When the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died on October 24, 1601, seven years before the invention of the telescope, it was not the end of his contribution to astronomy. Rather, his death opened the door for his student Johannes Kepler to leverage his work to make some of the most crucial discoveries in the history of science.

Brahe led a fascinating life. Kidnapped by his wealthy aunt and uncle to be raised as their own at the age of two, he enjoyed the connections of aristocracy as a young man, including access to the Danish royal court.^[1] This helped him secure patronage to work as a mathematician and astronomer, a career he switched to from law after he was captivated by the 1560 solar eclipse and how precisely it had been forecast. He was fiercely dedicated to and defensive of his work, even losing a portion of his nose in a duel over a mathematical disagreement.^[2] He longed to produce more accurate predictions of astrologically significant celestial conjunctions (when two or more planets align as viewed from Earth); his interest in the subject was sparked when the established astronomical tables of his day did not accurately predict an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn.^[3] To this end, he became obsessive about the accuracy of his astronomical measurements and intensely protective of his data.

Brahe’s big break came in 1572 when, while walking at night, he suddenly noticed what looked like a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. The appearance of a new star in the night sky in a time when the heavens were regarded as a fixed, perfect realm was shocking, and Brahe only believed his eyes when other astronomers confirmed his discovery. He named it Stella Nova (New Star), although today we know that it was not a “new star” but rather an old one exploding at the end of its life. In modern astronomy, it is known as Tycho’s Supernova.

Brahe’s discovery and subsequent observation of this object not only launched him to celebrity status but also upended his perception of the cosmos. At the time, the Ancient Greek model of the Earth as sitting at the center of a number of concentric, transparent spheres was still dominant, and accordingly, Brahe assumed that his “new star”—which was changing in brightness, not glowing consistently like a typical star—was an atmospheric phenomenon inside the spheres. But over time he observed that its position did not change night to night like nearby objects such as the Moon and planets (which were believed to occupy the inner spheres) but remained fixed like the stars. Likewise, it did not move like other objects then assumed to be atmospheric phenomena, such as comets. This suggested that it was more distant than any of those objects. Although Stella Nova ceased to be visible after eight months, Brahe shortly after had the chance to observe comets, which he calculated made smaller night-to-night movements than the Moon, indicating greater distance. These findings led him to publish a meticulously researched book, De Nova Stella, arguing that the idea that the outer spheres are fixed and unchanging was false and that the heavens were a dynamically changing environment. This was a culturally significant claim, challenging the dominant Christian orthodoxy that the heavens were a perfect, unchanging realm.

Brahe’s newfound fame led him to receive numerous offers of scientific positions around Europe, but King Frederich II of Denmark convinced him to stay in the country by offering to build him a private island retreat with a custom-built observatory. For thirteen years, Brahe worked tirelessly at his new facility and designed new instruments to aid in his observations, including sextants and even a quadrant the size of a house. His measurements of the positions of celestial objects were accurate to within two arc-minutes at a time when six arc-minutes was the typical standard, and some of his measurements have been determined to be as accurate as one-half an arc-minute. (An arc-minute is one sixtieth of one of the 180 degrees from horizon to horizon.) He also meticulously tracked each object’s position throughout its orbit, rather than only at key points as was typical at the time.^[4]

With these measurements, he designed a new model of the heavens. Brahe rejected Nicolaus Copernicus’s then-recent and highly controversial heliocentric model that placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the cosmos (contrary to Christian belief that the Earth was the center of God’s creation). But Brahe’s detailed observations could not fit the traditional geocentric model, so he created one that attempted to explain his observations while keeping Earth at the center. It featured the Sun orbiting the Earth while all the other planets orbit the Sun in perfectly circular orbits, as in Copernicus’s model.^[5] The planets exhibited irregularities in their movements that neither the heliocentric nor geocentric models could account for, but Brahe continued with Aristotle’s assumption that all celestial motion occurred in perfect circles and so designed his model to have the planets tightly orbiting a point that, in turn, orbited the sun. This partially explained these irregularities.^[6]

