“The real force in our time is no longer politics, but science,” declared Israeli president Shimon Peres last spring in Ottawa. This remarkable statement from a Nobel Peace laureate, whose vast and distinguished career has been devoted to the high politics of parties, parliaments and peace talks, can be seen as a turning of the page. Political power, once the supreme governor of human affairs, has taken a back seat. “The only certainty is that the future will be defined by scientific progress and innovation,” Peres has written. “As a result, the traditional power of states and leaders is declining; in today’s global economy, innovators, not politicians, wield the most influence.”
Eighty years ago, Thomas Mann could safely remark on the primacy of politics in human affairs that “in our time the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.” By 1959, C.P. Snow was allowing the claims of science room enough to describe “two cultures,” with traditional western...
John Duffy was a principal at StrategyCorp and the author of Fights of Our Lives: Elections, Leadership and the Making of Canada.
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