Cause and effect ...

... Freedom of Inquiry. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The only societies in which true science has ever thrived, [Ferris] argues, are those established on the principles of classical liberalism. Where government is limited, science can flourish because it is only under such conditions that free inquiry, on which science depends, is protected. Liberal democracies are also, in an important regard, scientific themselves. There is a provisional aspect to their operations, which are determined not by ideology, but by the messy, often frustrating, trial-and-error ordeal of representative elections.