When King Frederich II died in 1588, his son Christian IV took over. The new king withdrew the financial and practical support Brahe had enjoyed, so the astronomer accepted an invitation to work for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, for whom he later became imperial astronomer and astrologer. It was here that Brahe met Kepler, a student from a poor background whom Brahe regarded as little more than an assistant. Kepler had grander ambitions, and the two often clashed as Kepler tried to gain access to Brahe’s detailed astronomical observations to advance his own theories, which supported the Copernican heliocentric model rather than Brahe’s heliocentric-geocentric hybrid. The two eventually settled on Kepler focusing on the unanswered question of why Mars periodically reversed direction in the sky for short periods, a motion that neither Copernicus’s nor Brahe’s models could explain. But Brahe still denied Kepler access to his wealth of observations of unparalleled accuracy.^[7]

In 1601, however, Brahe unexpectedly died of a bladder infection. (Claims that Kepler may have poisoned him based on the presence of mercury in his remains have since been debunked.) Kepler, the most prominent of Brahe’s associates who had remained close to him by that point, took over his imperial role, and the emperor purchased all of Brahe’s equipment and materials from his family. This finally gave Kepler access to Brahe’s measurements, which he spent the next several years employing in his effort to modify the Copernican model to explain the irregularities of planetary motion that Brahe had captured in exquisite detail.^[8]

These data were pivotal in Kepler’s discovery of the true reason for Mars’s apparent retrograde motion: Mars’s orbit is not a perfect circle—as Brahe, Copernicus, and virtually everyone since Aristotle had assumed—but rather, an elongated ellipse. This discovery enabled Kepler to formulate two propositions that became, after his lifetime, known as the first two of Kepler’s Three Laws.

1. All planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun.

2. If we draw straight lines between a planet and the Sun at two points along its orbit based on how far the planet travels in a given period of time, the area between the two lines will be the same for that time interval at any point along its orbit.

Although Kepler had disproved the idea that celestial bodies move in perfect circles, he had discovered a new kind of perfection in their elliptical orbits: mathematical harmony. No matter how elliptical a planet’s orbit may be, the planet’s speed changes as it traverses the flatter and steeper sides of the orbit in perfect proportion to the angle of its travel.

Kepler, who had once aspired to be a theologian and spent much of his life looking for integrations between different areas of physics and geometry that would point to an overall “harmony” of creation, admired the beauty of this balance of space and motion. Kepler made extensive use of Galileo’s improved version of the telescope (originally invented by Hans Lippershey in 1609). Kepler corresponded with Galileo and made his own observations of Jupiter that supported the latter’s claims that four large objects (moons) were orbiting the planet. This was a shocking claim for many; both men were arguing not only that the Sun—not the Earth—was the center of the cosmos but also that other celestial bodies might also be the centers of other systems of worlds. Galileo would be forced by the Catholic Church to recant his claims, but Kepler, residing in Austria, was freer to develop them. Galileo thanked Kepler for supporting his discoveries, writing to him, “I thank you because you were the first, and almost the only one, to give complete credence to my assertions.”^[9]

Kepler continued looking for signs of mathematical proportionality in his observations of the planets, eventually developing what would become known as his third law (the idea of referring to such principles as “laws” was popularized later by Isaac Newton). It states that the square of each planet’s period of revolution around the Sun is directly proportional to the cube of its average distance from the Sun. With his three laws, Kepler had replaced oversimplified circular models of the solar system with a beautiful harmony of mathematical proportions perfectly matching Brahe’s precise observations. The laws Kepler had discovered were the crucial building blocks for identifying the principles of motion that made possible such a beautiful astral dance, which Kepler likened to silent music, noting its similarity to the proportional relationships between harmonizing notes.

