The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

by Charles C. Mann

The air in the scientific workshop is so clean and bracing and the results of researchers sequestering themselves inside so satisfying that they lose their bearings. They don’t want to leave the workshop. They prefer to live in its world of abstraction, separate as angels from the messiness of life. Or, worse, the findings of the workshop seem so luminous and clear, so like beacons of truth, they forget that the workshop is a special place within the world and begin to think that it is above the rest of life and should control it. And here, Husserl said, lies peril, because the people outside the workshop will come to detest and disbelieve the people within its privileged walls. Like Vogt, Borlaug was caught up in the clash between the workshop and the world.

Workshop v the world