Yuval Noah Harari on Truth, Power, and Society – Revealing Insights!

Truth was never the highest priority of human society. It was the highest priority of some individuals, but never of society as a whole — because society as a whole does not function on the basis of truth. If you take two of the most powerful institutions of humankind — science and the scientific community, and religion and churches — neither of them has truth as their chief value. For individuals, yes. But as institutions, no.

The chief value of science is power. The chief value of religion is order — organization. Religion is all about maintaining order in society, and science is mainly about gaining power. They use truth to some extent, on the way to achieving power or order — but it’s not their ultimate aim.

Host Dan Ariely: Power? What do you mean by power?

Science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power to control the world — to control diseases, the human body, the environment, rivers, animals, and forests. When you apply for a research grant, it often comes down to money. If you’re a freelance scientist, you can just explore the truth. Fine. But within an institution — a university — you need funding.

So you submit a grant proposal, and you don’t convince the authority of the truth. You have to convince them that what you’re doing will make us more powerful — that it will help us produce a new weapon, grow more food, or gain control over a previously uncontrollable epidemic. That’s what gets the money.

Of course, it also needs to be somewhat true — if it doesn’t work, nobody wants it. Medicine is about controlling disease. Engineering is about building dams to stop rivers from flowing.

Host Dan Ariely: The language of control can sound a bit negative — like a psychosis, or something unpleasant. Couldn’t we say that science wants to improve the human condition? That we want to understand and make things better — which sounds more positive than just control?

It’s not a contradiction — it’s a matter of framing. If you look at hundreds of years of scientific progress, not in all cases, but in many, the basic idea was: in order to improve the human condition, we need to control something.

It’s not like, “Let’s all do yoga and that will improve the human condition.” It’s more like, “How do we build a dam? How do we cut down a forest? How do we produce a new kind of antibiotic?” Things like that. Yes, there are exceptions, but looking at the big picture — 500 years of modern science — I think it was much more about gaining control than about anything else, when it comes to improving the human condition.

The first breakthrough scientific discipline that launched the scientific revolution, in my view, was geography. All these sailors and explorers leaving Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, exploring the world and mapping it — that was the first big scientific project: to map the world.

People often mention astronomy — Copernicus, Galileo — but that was a side issue. The real focus was geography and exploration. That’s where the big money went. And the reason was clear: the kings of Spain, Portugal, France, and the bankers of Genoa and Venice understood — correctly — that mapping the world was the first step toward conquering it.

This proved that science is a worthwhile investment. Astronomy — is the sun in the center, or the earth? — who cares? How do you make money from that? How do you conquer territories with that? But geography — the king of France saw that the king of Spain gave money to Columbus and Magellan, and now he has gold from Mexico. I want that too.

So the first successful project of modern science was the mapping of the world. And it was obvious to everyone: it wasn’t driven by curiosity — it was driven by the desire to control and to conquer.

We want to conquer.