This is a concluding chapter that summarizes previous findings. The importance of greater cultural competence on the part of elites is a particular emphasis.

Provides historical background on the clash between science and democracy and how previous scholars have approached it. One popular approach is to democratize science by subjecting scientific conclusions to popular review. This approach may work for certain discrete issues but is less successful for ongoing issues that involve substantial political content.

Describes the response to COVID-19 in each country, emphasizing the role of experts and challenges to their authority. While the USA saw populist resistance to shutdowns and other measures, Sweden saw a “war between experts” in which private scientists challenged the government’s hands-off policy. Japan saw public unity but a good deal of internal conflict regarding Covid policy, especially involving the 2020 Olympic Games.

This chapter provides a similar analysis of climate change policy in the three countries. While Sweden has a stronger record than the United States or Japan, expert opinion has come under attack in all three countries, with no obvious end in sight.

In Chapter 4, a history of the scientific method and the philosophies of science and technology are presented. The relationship between science, technology, and government indicate the impact of scientism and technological determinism on government policymaking, including a growing neglect of human well-being.

The Introduction raises the question of what the task, job, or purpose of metaphysics is and, by extension, what the metaphysician should aspire to do. It then canvasses different conceptions of metaphysics that answer these questions in different ways, noting how some answers are bolder and more ambitious than others. Among the boldest and most ambitious of these conceptions of metaphysics is that of Thomas Aquinas, who held both that metaphysics studies everything and that it can do so in such a way as to produce rigorous knowledge of the highest sort – what Aristotle would call unqualified episteme.

This chapter argues that Hobbes’s appreciation of Galileo’s principles of motion occurred in stages by focusing on a principle that Hobbes introduces in Leviathan 2.1 to explain the imagination: “when a thing lies still, unlesse somewhat els stirre it, it will lye still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat els stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, (that nothing can change itself) is not so easily assented to.” Although there is evidence that Hobbes became aware of the importance of this principle in early criticisms of Thomas White and in early notes for De corpore, he did not incorporate it into his account of the imagination in Elements of Law (1640). However, in later works, such as the English and Latin versions of Leviathan and De corpore, conceiving of unhindered motion as continuing eternally provided Hobbes with the ability to explain more aspects of human cognition related to the imagination. Furthermore, thinking of the passion "curiosity" as an infinite endeavor enabled Hobbes to explain why human scientific endeavors can persist even in the face of failure or apparent uselessness.

This chapter traces the historical evolution and terminology of the right to science within international human rights law, exploring its emergence post-Second World War and highlighting the pivotal role of UNESCO and the recent General Comment No. 25. It critically analyses essential terminology such as the scientific process, scientific progress and the benefits of science, both material and immaterial. Special attention is given to defining the scope of protected scientific knowledge, extending beyond traditional academic disciplines to encompass citizen science and Indigenous and traditional knowledge, while clearly distinguishing legitimate scientific knowledge from pseudoscience.

In 1950 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) published the first of two Statements on race,The Race Concept. The document was intended to bring the full weight of scientific authority to the condemnation of racism, and specifically, the kind of racism that had characterised the National Socialist regime in Hitler’s Germany during the Second World War. Whilst many were enthusiastic about the unequivocal condemnation of racial thinking and racism contained in The Race Concept, others saw it as a threat to the principles underpinning the scientific disciplines of anthropology, ethnology and biology, and publicly attacked it. A second statement, The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry, was published by UNESCO in 1951 in an attempt to address these critiques. This chapter situates both statements and their reception within broader debates about the constitution of science and the responsibilities of scientists in the post‑war period. Rather than marking a decisive break from scientific racism, as has often been argued, the statements reveal the persistence of epistemic structures that positioned scientific thought itself as evidence of European civilizational superiority. In this light, UNESCO’s efforts illustrate how anti‑racist projects could simultaneously reinforce racialized power.

