It is plausibly argued that, just as artistic and literary achievements flourish in a society held together by a good deal of political and religious repression, so the search for truth is effectively prosecuted in conditions where individual scientists feel as if they have no choice about the theories they accept; the totalitarian scientific community is an efficient device for, so to speak, launching the intellectual energies of individual scientists against the natural world.

Alan Ryan, J. S. Mill, London, 1974, p. 138