Free speech and progress

Gary Duncan has a good liberal article in The Times this morning:

Freedom of expression has been, and remains, the seedbed from which Western economic, social and scientific advancement has flourished. It has been the catalyst for the prosperity that we all enjoy. In earlier times, too, swaths of the history of economic and technological progress are, in fact, a story of heretical rebellion against dogmatic orthodoxy, and thus a testimony to the power of free expression.

Read it too for the sad story of Thomas Aikenhead, the Scottish theology student executed for blasphemy in 1696.