Following the Science
Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel, 1984, has a totalitarian government devoted to stability and power. But C S Lewis’s 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength, has a power-centered government that proposes to start managing human destiny through Science.
The novel fictionalized ideas which Lewis had presented in his 1943 philosophical book, The Abolition of Man. In this work, Lewis described the dehumanizing result of replacing God’s transcendent truth with the ideology of secularist educators claiming scientific infallibility.
He wrote: ‘For the power of Man to make himself as he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please . . . The man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.’
The novel fictionalized ideas which Lewis had presented in his 1943 philosophical book, The Abolition of Man. In this work, Lewis described the dehumanizing result of replacing God’s transcendent truth with the ideology of secularist educators claiming scientific infallibility.
He wrote: ‘For the power of Man to make himself as he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please . . . The man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.’
So, which is more descriptive of the present, Orwell's vision or Lewis'?
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