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    persuasion and politics to establish that idea's dominance in their field, and

    to drive rival hypotheses--along with those who propound them--to the

    periphery.  In the struggle for control over scientific journals, over the

    committees which determine what lecturers will be allowed to speak at

    scientific symposia, over who will get tenure, grants, prizes, and over all the

    various other power points which determine which ideas and researchers

    will be admired and which will be shunned, battles can become intense,

    insults snide and biting.  And occasionally, a pitcher of water is even

    dumped on someone's head.172  But there is no violence.

    In geopolitics, the closest equivalent is pluralistic democracy, a system

    within which subcultures and the ideas that ride them compete without

    bloodshed.  During the early '90s, it became popular to declare that

    democracies, unlike more ideologically-rigid forms of government, do not

    make war with each other.  The statement was an exaggeration (the War of

    1812 pitted democratic England against the equally democratic United

    States), but it carried a powerful element of validity.  According to Yale

    University political scientist Bruce Russett, "Since 1946, pairs of democratic

    states have been only one eighth as likely as other kinds of states to threaten

    to use force against each other and only one tenth as likely to do so."173  In

    addition, the Carnegie Commission for Science, Technology, and

    Government commissioned a 1992 task force which concluded that pluralism

    is one of the most potentially effective forces for promoting global

    development.174  These findings imply strongly that the human race will take

    a long step forward if it eliminates intolerant autocracies driven by a passion

    for doctrinal or ethnic cleansing.

    Even without this step, like the universe itself the world of Homo

    sapiens has not been marching from utopia toward chaos.  The truth, in fact,

    is quite the opposite.  Margaret Mead said that once upon a time men viewed

    all brothers as people whose lives they should cherish, and all outsiders as

    fair game.  In early human groups, said Mead, the number of those whose

    lives were sacred was 50 to 75.  The rest of the earth's population was a target

    for murder.  But today, Mead pointed out, the number a single society

    prohibits killing extends to 250 million or more.

      ps of men and women cohere around an idea, then use the powers of

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