Scientific effectiveness has imposed the critical search for truth as the ultimate criterion in education, with the hope of a harmonious encounter between truth, individual freedom and social justice. But the subtlety of the ethical and social problems posed by science and technology without providing the means to resolve them makes the Socratic ideal explode. It is the revenge of Protagoras and opinion, of the poetic and the rhetorical. Hopefulmonster has published in Italian the two essays by the same author: Tra il cristallo e il fumo, 1987 and A torto e a ragione. Intercritica tra scienza e mito, 1989.