The state of contemporary knowing labours under four difficulties: the fragmentation of knowledge, the volume of disordered knowledge, the corrosion of trust and the bombast of modern science.
First, we have in our time experienced a profound sense of the fragmentation of knowledge. Specialisation and expertise have overtaken a sense of knowledge as a unified whole. The university, with its ideal of an integrated understanding of knowledge has become in reality the multi-versity, with competing and overlapping disciplines fighting for scarce funding rather than sharing their learning. At the same time, there is in evidence a rising scepticism in the humanities about the possibility, or even the desirability, of true knowledge of things as they really are. This condition has been brought about by 1) an increasing awareness of the contribution that knowers bring to the process of knowing and 2) the suspicion that the ‘Truth’ has been and is being used as a regime of power. [Foucault]
Second, we have also experienced an exponential growth in the volume of things that are available for the ordinary person to know. However, the organization of knowledge has not become any easier. The sheer mass of information that we can readily access is completely overwhelming - disempowering even. The internet has intensified this feeling many times over. At the beginning of 2008 there were 108 million websites. How can you know anything when there is so much to know? The kind of knowledge that only used to be available to career academics in possession of special access to the dusty backrooms of the British Museum and the Bodleian Library is now a few mouse-clicks away. But being able to know so much doesn’t lead to more satisfactory conditions for knowing; it rather increases the anxiety that knowers may feel. The mass of information is neither integrated, nor ordered.
Third, we have experienced a corrosion of trust in those whom we trust to lead us in the business of knowing. In other words: knowledge is a moral issue. Necessarily, we turn to experts in order to compensate for our anxiety about knowledge. What would we do without them? We rely on them to fix our cars, to give us financial advice, to heal our bodies, to manage our diets, and to tell us that the computer is completely cactus because of the faulty motherboard. I have no way to really check the expert's advice. I can get another opinion, but then it is just a case of expert against expert, and I am no better off. We just have to believe them: which means they have an incredible amount of power over us. And yet, we are less and less certain that we can in fact trust others. The case of climate change is a good example. Is it the case that the climate is changing because of human created environmental damage? Well, many of the experts are agreed that this is the case. I might say 'science says so'; but when I do, I am just saying that the expert scientists are saying this at the moment. I personally have no idea whether it is or not. I am completely unable to evaluate the scientific data for myself - and if I could I wouldn't have time. So I am in the hands of the experts, who will decide government policies and how I should bag my rubbish. But whose interests do experts serve? And why should I trust them? Even though the case that there is indeed a human induced climate change is relatively well-established, a great deal of mistrust prevails.
The rise to prominence of evolutionary psychology potentially corrodes trust in knowledge further. If what we learn and know is driven by what a person’s need to survive and pass on his or her genes, then we can’t be certain that any other person’s claim to knowledge is in fact the case; only that it works to give them some advantage. It is not a novelty to observe that 'knowledge is power' - Sir Francis Bacon wrote it sometime in the seventeenth century; but it is one of those truths that keeps getting truer. Evolutionary psychology explains how that knowledge may merely consist of those claims to ‘truth’ which a person can use to gain power over others.
My fourth point perhaps seems like a contradiction to the others. In the midst of the storm of anxiety about knowing the nature of things, ‘science’ offers itself as a safe harbour of knowledge. In fact, more than this: the more general uncertainty about things expands, the greater the triumphalist claims of science. The claim often made in the material sciences - that there is a total explanation available for all things on offer in the hard sciences not in need of any further supplement from any other discipline - is as bombastic as the scepticism in the humanities is timid. Far from being counter-evidence, the rise of science-as-a-bulwark-of-certainty-against-the-doubters, is evidence of the conditions of fragmentation, disorder and mistrust under which the contemporary knowing subject labours. Like certain types of religious fundamentalism, the increasingly strident insistence of the scientific paradigm as the answer to all questions is a symptom of the very uncertainty it claims to have banished.
22 comments:
Well said! And if I might try to condense what you're saying... Relativism has a strong tendency to dictatorship?
While I appreciate these concerns and share some of them, this seems like an overly pessimistic description of the "current state of knowledge." Just to pick up on this comment, Michael: I have no way to really check the expert's advice.
That seems to be an unneccessarily extreme characterisation of expert advice and your own capacity.
You've just practically demonstrated the validity of the advice and activity of a variety of experts by posting this on your blog. Geologists, electrical engineers, software engineers, and a host of other experts have all been vindicated in the process of you hitting "post".
So, one way of assessing the validity of expert advice, which we all practice constantly, is to see if it "works". Does it do what it says on the box?
And, even within our own limited grasp of these things, are we not also able to ask questions that seek better understanding of the issues. I'm not advocating a return to a naive positivism, I just don't think it's all as negative as you have (polemically, no doubt) portrayed here.
