Question everything — even environmentalism
A new book on the importance of being sceptical about received wisdom and simplistic spindoctoring mysteriously leaves out one area of life where scepticism is thoroughly frowned on today: climate change.
Rob Lyons - 26 Jul 2009
When Karl Marx was asked by his daughter to fill in a ‘confession’, a light-hearted Victorian questionnaire, he declared that his favourite motto – usually attributed to Rene Descartes – was De omnibus dubitandum. Or, to put it another way, ‘question everything’.
These are wise words. Any serious inquiry into the truth should start with this pithy formulation of scepticism in mind. So when Richard Wilson’s book Don’t Get Fooled Again: The Sceptic’s Guide to Life arrived in the spiked office a few months back, I was looking forward to an illuminating exploration of the role of scepticism today.
PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones
August 9th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
It’s good to question everything, but you can question too much. You can pontificate about the truth behind environmentalism till the very skies fell upon your head. That is the tactics employed by industrialists to delay further investigations into the dangers of the chemicals that are used in various manufacturing processes.