LBG Guest Lecture: Truth, Science, and Democracy: What Can We Learn from a Theory of Argument?

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Rarely have democracy and the rule of law faced as much pressure as they do today. At the heart of this crisis lies a battle over truth itself — a politics of opportunistic alternative facts that has drifted far from any claim to evidence-based reasoning. As the systematic pursuit of truth, science and research have a key role to play in response.

It is against this backdrop that the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft and three Ludwig Boltzmann Institutes for Human Rights, for the Study of War's Consequences, and for Digital History — united under the initiative Science, Truth and Democracy — invite you to this lecture.

What if the real threat to democracy isn't distant elites or foreign powers — but how we argue?

In this lecture, Harvard Law Professor Scott Brewer brings his Logocratic Method to bear on three things whose health determines whether a society can govern itself: truth, science, and democracy. Not as abstract ideals — but as practices, institutions, and arguments that can be made well or poorly, and that can be taught.

This lecture will be delivered in English.