Ophelia Benson
Ophelia Benson is an American author, editor, blogger, and feminist. Benson is the editor of the website Butterflies and Wheels and a columnist and former associate editor of The Philosophers' Magazine. She is also a columnist for Free Inquiry.
Her books and website aim to defend objectivity and scientific truth against what she sees as threats to rational thinking posed by religious fundamentalism, pseudoscience, wishful thinking, postmodernism, relativism, and "the tendency of the political Left to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks". Her website is called Butterflies and Wheels because, according to the website itself, "Mary Midgley borrowed Alexander Pope’s witticism about breaking a butterfly upon a wheel, only she did it wrong."
Her books and website aim to defend objectivity and scientific truth against what she sees as threats to rational thinking posed by religious fundamentalism, pseudoscience, wishful thinking, postmodernism, relativism, and "the tendency of the political Left to subjugate the rational assessment of truth-claims to the demands of a variety of pre-existing political and moral frameworks". Her website is called Butterflies and Wheels because, according to the website itself, "Mary Midgley borrowed Alexander Pope’s witticism about breaking a butterfly upon a wheel, only she did it wrong."