Kepler’s ability to further develop his astronomical principles was hampered by numerous personal problems, including his wife’s severe illness, a less favorable relationship with Rudolf II’s successor, Mattias, and accusations of witchcraft made against his mother. He also diverted much of his attention to studies of other subjects, including astrology and alchemy (which had both been interests of Brahe’s as well).

It would be left to Isaac Newton to derive from Kepler’s Laws the laws that govern the motion of bodies in space and thereby on Earth as well. Newton’s first law—that an object at rest remains at rest and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force—is fundamental to understanding the motion of objects in space, where the lack of air resistance permits objects to continue moving on a given trajectory indefinitely. Newton realized that the Sun was exerting a force on the planets that pulled their naturally straight trajectories into elliptical orbits; the relationship between their speed and trajectories that Kepler had identified was crucial to this discovery.

Newton formulated three laws, the other two concerning how forces (such as the Sun’s gravity) operate on objects to affect their motion. When Newton said that “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” Kepler and Brahe were two of the giants who gave Newton the foundation upon which to make his discoveries—discoveries that were instrumental in paving the way for the development of mechanical engineering and steam power.^[10]

Tycho Brahe’s industrious and detailed observation of the planets, together with Johannes Kepler’s use of those observations to formulate his laws of planetary motion, transformed our understanding of Earth’s place in the universe. Moreover, they provided the building blocks for discovering the fundamental laws of physics and thereby set the stage for the earth-shattering innovations of the Industrial Revolution.

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

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^[1] Don Nardo, Tycho Brahe: Pioneer of Astronomy (Minneapolis: Compass Point, 2008), 39.

^[2] Emily Staniforth and Nola Taylor Tillman, “Tycho Brahe: Colorful Life, Accomplishments and Bizarre Death,” Space.com, June 21, 2023, https://www.space.com/19623-tycho-brahe-biography.html.

^[3] Leah Poffenberger, “November 11, 1572: Tycho Brahe Spots a Supernova,” APS, November 11, 2019, https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2019/11/tycho-brahe-spots-supernova.

^[4] The Galileo Project, “Tycho Brahe (1546–1601),” Rice University, https://galileo.library.rice.edu/sci/brahe.html (accessed October 21, 2025).

^[5] Technically, in both Copernicus’s and Brahe’s models, the planets orbit an empty point called the “mean sun” that the Sun also orbits closely. This wasn’t far from the truth, as the Sun does revolve around a gravitational barycenter for the whole solar system, although this is deep inside the Sun’s interior owing to the Sun’s vastly larger mass than the rest of the solar system combined.

^[6] “Kepler’s New Astronomy: Tycho Brahe’s Hypothesis,” Promethean Updates, February 20, 2016,

^[7] Staniforth and Taylor Tillman, “Tycho Brahe: Colorful Life, Accomplishments and Bizarre Death.”

^[8] “Johannes Kepler,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/Keplers-laws-of-planetary-motion (accessed October 21, 2025).

^[9] “Johannes Kepler,” Britannica.

^[10] “Newton’s Laws of Motion,” NASA, https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/newtons-laws-of-motion (accessed October 21, 2025).

The dream of humanity colonizing the solar system just got a whole lot closer to reality.

On August 26, 2025, SpaceX conducted the tenth test flight of its new spacecraft, Starship.^[1] On its own, Starship is by far the largest manned spacecraft ever built, with an interior volume almost four times greater than NASA’s Space Shuttle (which, along with its near-identical Soviet copy, was many times larger than any other manned spacecraft). When joined to its “Super Heavy” booster, Starship is the largest rocket ever launched. The enormous power of the Starship/Super Heavy combination makes Starship capable of carrying humans directly to the Moon and Mars . . . if it can prove itself in testing.

