gained from men, for it is the knowledge of the enemy’s true situation.”

Sun Tze, Bing Fa, 13 (perhaps 500 BC).

“Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.” [For knowledge itself is power]

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) (Religious Meditations—Of Heresies).

“I am selling what the whole world wants: power.”

Matthew Boulton (1711–1780) (Letter to Catherine the Great of Russia, offering steam engines for sale).

“Modern industry has established the World Market.”

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, (The Communist Manifesto, 1848).

“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) (“Power: A New Social Analysis,” 1938)