During the Dark Ages, the progress of Western civilization virtuallystopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost; fornearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears fueled by ignorance.In this outspoken and forthright book, Lee McIntyre argues that today we are in anew Dark Age--that we are as ignorant of the causes of human behavior as peoplecenturies ago were of the causes of such natural phenomena as disease, famine, andeclipses. We are no further along in our understanding of what causes war, crime, and poverty--and how to end them--than our ancestors. We need, McIntyre says, another scientific revolution; we need the courage to apply a more rigorousmethodology to human behavior, to go where the empirical evidence leads us--even ifit threatens our cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender.Resistance to knowledge has always arisen against scientificadvance. Today's academics--economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others inthe social sciences--stand in the way of a science of human behavior just as clericsattempted to block the Copernican revolution in the 1600s. A scientific approach tosocial science would test hypotheses against the evidence rather than find and useevidence only to affirm a particular theory, as is often the practice in today'ssocial sciences. Drawing lessons from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic churchand current debates over the teaching of "creation science," McIntyre argues thatwhat we need most to establish a science of human behavior is the scientificattitude--the willingness to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes withreligious or political pieties--and the resolve to apply our findings to thecreation of a better society.

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