But recent test flights have not gone as planned. Flights Seven, Eight, and Nine all ended in the ship being destroyed before the end of the mission. SpaceX is well known for its policy of embracing failure as a means of perfecting technology, intentionally flying high-risk test flights to discover faults rather than spending extra years on preflight research and modeling. This has enabled the company to rapidly develop the now highly reliable Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft. But this time many were asking if the Starship program—or even SpaceX itself—could survive a fourth setback.^[2]

Fortunately, Flight Ten was an outstanding success, demonstrating many of the key capabilities that make Starship a turning point in the history of human spaceflight:

1. Full Reusability

Both of Starship’s major components—the ship itself and the Super Heavy booster—are designed to return safely to Earth for future reuse. This reusability, combined with the simplicity of only having two major components rather than several separate rocket stages and modules, will make Starship far more cost-efficient than other spacecraft. SpaceX is aiming for launch costs as low as $10 million per launch, a far cry from the $100 million cost of launching the European Space Agency’s new Ariane 6 rocket or the mindboggling $2.5 billion projected cost of launching NASA’s in-development “Space Launch System.”^[3]

Flight Ten proved that both the Super Heavy booster and Starship itself can guide themselves to a safe splashdown in a specific area of ocean. The booster did so with one engine intentionally disabled, an example of how SpaceX is testing Starship’s ability to operate in high-stress situations, not merely under normal flight circumstances.

2. Engine Reignition

One of the key objectives of Flight Ten was reigniting Starship’s engines in space mid-flight. This is important because a key part of Starship’s ability to fly directly from Earth to the Moon and Mars is its ability to restart its engines in orbit after refueling. The refueling process itself will be a key element of future test flights, but Starship’s ability to reignite its engines in the vacuum of space proves that it is possible for a single manned vehicle to launch into Earth orbit and then start a new flight from there to destinations beyond Earth.

3. Controlled Reentry

Starship has an utterly different design from any previous manned spacecraft. Aside from NASA’s Space Shuttle, which was essentially a delta-wing airplane mounted on a rocket, all other manned orbital spacecraft have been small capsules that sit on top of large multistage rockets. Starship, however, is a much larger vehicle, shaped like a large bullet with four flaps protruding like small wings, two at the front and two at the back. This innovative design gives it not only the power of a large rocket during launch and deep-space flight, with large engines and a large internal capacity for cargo or passengers, but also a degree of controllability during atmospheric reentry—unlike capsule spacecraft, which fly ballistically through the atmosphere. (The Space Shuttle was also somewhat controllable during reentry, but it had small engines and no fuel tanks, relying on an external fuel tank to reach low Earth orbit and being unable to travel further into space or use its engines during landing.)

Flight Ten proved that Starship’s flaps can guide the ship during harsh reentry conditions—SpaceX intentionally subjected it to a hotter more complex reentry course than a normal flight would require—and that it can use its engines during descent to slow down and maneuver. The ship successfully altered its orientation and heading several times, and although it sustained some damage during reentry, it remained intact and fully controllable all the way to the ocean surface.

4. Large-Scale Payload Deployment

Flight Ten’s other major breakthrough was the successful deployment of eight dummy satellites in space. This marked Starship’s first successful payload deployment, a key demonstration of its ability to deliver satellites into orbit. Starship’s vast cargo capacity means that it can, in theory, deploy up to sixty Starlink satellites in a single flight. This huge carrying capacity will contribute greatly to the ship’s economic viability, with numerous customers being able to share a single flight instead of each requiring a separate launch.

***

All of Flight Ten’s breakthroughs are a testament to the effectiveness of SpaceX’s strategy of embracing failure, to its innovative approach to spacecraft design, and to Elon Musk’s vision for a human future in space. In fewer than twenty years since it became the first private company to launch a rocket into space, SpaceX has designed and proven a manned spacecraft with capabilities that were sheer science fiction only a few years ago.

SpaceX is already planning missions to send unmanned Starships to the Moon and Mars—within the next two years. Whether it will meet this aggressive time line remains to be seen, but the very fact that the people at SpaceX think in terms of how quickly they can achieve the next big feat, in contrast to NASA’s “no earlier than” approach to mission planning, speaks volumes about the company’s can-do attitude and pro-growth philosophy.