And regarding everyone's bete noire, human induced climate change, there are some questions even a non-expert can ask. Do greenhouse gases actually have the effect of trapping and re-radiating infrared energy? Yes, they do and it can be demonstrated in a laboratory. Can we demonstrate that these gases are accumulating in the atmosphere at an increasing rate, at higher concentrations than in the observable past, due to human activities? With a very high degree of confidence, these things can be shown. Are averaged global land and sea temperatures rising over statistically significant time periods? Again, it seems to be a pretty clear yes.
What effects will all of this have on the coupled atmospheric-ocean system? I think we have pretty good reasons to be concerned.
Not sure if my earlier comment was deleted by ironic glitch of the internets, by mischievous design of blog-owner to make a point, or by my own incompetence.
If you can find it Michael, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts in response.
Thanks Ben - I am trying to demonstrate how endemic trust is to knowledge, when in fact the common rhetoric is otherwise. Trust might be earned by the experts insofar as it can be demonstrated. It is easy when it comes to posting on my blog, but ... how do you test whether your oncologist is right or not? We have various ways of shortcutting that process - professional qualifications etc. I guess. But these we have to trust also.
:-) I thought that was probably the case.
Sure there are easier and harder cases when it comes to establishing and maintaining trust, and to demonstrating "what works". Particularly in preventive cases where we are dealing with counterfactuals, what would or could happen otherwise... How do you know if you would have lived any less time had you ignored the advice of nutritionists?
So, I agree with your point about trust. However, I still think you have overstated the negative case. There are many mechanisms by which we strive to establish this kind of confidence and you've mentioned a few: Professional qualifications, government or other accreditation, informed questioning, multiple attestation, practical experience, etc.
I wonder also if you need to address the issue of the very well resourced purveyors of distrust that have contributed to the degradation of trust in expert advice. This is well established in the case of tobacco companies deliberately attempting to muddy the links between smoking and cancer. And, of course, it still goes on.
If I am overstating the negative case it is because I think this is the way that the case is often put. I am not advocating scepticism but describing it.
With the climate change examples you cited, though: you are telling me things that I am willing to accept, but it is certainly not easy for me to check or confirm what you are saying. Into this uncertainty gap the cranks and sceptics pour (as in the case of big tobacco).
Yes, I think you've highlighted well some aspects of people's paradoxical relationships with contemporary knowledge/information systems and content.
I don't at all think that you have been disingenuous, but I think that, as a general observation, there can be a level of disingenuousness in many attacks on expert knowledge (and experts). And this should probably be acknowledged when discussing public scepticism.
As for the climate change examples, I'm not sure how hard they really are to check.
Hey Michael, a big thumbs up bro. Well said. I feel it just as you describe it.
I'm with Ben, I think you're overstating the problem with expertise. On the specific example under discussion (climate change), there are indeed quite easy ways of checking the data that Ben puts forward.
As a test-case, are you actually sceptical about the link between smoking and cancer? Would you stop your children smoking on the basis of the expert advice?
I personally have no idea whether it is or not.
So anything taken on trust from experts is to be treated as though you know nothing at all? Sounds a little too Cartesian for my taste. Not sure how you'd go about even doing theology on that basis: "but how do you know that Jesus is the Son of God? Aren't you just relying on the expert testimony of eyewitnesses?"
I also wonder whether one issue that has come up a few times requires it's own discussion as a fifth difficulty: the corrosive effects of (hyper)capitalism on knowledge. You mention the scramble for funding in a cash-strapped university and the role of corporate misinformation campaigns. These are linked through the role played by the love of money that we have hardwired into the social, economic and political system. This affects not just universities but particularly the media, when news journalism becomes entertainment for profit.
I remain ambivalent about your claims that scientism is becoming "increasingly" strident or that scepticism in the humanities is "rising". Such things are difficult to measure and there is good evidence of counter-trends in both cases.
You tell me there are easy ways of checking the data - but I really have to take it on trust. I don't have access to a lab, or the training in science required, or the time to go through with it. I don't recall you doing a science degree either!
But in any case: I am not trying to say you can't trust anything an expert says. I am just pointing out the often fragile gap between our first-hand knowledge of things and the knowledge we have to take on trust merely to survive. I think we are ever more aware of the vulnerability of that gap to distortion. We are in the hands of the experts - and yet, the doctor can misdiagnose us, the scientist can be bought off and so on.
Into this gap the conspiracy theorist and the scallywag plunge...
On the basis of what you have said; does this mean Christianity is trustworthy?
In general the church community bases a lot of faith on expertise not of our own...and takes many things at face value to rely on the expertise of others.
