Science as metaphor

In further pop-culture crossover news, I was pleased to see this paragraph in John Keane’s review of Alan Ryan’s “On Politics” in this weekend’s Financial Times:

Ryan sees this period [the 1940s] as the point of triumph of liberal democracy against its Fascist and Stalinist opponents. Closer attention shows this decade was instead a moment of what physicists call dark energy: the universe of meaning of democracy underwent a dramatic expansion, in defiance of the cosmic gravity of contemporary events. The ideal of monitory democracy was born.

Not a bad metaphor. Nice to see that the author, a professor of Politics from Sydney, is paying attention to the stuff that really matters.