Rushing students through university and fixating on science is not the way forward | David Cannadine

It is to our detriment that the political focus on technology sees science and society as separate or even as being opposed. We need joined-up thinking

" David Cannadine is president of the British Academy

The refrain of the past few years has surely been that we live in uncertain times. And hackneyed as that mantra might now be, the evidence is all around us - institutions are distrusted and derided, expertise is mocked and scorned, xenophobia and populism are on the march.

When human affairs seem more than usually baffling and bewildering, it is tempting to suppose that there may be simple solutions to complex problems - and in a government that risks at any moment being undone from the inside, we can see how widely this attitude has taken hold. As with Harold Wilson in the 1960s, so again today, the answer to the challenges we face is thought to be found in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.