By contrast with diamonds or asbestos or granite or the minerals we burn for fuel, the lowly agate is the victim of scientific disinterest, the same … - Robert N. Proctor

The case of Otto Neurath, first author of the Vienna Circle's manifesto, is a revealing one. In the years before the First World War, the young Austrian economist became interested in eugenics, translating (with his wife, Anna Schapire-Neurath) Francis Galton's Hereditary Genius for the first time into German. His most important early work, however, was his analysis of the war economy. War economics, in his view, was a science with well-defined laws and principles which, like ballistics, are "independent of whether one is for or against the use of guns."

Why do we know what we know and why don't we know what we don't know? What should we know and what shouldn't we know? How might we know differently?

In March 1937 the reported on the case of a farmer who had shot to death his sleeping son because the child was "mentally ill in a manner that threatened society"