Chapter 7 examines Gulliver’s Travels Parts II and III, with particular focus on the role of ideology, namely religion and sectarianism, in the context of global politics and trade. Swift saw modern Europe as a once-unified constitutional and ideological system (Christendom) that fell into a state of decay – a process accelerated by ideologies and policies motivated by hubris and aggression, such as absolutism, militarism, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. In doing so he illustrated essential dynamics of modernity, science, technology, and globalization and implied that their unrestrained development would lead to conflict rather than cooperation. He painted a picture of Asian governments, namely Japan, as foils to European governments: while they were despotic at home, they followed rational self-interest abroad, enabling cordial trade relations and a balance of power. By contrast, modern European colonial powers are satirized as being blinded by the pursuit of commercial monopolies and hence objects of foreign manipulation.

Now that the notion of the Anthropocene is more than a quarter century old, it is possible to review its career. With a special focus on the notion’s trajectory in literary studies, this chapter assesses that career in three ways. First, it makes the language-theoretical point that the Anthropocene is less a rigid denominator than a necessary misnomer: a term that cannot possibly capture the vast realities it is assumed to name, and is better thought of as a catalyst for debate. This helps explain why the recent dismissal of the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphic unit hardly affects the term’s popularity. Second, it tracks the development of the term in literary studies to show how a term that initially signaled ecological urgency began to signify theoretical complexity in the 2010s and, somewhat later, also an increasing awareness of diversity. Third, it underlines that the particular way in which literary studies conceives of the Anthropocene is affected by the specific affordances of literature, which is reflected in the association of the Anthropocene with interdisciplinarity, multiscalarity, embodied experience, the ontology of writing, and a mood of impending disaster.

This chapter challenges the claim that the first decade of the nineteenth century was a disciplinary moment in which the arts and sciences were separated. It analyzes a publishing phenomenon of that decade: scientific publications for children, women, and artisans produced as conversations, dialogues, or catechisms. A wealth of such publications emerged in the years 1800 to 1810. They offer important insights into the competing scientific cultures of the turn of the century, in which professionalized disciplinarity had by no means eclipsed the amateur, even un disciplined, natural philosophy of the late eighteenth century. This essay focuses on Jeremiah Joyce, a scientific educator and author, analyzing the development of his educational writings and those of his interlocutors in this decade. Though these years produce new models of scientific instruction, experiment, and print communication, there are strong continuities with the natural philosophical and pedagogical practices of the previous century.

We present historical background, contemporary status, and potential future development of the psychology of religion (PoR) in Hungary, beginning with its origins: the formative people, places, and various intellectual schools of thought. Writing about the current state of the topic, we reflect on influential factors that are either facilitating or inhibiting the study of PoR, including publication options, topical emphases, practitioners, orientations, methodologies, and professional organizations.

We offer opinions concerning future development topics that are emerging as important in the immediate future and/or are perennially important in order to stimulate creative and useful research including Western theoretical relevance, the extent to which Western PoR theories may or may not contain reasonable expectations and concepts for this region, contextual nuances, Indigenous theoretical concerns, collaborative research opportunities, and common faux pas – reflections on what people unfamiliar with this region commonly and incorrectly assume about conducting PoR work in this context.

I present historical background, contemporary status, and potential future development of the psychology of religion (PoR) in South Korea, beginning with its origins: the formative people, places, and various intellectual schools of thought. Writing about the current state of the topic, I reflect on influential factors that are either facilitating or inhibiting the study of PoR, including publication options, topical emphases, practitioners, orientations, methodologies, and professional organizations.

I offer opinions concerning future development topics that are emerging as important in the immediate future and/or are perennially important in order to stimulate creative and useful research including Western theoretical relevance, the extent to which Western PoR theories may or may not contain reasonable expectations and concepts for this region, contextual nuances, Indigenous theoretical concerns, collaborative research opportunities, and common faux pas – reflections on what people unfamiliar with this region commonly and incorrectly assume about conducting PoR work in this context.