Craig - That was going to be my question!
Michael - Do you lie awake at night wondering if the UBS 4th edition is a faithful representation of the extant manuscript tradition? Does you toss and turn over the translation of the Hebrew passages that you've forgotten how to check for yourself? Do you reserve judgement over the correct translation of lepton because you haven't checked the usage in extra-canonical literature?
That was my point about some of this sounding a bit too Cartesian for my taste. Yes, experts can lead us astray through greed, sloppiness or honest mistake. But we are not in a worse condition as a result of needing to rely on experts. We are actually in a better position, since without experts, I wouldn't have known I had a tumour (let alone known how to treat it) and would almost certainly be dead. Yes, they could have lead me astray, but that possibility is a much smaller issue than a situation in which I don't have access to their expert judgement. Without experts, we might still think that Thor is to blame for the Queensland floods, and would have no idea that our burning of coal might be one of the greatest threats to our common future.
Put another way, we are more in the hands of experts because of the very successes of the enterprise of human knowledge. It is possible to be triumphalist about this, but one needn't be. Our reliance on experts (and indeed the fragmentation of specialties in the multiversity) is a symptom of the complexity of our society, and of the knowledge on which that society is based.
There is an important and legitimate point to be made about the disconnection between more information and true wisdom, but the fact that our society requires certain people to specialise in narrow fields is not a backwards step for my ability to know things (fallibly, of course, but then all human knowledge is fallible anyway).
There is also an important and legitimate point to be made about the significance of how we structure relationships of trust (i.e. how our experts are accredited) and how scallywags or industry shills can be identified. The increasing reach of corporate and state power makes this all the more important (and makes the increasingly corporate character of the contemporary university all the more troubling).
I think that on the one hand we are more in the hands of the experts but on the other hand, it is possible to argue that in many cases (certainly in many cases that matter to us), we actually have an increased ability to chase paper trails, check qualifications, seek transparency about funding. For instance, it is possible to locate the qualifications and funding for the "experts" who reject anthropogenic climate change, and to discover that almost to a man (there are, for some reason, few women), they receive funding from oil companies and/or have no relevant qualifications.
Furthermore, while we might not have the skills (or time) to check the experts on everything, we (esp those with significant background education like Michael and many of those in this discussion) often have either have the abilities ourselves partially to check (Michael can look at the LXX to see whether the OT translators are on the right track) or personally know an expert (he can knock on an OT colleague's door).
Two examples.
The basics of evolutionary biology are readily understood by an intelligent high school student and can be learned in a couple of hours. While that might not be enough to see through every creationist counterclaim, it is enough to see that many of their claims simply don't understand what evolutionary biology is saying and that few of their "experts" are willing to call out their fellows for their mistakes.
Similarly, the basics of climate science are readily understood by an intelligent high school student and can be learned in a couple of hours. While that might not be enough to see through every mendacious claim made on behalf of those whose financial, social or political interests are served by inaction, it is enough to see through most of them, and to realise that the "expert" deniers very frequently turn out to be intellectually dishonest.
Of course, the mainstream science in both cases could well be wrong, but the burden of proof for doubting the collective judgement of accredited experts lies with the sceptic.
I think you mistake my purpose here. I am merely reporting on the conditions of knowing that make disreputable phenomena like climate change denial and creation 'science' possible. I want to point, Alasdair McIntyre-like, to the necessity for trust to operate in knowing and therefore the necessity for a moral approach to epistemology. Human knowing is a tradition and a practice - and when trust is eroded it becomes harder to know things.
If that is indeed your purpose, then I have no quibble with it, apart from noting that perhaps it was a little opaque to some of your more muddle-headed readers (like myself!).
I realise you've touched on your frustration at experts before (and again here), and so I should have realised where this line of thought might be going.
I guess I'd just ask you to substitute one of your own hobby horses into the example in your fourth paragraph and see whether you'd feel uncomfortable with leaving it as open as you have.
And yet, we are less and less certain that we can in fact trust others. The case of young earth creationism is a good example. Is it the case that the earth is billions of years old? Well, many of the experts are agreed that this is the case. I might say 'science says so'; but when I do, I am just saying that the expert scientists are saying this at the moment. I personally have no idea whether it is or not. I am completely unable to evaluate the scientific data for myself - and if I could I wouldn't have time. So I am in the hands of the experts, who will decide whether I am related to monkeys and what my children are taught at school. But whose interests do experts serve? And why should I trust them? Even though the case that there is indeed a long and complex evolutionary history to life on earth is relatively well-established, a great deal of mistrust prevails.
The 'expert' thing is something I got from leading expert sociologist Anthony Giddens. He is describing the anxiety of late-modernity, and depedence on experts in an age of tabloid media (which likes nothing better than a scandal in which an expert betrays trust or is corrupt) is part of that anxiety.
