How can you or your society decide ethically which knowledge should or should not be pursued?

How can you or your society decide ethically which knowledge should or should not be pursued?

An early advocate of progressive scientific empiricism, Francis Bacon, insisted that ‘Knowledge itself is power’. It is a different kind of power to merely material. Naturally enough, it is not sensible to use a pen to defend oneself against a Kalashnikov, but the ideas and the passions which inform the pursuit of knowledge will vary much further and eventually will have much greater influence. Knowledge is the province of everybody capable to search for it. Alvin Toffler had said that knowledge is revolutionary in that it can be ‘grasped by the poor and the weak’ as well as the strong and the rich. Of course, there are qualifications, but in general the view is sound. The attempt to control knowledge remains the responsibility of authoritarian organizations. The things that we know, the education that we receive, the freedom in which we are given to think, and the liberty to ...