Pandemic Pandemonium Science and civic accountability. by Glenn Ellmers ... [T]he modern project launched by Machiavelli, Bacon, René Descartes, and Thomas Hobbes, the principles governing physical reality came to be understood through a technical method , leading to the belief that we can achieve mastery over nature. Science then became an ideology, which Desmet sees as the source of our spiritual and political discontents. “The relief of man’s estate,” to use Bacon’s famous phrase, was intended to liberate us from labor, suffering, the penalties of vice, and even death. Yet technology keeps deferring its final payoff of leisurely bliss. Indeed, in many ways, modern man’s famous alienation and existential angst seem to arise from the very achievements that were supposed to make us happy. As Desmet writes, “How is it that the Enlightenment tradition led to more fear and insecurity and, eventually, hyper-strict morality? Didn’t it explicitly aim at the opposite?” His book se...