As I have discussed in several prior posts, some bigger policy problems we have had have had to do with intellectual compartmentalization of specialized, often scientific, knowledge.
Compartmentalization has facilitated the subordination and manipulation of isolated branches of knowledge. Subordination of and manipulation of specialized knowledge has not been an especially 'new' phenomenon in the 20th Century. Simpler mere repression had been a main tool of the Renaissance papacy, Galileo being an especially prominent example.
As David Kaiser mentioned in passing in Politics and War, european monarchs were quick to turn ostensibly anti-crown enlightenment notions to crowns' advantage, re aristocracy, populace, and dynastic rivals.
Other important issues have to do with notions of scientific progress and method.
A connection between science and progress has not been as obvious a connection as one might suppose, particularly in the 16 and 17th Centuries with respect to church doctrine.
Collingwood has an illuminating discussion of Aristotelianism, Platonism and science in Essay On Metaphysics, XXV "Axioms Of Intuition". Also good on the topic, Butterfield, Origins of Modern Science.
This is perhaps enough references to stuff, for one post.
One more note; see also, if he posts it, my note re Professor Kaiser's post Historical Novels etc, and his passage re the end of scientific knowledge, my comment referring to Fukuyama's book The End Of History And The Last Man, and the Whig interpretation of history.
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