Universities Betray Reason and as a Result Betray Humanity Volume 4 - Issue 5

Nicholas Maxwell*

• Science and Technology Studies, University College, London

Received:July 27, 2021   Published: August 06, 2021

Corresponding author:Nicholas Maxwell, Science and Technology Studies, University College, London

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2021.04.000199

 

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Abstract

If universities sought to help promote human welfare rationally, they would give intellectual priority to the tasks of articulating problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible actions. Priority would be given to public education about what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. Universities do not remotely proceed in this way. Why not? Because they are dominated by the idea that knowledge must first be acquired; once acquired, it then can be applied to help solve social problems. But this idea violates the most elementary rules of rational problem solving. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, universities today, devoted in the first instance to the pursuit of knowledge, are profoundly and damagingly irrational in a structural way, and it is this structural irrationality of universities that in part accounts for the genesis of global problems that threaten our future, and for our current incapacity to solve them. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in our universities so that they come to pursue the welfare of humanity in a genuinely rational, and active, way, and thus help save humanity from impending disaster.

Abstract| The University Rationally Devoted to Helping Promote Human Welfare| Discussion and Conclusion| Archaeological Context : The End of the Iron Age in Western Switzerland| The Betrayal of Reason and Humanity| Conclusion| References|