Soul man

Is science moving too fast? Does it require tighter controls? Such questions send waves of panic through many scientists, but have become a rallying call for a large and diverse group from anti-capitalist activists to Prince Charles. They have an ideological guru in Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, editor of Resurgence magazine and founder of Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon. Kumar believes that certain areas of study should be off-limits, but he is not “anti-science”. The problem, he told Michael Bond, is that scientists have ceded too much control over what happens to their work to business and industry.…