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] Mike Wall, “SpaceX's Giant Starship Mars Rocket Nails Critical 10th Test Flight in Stunning Comeback,” Space.com, August 26, 2025, https://www.space.com/space-exploration/private-spaceflight/spacex-launches-starship-flight-10-critical-test-flight-video.

^[2] “Elon Musk’s Starship Fails Again: Can His Mars Dream Survive Another Setback?,” First Post, May 28, 2025, https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/elon-musk-starship-failure-mars-plans-risk-spacex-nasa-13892360.html.

^[3] Jon Martindale, “SpaceX Starship Flight 10 Delayed, Now Targeting Aug. 25,” ExtremeTech, August 25, 2025, https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/spacex-starship-flight-10-delayed-now-targeting-aug-25#:~:text=But%20with%20the%20potential%20ability,to%20launch%20in%20the%20future; Jay Derr, “NASA Should Consider Switching to SpaceX Starship for Future Missions,” Reason Foundation, November 12, 2024, https://reason.org/commentary/nasa-should-consider-switching-to-spacex-starship-for-future-missions/#:~:text=Since%20its%20inception%20in%202011,to%20cost%20around%20%242%20billion.

What does it truly mean to be an advocate for progress?

Since the late 19th century, the term “Progressivism” has been associated with a specific political philosophy. This philosophy argues for a politically powerful government with vast reach—one tasked not with protecting individual rights but rather, with using its coercive power to violate them in order to “manage” the economy in the supposed interests of the majority, undo alleged historic injustices, and achieve some kind of egalitarian, utopian society.^[1] In recent decades, this concept of Progressivism has grown to include government action to “protect” the environment from human activity.

The word “progress,” in its basic sense, means advancement toward any given goal (e.g., progress on your daily step goals or progress on a construction project). In this sense, the term is morally neutral—you can progress toward a goal that is good for human life (such as these examples) or bad for human life (such as progress in planning a bank robbery). But in common usage today, the word “progress” has a positive connotation, which is problematic if we speak of progress as such as a good thing. The modern “Progressive” movement uses the term in this way, smuggling its goal of creating an egalitarian, centrally planned, “zero-environmental-impact” society under the positive-sounding title of progress.

So, what is the basic standard by which progress can be considered positive? Progress is morally positive when it describes advancement toward human beings being better able to live and flourish. Many of the Progressive movement’s historic goals were somewhat in this direction. For example, many Western “Progressives” sought to achieve improved legal protections for women in a time when they did not enjoy equal recognition of rights. Many also claimed to want higher living standards for poor or disadvantaged people.

But the Progressive agenda of central planning and government control is not a valid or proper means to those ends. It stifles human freedom and, in so doing, destroys people’s ability to pursue values, create wealth, and achieve meaning.

But some people do advance a proper conception of progress, at least in general terms—people who advocate true human flourishing in technology, industry, and all other fields of human endeavor. These are the people who deserve recognition as the true progressives. The time has come to reclaim the term “progressive” for the real heroes of human progress, a few of whom I will celebrate.

Peter Diamandis and the X-Prize Foundation

I first became aware of the X-Prize Foundation in 2004 when a little-known aviation firm called Scaled Composites became the first private company to put a human being into space. It won the Ansari X-Prize, a $10 million reward for the first private company to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

The X-Prize was the brainchild of Peter Diamandis, who sought to re-create the pioneering spirit of the early days of aviation. In the 1920s, entrepreneur Raymond Orteig had offered a prize for the first aviator to fly from New York to Paris, spurring Charles Lindbergh to achieve that feat in 1927. Diamandis realized that such prizes could inspire all manner of world-changing innovations. He founded the X-Prize Foundation, which brings together wealthy people who want to see a particular technological breakthrough happen and sets up prizes that businesses then compete to win.

