From vaccines to climate change, skeptics ask: why does some intellectual elite get to tell us what to think? We can best understand the frustrating dilemma of scientific authority by looking back to a time when modern science emerged alongside modern views on political authority.

When we disagree, we should try to work out the truth. For that we have debate. But the meaning of debate is also debatable, and this lecture arranges just such a clash of minds across time and space, between the 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill and the classical Buddhist scholar Nāgārjuna.