Gallio : or, The tyranny of science

Sullivan wrote this audacious little book in 1925, when science seemed poised to explain everything about human experience. His argument remains radical: that science, for all its genuine power, cannot capture what makes life worth living. The book is a passionate, intellectually serious defense of art, moral intuition, and spiritual experience against the expanding empire of scientific reductionism. Sullivan contends that treating science as the sole arbiter of truth empties existence of purpose and wonder. This is not anti-science polemic; it is a careful argument for preserving humanistic values in an increasingly technocratic age. Though nearly a century old, Gallio speaks directly to our current moment, when algorithms and data have begun to claim the authority that science once held exclusively. For anyone who has felt the unease of being reduced to statistics, who suspects there is more to reality than measurement can reach, this essay offers philosophical nourishment and a bracing sense that the fight for human meaning is ongoing.