MichaelisAnthony R.: ‘The scientific temper. An anthology of stories on matters of science’; 2001, Heidelberg, Universitatsverlag C. Winter.
2.
MillerMorris: ‘Poverty as a cause of wars?’, ISR, 2000, 25, 273–297; and ‘Nuclear power in the twenty-first century’, ISR, 2001, 26, (4).
3.
In a recent review of the philosopher Stephen Toulmin's book ‘Return to reason’, Steven Shapin says that Toulmin ‘acknowledges that interdisciplinary vigour and breadth are dependent on a prior narrowing of perceptions’ (Steven Shapin: ‘Dear Prudence’, London Review of Books, 2002, 24, (2), 25–27). Not to put too fine a point on it, this seems an altogether cockeyed view of the situation, not unlike acknowledging that if a once happily married couple hadn't divorced, they couldn't now be such good friends.
4.
MichaelisAnthony R.: ‘Energy 2000’, ISR, 1978, 3, 87–88.
5.
See Ian Sample: ‘Making a mint’, New Scientist, 2002, (2326), 36–37for more on this and related issues.
6.
In fact English banknotes have featured the head of the reigning monarch only since 1960.
7.
With financial transactions now squarely in the hands of computers, there is no practical reason why the euro could not have been introduced as a supplement to and not a replacement for existing national currencies, to be used primarily by businesses for international transactions (for a sound introduction to the idea of multiple currencies, see richard douthwaite: ‘The ecology of money’, Schumacher Briefing No. 4; 1999, Torrington, Green Books). But mainstream economics has become so preoccupied with shoring up the foundations of the existing Western, market led, capital dominated system that most economists would be quite unwilling to take seriously such an apparently outlandish notion. Proper questioning of the economic status quo (and the process of questioning the status quo is in essence what in ‘economic science’ must pass for conducting an experiment) is therefore left to thinktanks such as the New Economics Foundation, which has gone so far as to suggest in a recent pamphlet that London should have its own local currency (David Boyle: ‘Why London needs its own currency’; 2000, London, New Economics Foundation).