Since the Ansari X-Prize (which was mainly funded by Anousheh and Amir Ansari), the foundation has offered prizes for fuel-efficient cars, oil cleanup, Moon exploration missions, medical diagnosis tools, women’s safety devices, clean water extraction, seafloor mapping, literacy tools, and most recently, avatar robots to enable people to virtually travel and directly interact with people and environments around the world and beyond.

The Thinkers: Stephen Pinker, Johan Norberg, Robert Zubrin, and J. Storrs Hall

Thousands of thinkers write and speak about how technology and innovation can improve human life, but I want to highlight a few who I’ve found most inspiring and effective in spreading this vital message:

Stephen Pinker: Perhaps the best-known advocate of science and technology, Pinker is the author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, an Amazon best seller that pushes against the growing tide of pessimism about humanity’s future. Pinker’s optimism about the human ability to improve our lives, discover the truth about reality, and build a better future is infectious. “We will never have a perfect world,” he admits, “but it’s not overly romantic or naive to work towards a better one.” Fostering optimism is crucial if we are to continue inspiring the innovators and entrepreneurs of the future. A qualified linguist and psychologist, Pinker has also written extensively on language, human thought, and what he believes is the demonstrable trend in recent human history away from war and toward peace. He is also a staunch advocate of intellectual freedom, arguing that “morality and conformity are the opposite of each other.”

Johan Norberg: Like so many people today, Norberg was once a pessimist about the future of human civilization. “When I was around fifteen,” he recounts, “I was very unhappy about modern, industrial civilization. I looked upon highways, cars, trucks, and factories as blights on the landscape. I thought the hustle, bustle, and stress of consumerism and modernity were unnatural and unhealthy.”^[2] He looked back romantically on the “good old days” of preindustrial life . . . until he began to study that time seriously. The more he studied, the more he realized how much highways, cars, trucks, and factories have radically improved human life. Since then, he has become one of the most inspiring advocates of technology and freedom, writing such powerful books as In Defense of Global Capitalism (2001), Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016), and The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World (2023).

Robert Zubrin: The founder of the Mars Society, Zubrin is perhaps the most passionate advocate of the exploration and colonization of Mars that I know of. He has been at it since the 1980s, regularly popping up in documentaries and news items to explain the many benefits to human life that going to Mars will unlock. These aren’t limited to the scientific and material benefits of colonizing a new world—he has also overseen competitions to design future Mars city-states to highlight how colonizing the “Red Planet” could open the door to social and political innovation.^[3] More broadly, he advocates for industrial development, especially nuclear power, and for humans to increase rather than decrease our use of energy to improve our lives. “A main threat to human existence today,” he argues, “is the idea that resources are limited—that there’s not enough for everyone, and we need to take what’s there for ourselves. But if we can show that it is possible to grow those resources by opening up space to human settlement and development, then it becomes clear that there’s no reason to kill each other fighting over provinces when, working together, we can open up planets.”^[4] Zubrin has also been an outspoken critic of NASA’s approach to space exploration, shining a light on the government-funded agency’s inefficiency and failure to achieve a lasting human presence beyond low Earth orbit—something he discusses in my 2021 interview with him.

J. Storrs Hall: If you only ever read one book about technology and innovation, I recommend Where’s My Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall. Hall is a computer scientist who one day wondered why other fields of technology, especially aviation, haven’t progressed the way computing technology has in the past several decades. To answer that question, he became an expert on the aviation industry, even becoming a licensed light aircraft pilot, and did a deep dive into numerous other fields, including power generation and medicine. Where’s My Flying Car? presents his detailed findings as to why innovation outside of computing (and the progress computing has made possible in other fields) has slowed to a crawl since the 1970s.

