Barbara Forrest, Philip Kitcher, and Michael Ruse are among the scholars contributing to a symposium on "Democracy and Science" published in the journal Logos — which seeks to foster a critical dialogue on modern politics, culture, and society — and available on-line.
Forrest, in "Rejecting the Founders' Legacy: Democracy as a Weapon Against Science," compares "the Founders' enthusiasm for science with Republicans' current animosity toward it," concentrating on her home state of Louisiana and the successful campaigns to undermine the teaching of evolution there. Kitcher, in "Plato's Revenge: An Undemocratic Report from an Overheated Planet," argues that "our current misconceptions about democracy, and about what a commitment to democracy requires of us, interfere with the global political discussions we so urgently need" in the face of global climate change. And Ruse, in "Democracy and Pseudo-Science," urges tolerance for pseudoscience — but emphasizes that "tolerance about people's beliefs does not extend to letting this sort of stuff [creation science] be taught in science classrooms in state-supported schools."
Forrest, a member of NCSE's board of directors, is Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. Kitcher and Ruse, both members of NCSE's Advisory Council, are Professors of Philosophy at Columbia University and Florida State University, respectively.