Abstract
AS these pages pass through the press and come to the hands of our readers, Great Britain once more lies under the stress of one of those periodically recurring emotional crises in which the future policy of government of the country for a period of greater or lesser duration is determined by popular vote. The gravity of the issues involved on this occasion needs no stress; but it may well raise the question whether the machinery of democratic government is such as to adapt itself to that scientific approach to the solution of the problems of government and administration, which the course of events in the last ten or fifteen years has shown to be a necessity of this modern age. In the hundred years which have elapsed since the introduction of the Reform Bill, thanks in great measure to the British political genius for compromise, the ultimate control of the destinies of the nation has passed from what was virtually an oligarchy to the people as a whole without the more violent pangs which marked the birth of democracy in less fortunate conditions. No longer, however, is the electorate confronted with the relatively simple issues of ‘party’. The problem of the future in an increasing degree must be the manner in which, and at what stage, the scientific and technical considerations, which it would seem must enter more and more largely into the shaping of public action, are to be brought home to democracy.
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Science and Political Responsibility. Nature 136, 733–734 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136733a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136733a0
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