The Think Tanks: We Are Innovation, Free Cities Foundation, and HumanProgress.org

In addition to individual personalities, several organizations are doing valuable research and advocacy toward changing the public perception of technology and encouraging more innovation. Here are a few of the most effective I’ve encountered:

We Are Innovation: This organization describes itself as “a dynamic network of individuals and institutions who deeply believe in innovation’s power to drive progress and solve the world’s most pressing problems.”^[5] It produces films, research papers, and social media content about all manner of new approaches to perennial issues from progressing nuclear power to overcoming smoking addiction. It also partners with and support organizations promoting policy changes to make innovation and entrepreneurship easier.

Free Cities Foundation: Innovation depends on freedom—intellectual and material—something desperately lacking in most countries today. The Free Cities Foundation has a novel solution: Create new places where the freedom exists for innovation to flourish. Building on research into the various “special economic zones” established around the world since the 1980s, it advocates for the establishment and growth of new “free cities” and publishes research into what form these can take and the life-enhancing ideas and inventions that can and do come from them.

Human Progress: Established by the CATO Institute, Human Progress pulls together evidence from researchers and organizations across the world to demonstrate how innovation and technology are already hugely enhancing human life and could do so on a much greater scale in a freer society. All too often, the truth about our improving world and quality of life gets buried under a pervasive message of pessimism, and so Human Progress’s work in bringing that information to light and presenting it in an easy-to-understand visual form is vital for turning public opinion back in favor of progress.

***

These are just a few of the true advocates for progress who deserve celebrating. If you know of others, please write a letter to the editor—we would love to highlight more of these heroes in any way we can. Otherwise, I highly recommend checking out the books, articles, and talks published by all the people and organizations I’ve mentioned here. Maybe they’ll inspire you to create something new.

This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of The Objective Standard.

^[1] “Progressivism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/progressivism.

^[2] Johan Norberg, “My Conversion from Anti-Industrialist to Lover of Human Progress,” The Objective Standard 19, no. 3 (Fall 2024), https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/p/my-conversion-from-anti-industrialist-to-a-lover-of-human-progress.

^[3] Frank Crossman, ed., Mars City States: New Societies for a New World (Lakewood, CO: Polaris Publishing, 2021).

^[4] “Thomas Walker-Werth, ”How Going to Space Can Enhance Human Flourishing, with Dr. Robert Zubrin,” The Objective Standard 17, no. 2 (Summer 2022), https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/p/how-going-to-space-can-enhance-human-flourishing-with-dr-robert-zubrin.

^[5] “Our Story,” We Are Innovation, https://www.weareinnovation.global/our-story.

Author’s note: This article is adapted from a talk given at Objective Standard Institute’s Innovation Celebration 2023 conference.

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

By Frans de Waal

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

352 pp. $16.95 (paperback).

As the adoring owner of two mutts, I’m often impressed by their apparent intelligence. They seem perfectly capable of telling me when they want to eat, or go potty, or play. And although neither is a match for Chaser, the b…

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Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks

by Ben Goldacre

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010.

304 pp. $13.86 (paperback).

In order to lead healthy and productive lives, we have to make all manner of health-related decisions. But often we are buried under an avalanche of claims—many of which contradict one another. In Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks,…

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Have you ever stopped to think about what your life would be like without Google? No, it would not exactly be nasty, brutish, and short for lack of a search engine, turn-by-turn directions, or a collaboration-enabling document creator. But life would be far less easy, far less productive, far less good—at least, mine would.

Although Google processes the …

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In January 2015, the California Department of Public Health received reports of several suspected cases of measles in California and Utah. The connecting links in these, and soon to be many other cases, were visits to Disneyland Resorts in Anaheim.1 By mid-April, when new infections had ceased, 131 measles cases in California were linked to the Disneylan…

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Just in time for “Earth Day,” Alex Epstein explains in the video below why fossil fuels are the key to solving our biggest environmental challenges, including:

• Purifying our water

• Keeping our air clean

• Making our cities and homes more sanitary

• Keeping us safe from potential catastrophic climate change

This is a great video to share with anyone and everyone y…

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