The Republic of Science, the Constitution of Knowledge, and the Besieged University

In a new book, Jonathan Rauch argues for a spirited defense of the “Constitution of Knowledge.” His comparison of the US Constitution to a national intellectual community resembles Michael Polanyi’s metaphor of a “republic of science.” But the surprising thing about Polanyi’s evocation of a republic was precisely its embrace of science’s irrationalities, not an assertion that republics and scientific communities were alike in the pursuit of truth. First amendment scholar Donald Alexander Downs’s new book offers a vision of intellectual community that more effectively reconciles the irrational to the pursuit of truth, and as such perhaps a more workable framework for accommodating the extremes of our age.