Free Republic

The Higgs boson is a theoretical particle which scientists believe gives mass to everything in the universe, and is a key component of the Standard Model of physics. While finding it in its expected form would confirm common theories on how atoms are put together, identifying a number of Higgs bosons with different masses or disproving the particle entirely would overturn many assumptions of modern physics.

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,...