June 3, 2009 — Movements since the late 19th century have employed science as justification for tyrannical ideas. Ziauddin Sardar wrote in Nature, “Misplaced faith in science, as rational dogma, as the enemy of pessimism, as a theory of salvation, often serves as the glue that binds modernity and fascism together.”1 Could that happen again? Sardar, the editor of Futures, was reviewing a new book by Christine Poggi, Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism (Princeton, 2009). He began,...
