TREACHERY OF REALITIES

The Treachery of Realities targets the contemporary atmosphere of lies, post-truths, and alternative facts.

We have previously had little reason to think that humanity was about to have its dinosaur moment; we could be confident of surviving for millennia. It now seems that humanity's future might be a matter of decades given the variety of existential threats we face, from climate change and asteroids to robots and AI. We are not going to save ourselves driven by faith, belief, hopes, prayers, and wishes in an atmosphere of science deniers. What is required is an investment in a renewed and re-energized secular worldview, guided by the sociological imagination and opposed to conventional reasoning and action.

Sal Restivo taught sociology at universities in the U.S., UK, Europe, Brazil, and China for 50 years. He is a former President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. His recent publications include The Social Brain (Lexington Books, 2023) and Inventions in Sociology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).