Let's read Richard Price!

I am frequently struck by the applicability of Richard Price's insights to the modern world. Price was born in a Welsh village, the son of the Minister of the Chapel, in 1723. His talents were such that he went on to become not only a Dissenting Minister himself but also an adviser to the Government on finance, a mathematician deeply involved in putting Insurance on a sound footing, a moral philosopher and a nationally known political pamphleteer. Despite being a churchman he was against obscurantism and argued for liberty both politically and for free inquiry and free speech. He was convinced that the truth had nothing to fear from free rational debate and that a man's conscience could not be dictated to by anybody.

Price would be horrified by our sound-bite culture, and by the encouragement that wilful ignorance gets from religion. In his book "Review of the Principal Questions in Morals" first published when he was 35, Price argues in one place from the then recent scientific discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton to make his case. He was a friend of Joseph Priestly, another Dissenting Minister and the discoverer of Oxygen, concurrently with and independently of Lavoisier. It was Price who published the notes of Joshua Bayes, the discoverer of Bayes' Theorem, the foundation of mathematical probability that still underlies Insurance and much else. Bayes too was a Dissenting Minister, although of a different persuasion to Price. But it is typical of Price that the differences of opinion that he had with both Bayes and Priestly did not dim his admiration of their scientific work. For Price, reason and rationality were extremely important. All three of these churchmen were elected members of the Royal Society for their contributions to science. Hard to imagine today, isn't it?

But back to our sound-bite culture in which politicians and celebrities are encouraged to give their opinions on everything under the sun on television. Price was scathing on speaking with neither thought nor knowledge. Price, a man who was never shy to think, and think hard, says, in Chapter 1 of the book mentioned above "There are hardly any subjects so plain, as not to require care and attention to form a competent judgment of them." He continued "What then must we think of those whom we continually see readily delivering their sentiments concerning points they have never considered; and deciding peremptorily, without thought or study, on the most difficult questions? If such are ever right it can only be by chance. They speak and think entirely at random, and therefore deserve no regard." I get the feeling he had a television! He then goes on to make the point that arriving at the truth of any matter is not easy. "The more we know of men, the more we find that they are governed, in forming and maintaining their opinions, by their tempers, by interest, by humour and passion, and a thousand nameless causes and particular turns and casts of mind, which cannot but produce the greatest diversity of sentiments among them and make it impossible for them not to err. There are in truth none who are possessed of that cool and dispassionate temper, that freedom from all wrong byasses (sic), that habit of attention and patience of thought, and, also, that penetration and sagacity of mind, which are proper securities against error. How much then do modesty and diffidence become us? how open ought we be to conviction, and how candid to those of different sentiments?"

The word "candid" was used differently in 1785 (two years before the 3rd edition of Price's "Review") to our use of it. In his ground breaking dictionary published in that year, Dr Johnson gives "Candid … Free from malice; not desirous to find faults; open; ingenuous" and "Candidness … Openness of temper; purity of mind" and he includes for candour "sweetness of temper". So when Price says that we should be "candid to those of different sentiments" he means that we should listen open-mindedly, without rancour and ill-will or ill-humour and give their arguments the weight they are worth and discuss differences reasonably and rationally.

Price's model, forged in the 1750s, is much needed today.