Re your example above, I can imagine someone thinking exactly this.
Partly the problem is the quest for an illegitimate certainty, which human, finite knowing can't ever provide. The sceptic says, 'well, you can't prove it totally and in any case you are all in the grip of a left-wing agenda/anti-god atheism/big business interests whatever'. This does not however entitle one to disbelieve what the experts are saying.
I read Bill Bryson's book 'A Short History of Everything' recently. It was amazing how often major discoveries in science were made by cranks, oddballs, and non-specialists. Clearly, science is at times prone to a group think which makes it dangerously closed to discovery.
However, this does not entitle us to believe that cranks are always or even mostly right. Cranks are still cranks! Good luck to them, but the condition of being a crank is not a qualification for being right.
Crankdom is neither sufficient nor necessary for being correct. My own reading of the history of science (esp more recent science) leaves me with the impression that most of the significant scientific work has been done by non-cranks. The exceptions are celebrated more than the rule. (I'm Not sure that Bryson ranks as a leading science historian.)
Listening to Anthony Giddens as SSCE last year was a highlight of the year and he singlehandedly (and unwittingly) convinced me of the value of an unelected upper house. I don't doubt that the proliferation of experts as mediated by tabloid media is indeed a contributor to the stress of late modernity.
As for my example, my point was not that such a POV is possible, but to ask whether you would be happy to have such an account feature as an example in an argument making another point.
And yet, we are less and less certain that we can in fact trust others. The case of the existence of Jesus is a good example. Is it the case that there was a Jewish teacher from Nazareth in the first century? Well, many of the experts are agreed that this is the case. I might say 'history says so'; but when I do, I am just saying that the expert historians are saying this at the moment. I personally have no idea whether it is or not. I am completely unable to evaluate the historical data for myself - and if I could I wouldn't have time. So I am in the hands of the experts, who will decide whether my faith is in vain and my life a joke. But whose interests do experts serve? And why should I trust them? Even though the case that a man called Jesus existed in first century Palestine is relatively well-established, a great deal of mistrust prevails.
I don't quite get the point you are trying to make. You seem to be agreeing with me but thinking you are disagreeing. Of course in all three versions of the paragraph, more needs to be said. My post is a sketch towards a larger piece I am working on. More will be said. However, the experienc of alienation from knowledge is there - this now sounds like things my school students would have said to me years ago.
I don't claim Bryson as a major academic science historian. He's a story teller and I read the book for fun (so sue me). Still, the book is well researched, and he is very positive towards science in general. The theme I detected wasn't one that Byrson himself highlighted.
But my point was not to uphold cranks... my point was this (let me spell it out):
1 - sometimes cranks and eccentrics are actually right.
2 - but this doesn't entitle us to believe cranks over experts, or to believe that the ordinary guilds of knowledge are misguided or corrupt.
Example: because medical science is imperfect, and some doctors are bad and make mistakes and becuase drug companies and government bureaucracies corrupt the process does not entitle us to abandon medical science in favour of homeopathy. And a court will rightly put you in gaol if you withhold orthodox treatment from a child of yours and they suffer as a result.
Oh, and I didn't say that tabloid media leads to the proliferation of experts; rather that it undermines expert knowledge by trading on our fears that we have been mislead all along.
I think part of the problem is that knowledge always comes with trust and expertise embedded within it, but that prevailing rhetoric (and the prevailing epistemology on the street) pretends otherwise, so any account of dependence on trust sounds like a sceptical foray.
This provides another way into the problem of "the bombast of modern science". The natural sciences are special, but popular epistemology provides no way to understand or present that specialness that is not overweening and imperial. So we are routinely subject to warring (even if public-minded) "correctives" in the media: pained reassertions of Science's privilege, and presumptuous attempts by outsiders to put the sciences in their place.
There is a great deal of common cause here between conservative Christianity and the sciences, but the opportunity to do integrated thinking on this has been going begging for a generation or more. On my reading, an out-of-control concern for purity is still preventing the leaders of the church from engaging with us unwashed.
Yes, we're agreed on cranks.
I didn't say that tabloid media leads to the proliferation of experts
Neither did I. My point was simply to highlight the fact that it is not the proliferation of experts per se that is the problem. The bigger problem is the generally/frequently terrible job that tabloid media do in mediating them to the general population. This is another point on which we agree.
My point is that by not making clear at the outset that this is part of a larger argument, your treatment of the example of climate science could well leave an honest reader somewhat confused where you stand on the matter. I was wondering whether you would be comfortable leaving open such a possible misunderstanding of your position on a hobby horse closer to your heart.
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