The Human Fire 2.13 - The Value of Knowledge
Understanding how knowledge is power, and powerful.
If I've had an intellectual obsession in my life, it's been with knowledge. Or rather, put precisely, with how we know what we know. That is a fundamental question in the history of philosophy, all the way from Plato's shadows on the cave wall, to Neo's battery-life in The Matrix. But it's my obsession too.
Many people experience knowledge as tricky, but even with our polarized frames of reference, it's not impossible. There are hundreds, even thousands of things we know and use on a regular basis without much ado, which point to an epistemology - a theory of knowledge - we all can actually live by. I know the car won't run without gas and oil. I know the salmon won't cook if I fail to turn on the oven. I know the nuances of what my son is going to ask of me by the tone of his "hey dad" query. Between us, you and I know a lot of things.
Humans have been passing along knowledge of all kinds throughout our existence. It's one of our unique characteristics, this capacity to transmit knowledge across generations. And that knowledge, passed from person to person, culture to culture, is intrinsically valuable.
One of the things I've come to understand after years of pursuing the knowledge question is this: the best way to know something often depends on the nature of knowledge's object. This too we learn this from our everyday experience of life. If I want to know about gravity, for example, the scientific method is a fairly reliable route for understanding gravity. If I want to know what I think about a political issue, I'll gather diverse perspectives and sift through their arguments. If I want to know my wife, designing an experiment to test her is going to backfire.
Somewhere along the way we got a bit dumb about what we know. It's time to be clear and sensible - call it a critical common-sense pursuit - about how we put our world together.
Oxygen
"The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know… We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart."
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées
I've been going to Crane Beach in Ipswich, MA, for twenty years. There's something about that beach - the sight of the ocean when you crest up the dunes, the smell of sea on the breeze, the feel of sand grains between your toes - that makes me feel known. Like I know my heart again, in a fuller, richer way.
That we know a place, and a place knows us, is an undervalued form of knowing. It shows us that connection is a key quality of knowing something or someone. In this way, knowledge is always as close as my ability to connect with the person in front of me, or the ground beneath my feet.
Fuel
In our modern world, we've often expressed our knowledge through those crystalized forms we call beliefs. All of us can get stuck here and confuse those beliefs with the knowledge of ultimate truths. Beliefs get fixed, and we get fixated on them, which is usually when they lose the status of actual knowledge. The American scientist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse") identified four ways that we tend to "fix" our beliefs about the world.
He called the first, "tenacity." Today we might call it "the social media method" or "confirmation bias." This is a simple refusal to question ourselves or our beliefs and instead look only for sources that support what we already think or believe.
The second, Peirce termed "authority." Parents, priests and pastors, or professors tell us what to think; we lean on and learn from them, or on the state, or on other experts to define our knowledge. It's not a terrible fall back if they're wise. It's disastrous if they aren't.
Third comes the "a priori" method. This is a way of reasoning that begins with what may be reasonable first principles - so long as there aren't any facts that get in the way of questioning. Principles get priority, even if they can't account for all the evidence under discussion.
Finally, Peirce offered "science" as a better way of settling belief. This is essentially a way of resolving "the irritation of doubt" by a method of inquiry (i.e., "science"). I put "science" in quotes here because what Peirce means by this is simply a method of inquiry that can, practically, help determine what we know from what we don't or can't. In our day, there are some who rely on science to validate or "fix" their beliefs, but they do so through one of the other three methods, not as genuine inquiry.
What do you know about the Salem Witch Trials? Have you studied the history, watched a documentary, been to the museum on vacation, or read The Crucible? Or maybe you're of the Dan Brown school of historical conspiracy? (Side note: The DaVinci Code was the worst book I couldn't put down.)
I almost spit my coffee out when scrolling LinkedIn this week, which rarely happens on that platform. A psychologist from the UK who works with trauma victims had posted a claim about "the millions of women" who were burned as witches, and that we should stop calling certain historical events "witch trials" but rather "women trials."
Witch trials are one of those embarrassments that, as a historical phenomenon, make people's brains get all in a bind. I've researched, taught, and studied this history, so I was taken aback by the tenacity with which the psychologist's claim was made. I was even more taken aback by the appeals to certain "authorities" made in the comments.
Here's some context to show why "millions" isn't remotely accurate. The population of Europe simply wasn't that large: the Black Death of the 14th-century, the 16th-century "wars of religion" and the Forty Years War of the early 17th century, shall we say, curtailed a large and thriving population. There just weren't "millions of women" available to execute, even over a few centuries. Based on the records of trials and demographics, historians have estimated that somewhere between 40-60,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Europe over about 500 years.
That's several thousand too many, of course, but nowhere close to "millions."
In English-speaking places, like Salem, Massachusetts - just down the road from me - witches were hung, not burned. A subtle distinction, no doubt, as other places did burn people. But distinctions matter when it comes to knowledge.
Lastly, while those accused of witchcraft were predominantly women, an estimated 15-20% were men. It's true that how we name things matters, but "mostly women and some men trials" feels, I don't know, sort of clunky and doesn't at all tell us what they were tried for. (Which is kind of the point, historically speaking.)
There are ways to bolster a case for supporting trauma victims, but bad appeals to a poorly understood history don't help. Knowing when and how to use history can make the case more, or less, powerful.
Heat
Mary McLeod Bethune, an American educator and civil rights activist, said, "When we set out upon the search for truth we should not assume that we already know for certain what truth is." As the United States moves into another heated election season, what are your assumptions about what you know? Are they well-interrogated and earned? Or do they rest on the authority of others, or the tenacity of prejudice? What beliefs do you hold that get in the way of knowledge and truth?
What, right now, do you wish you knew more about? What connection can you make to that subject, or hobby, or person? What can it tell you about how to best know it?
I hope you've had a wonderful summer, or are squeezing out the last drips of good weather as I am. What are the obsessions you value most? Hit reply and let me know - I'd love to share in what you know.
Until next week, I'll see you down the path.
Chad