THE ANGLOSPHERIC ADVANTAGE:

Sceptics still want to learn about things. The word 'sceptic' comes from the Greek word skepsis, meaning 'enquiry'. Sceptics run experiments, test hypotheses, submit and do peer review, and the like. Sceptics follow the rules and methods of science and scholarship, and they laugh with their scholarly friends at the unfounded pronouncements of populists. But sceptics think that part of being intellectually honest is admitting the limits and flaws of one's knowledge.

Looking back in time, we see that people should have been more sceptical about, say, the risks and rewards of using certain chemicals. In the 1960s, doctors prescribed thalidomide to treat morning sickness, and subsequently discovered that the drug caused birth defects. Americans sprayed more than a billion tons of the insecticide DDT on crops and lawns before the US government banned it in 1972; a recent study has shown that DDT's health effects can persist for generations. In 2009, the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer had to pay a $2.3 billion fine for illegally promoting drugs such as Geodon, an anti-psychotic, and Zyvox, an antibiotic. Scientific consensus and common sense have been mistaken in the past. Sceptics press us to consider the possibility that experts and the majority of the public might be wrong today.

We cannot say that sceptics always favour democracy over other political regimes, yet scepticism has an egalitarian impulse insofar as it withholds from anybody the status of sage or philosopher-king. Democratic societies cultivate a healthy scepticism of political, scientific or cultural verities. Reading Sextus Empiricus today gives us argumentative strategies, and confidence, to resist anybody who claims to speak on behalf of truth or reality.

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