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Abraham Lincoln’s “Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions,” taken with his contemporaneous “Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society,” presents a coherent view of the role of science in a democratic society. While often read either as a celebration of technology or as only a subtle condemnation of slavery, these speeches are best understood in the context of an antebellum divide between Whigs and Democrats about science and technology. Lincoln’s deft deployment of biblical language in “Discoveries and Inventions” suggests that he shared the Whig concern about the social effects of unconstrained technology.

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.