It is the business of the future to be dangerous and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

Whitehead frames “the future” as inherently risky: what lies ahead will unsettle habits, institutions, and settled knowledge. In that sense, danger is not an accident but the future’s “business”—its work is to disrupt the present. Science, for Whitehead, is therefore not merely a storehouse of facts; it is a disciplined way of thinking that trains societies to meet novelty, uncertainty, and responsibility. The “merit” of science is practical and moral as well as intellectual: it equips human beings with methods (critical inquiry, experiment, revision) suited to confronting new conditions and the duties they impose. The line also hints at ambivalence—science empowers, but the empowered future may be perilous.