I stumbled across this post from 2022 by accident, but feel like it is a good time to repost it. It sparks recall of one of the histories’s great thinkers, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) G.K. slaughtered Clarence Darrow in an Oxford debate over the existence of God—Darrow took the negative position, naturally, an assertion that he had won debates maintaining many times. After the debacle, Darrow commented, in essence, “My hat’s off to him. He was better prepared and won fair and square.” He was thinking, I believe, “Holy cats! This guy is smarter than me!” Chesterton, sadly, is mostly known today by Americans because of the PBS series dramatizing his “Father Brown” mysteries, stories Chesterton published as a lark. He was much more than second-rate Arthur Conan Doyle.
I also am moved to repost this because it was the sole guest post offered by my late wife, best friend, business partner and inspiration, Grace Bowen Marshall, who suddenly perished this month in 2024. She occasionally commented here, but her real love was literature, especially British literature. In her introduction she wrote in part,
“The first chapter of his 1910 book “What’s Wrong With The World” was a ‘bright-light’ experience for me. Though hopelessly outdated in some 21st century factual respects, it is considered to be one of his more interesting works because Chesterton examines the human thought process and how it affects the outcomes of different kinds of problems, reminiscent of the “observer effect.” G.K. was, in 1910, much more trusting of science and medicine than we are now, e.g., and did not address 21st century thought-process issues like the scientists’ tendency to do something simply because they can without considering if they should. Here is an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton’s “What’s Wrong With The World.”
Ethics Alarms 