Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Thursday, May 18, 2017

Climate change "skeptics" and Hayek

Climate change “skeptics” and “deniers” often turn to F.A. Hayek’s criticism of science in order to justify their position.  Here is Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (often considered a sort of Bible among conservative thinkers and classical liberals) commenting on the “counter-revolutionary” role of science and the rise of National Socialism:

The way in which, in the end, with few exceptions, her scholars and scientists put themselves readily at the service of the new rulers is one of the most depressing and shameful spectacles in the whole history of the rise of National Socialism.  It is well known that particularly the scientists and the engineers, who had so loudly claimed to be the leaders on the march to a new and better world, submitted more readily than almost any other class to the new tyranny.[1]

- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944).         





[1] F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.  Texts and Documents.  The Definitive Edition [Vol II of the Collected Works], ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 200,201.

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