Thesis #23: Civilization has no monopoly on knowledge.
by Jason GodeskyWhere all else fails, science is held up as a distinctly civilized pursuit, and something that can justify whatever other problems it may entail. This supposition works well against our general impression of primitive society as “stupid, ignorant, or superstition-dominated.” The animistic beliefs of so many foragers convince us that they inhabit a terrifying world of evil spirits, where they are driven by their superstitious fears. The progressivist myth articulated explicitly in the Enlightenment posits a narrative of human history where civilization frees us from such a life of fear and ignorance by the ennoblement of reason. The very term, “the Enlightenment,” points to the salvific role it bestowed upon reason, logic, and the scientific process. Yet, as E.O. Wilson discusses at length in Consilience, as powerful as the reductionary mode of thought may be, we also need an integrative form to turn our collected facts into a full body of knowledge. Though science may be unique to modern civilization, impressive bodies of knowledge are not. Our belief that science is the only valid way to gain knowledge is an ethnocentric farce that denies enormous swaths of human potential, as illustrated by the impressive means of gathering knowledge exhibited by primitive peoples, and the incredible bodies of knowledge they have formed with them.
First, we must address the fundamental issue of the “superstitious” primitive mindset which has been so often remarked. Psychologists and anthropologists alike have written whole volumes on this subject, but even from such an ethnocentric frame, the systematic curiosity inherent to human nature everywhere is all too often self-evident. Evans-Pritchard once wrote of the Azande:
Their blindness is not due to stupidity, for they display great ingenuity in explaining away the failures and inequalities of the poison oracle and experimental keenness in testing it. It is due rather to the fact that their intellectual ingenuity and experimental keenness are conditioned by patterns of ritual behavior and mystical belief. Within the limits set by these patterns they show great intelligence, but it cannot operate beyond these limits. Or, to put it another way: they reason excellently in the idiom of their beliefs, but they cannot reason outside, or against their beliefs because they have no other idiom in which to express their thoughts.
This passage says more of Evans-Pritchard’s biases, than it does of the Azande’s knowledge. All of us are bound by our cultural norms; as Daniel Quinn suggested, the advance of knowledge is not limited by knowledge itself (which is usually easy to attain), but curiosity to seek that knowledge in the first place. For example, the notion that the Azande may have intellects equal to his own is something that Evans-Pritchard cannot conceive of in the above quotation. He displays “great ingenuity in explaining away the failures and inequalities” of his own theories, but he is ultimately “conditioned by patterns of … belief. Within the limits set by these patterns, he shows great intelligence, but it cannot operate beyond these limits.”
In fact, primitive thought more often operates on multiple, simultaneous levels, such that a statement may be a straightforward, physical formula, an allusion to mythology, and a statement of metaphysics all at once. This is a common occurence in oral societies, where knowledge is often encoded in stories, myths, and other mnemonic devices to aid necessary memorization. A statement that seems, on its surface, to be pure superstition to us, is often very clearly a statement of physical practicality to its tribal speaker. As Paul Radin explained in Primitive Man as Philosopher:
Primitive peoples will, for instance, indulge in magical rites for the attainment of purely practical ends - the killing of deer, for instance - under circumstances in which they could by no conceivable means fail to do so. Yet they will seek the most tenuous of religious sanctions for a hazardous undertaking such as a warpath. They may tell you, if directly interrogated, that a poisoned arrow discharged for a short distance into a deer trail will cause the death of a deer that is to be hunted on the following day. What inference can we very well expect a person to draw from such a statement but that a magical nonrational rite has achieved a practical and all-important result? Must we not insist, then, that the mentality of people who accept such a belief is different in degree and possibly in kind from our own? There seems indeed to be no escape.
The first error that we commit is that of expecting the answer to a direct question put to a native to be either complete or revealing. It is similarly an error even to expect that such a question touches the core of the real problem involved. Let us take the last example given. We are not to imagine that after discharging the arrow into the deer trail our native returns to his family and informs them that he has potentially killed a deer, nor are we to imagine that he tells them he has performed the preliminary part of his work. What he has done is one indissoluble whole - he discharges the arrow in the proper way, waits for the morrow, and then follows the trail until he has killed the deer. Any question whereby it is assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that one part of this series of activities is more important than the other or that a causal relation exists between them, is misleading and entails a misleading answer. So much for our initial error. But we have likewise no justification for assuming that some general principle underlies the native’s activities in this particular instance. He did not select any trail at any time of the year, but a particular trail at a particular time of the year. We must assume that he knows from unlimited practical experiences that he is selecting the proper conditions for his task. I once asked a Winnebago Indian whether the rite of shooting an arrow into a trail of which he had no knowledge would be effective and received a prompt and amused denial. Similarly it was discovered that although in certain tribes a vision from a deity was regarded as adequate sanction for embarking on a war party, in actual practice certain very practical conditions had to be fulfilled before an individual was permitted to depart.
So we see here that the juxtaposition of science and religion we experience in our own society is by no means universal, and in fact in many oral, tribal societies, religion is the language in which one expresses natural knowledge. We have concluded that these societies are superstitious based on their invocations of “spirits”–a conclusion that says more of our own lack of understanding of oral societies, than of their natural knowledge.
Some circles have been trying to advance the study of “aboriginal science,” but this is misleading. Though it is intended to legitimize native modes of thought and knowledge, it in fact does harm to that cause, first by eroding our notion of science from one particular, useful means of gathering knowledge, to a generalized–and thus meaningless–synonym for “knowledge” itself. Secondly, it further supports the notion that science is the only respectable means of gathering knowledge, an ethnocentric fetish for our own, particular mode of thought. Science is a very particular way of thinking. It is a rigorous, minimalist process that relies on reductionism and analyticism. If our goal is to create a minimalist database of truly reliable information, there is probably no better approach. Yet, this cannot–and should not–be our only epistemological goal. Such a database is invaluable as a base to begin with, but as E.O. Wilson argues, such a database is of value primarily as the foundation of an integrative consilience. As Kerim Friedman wrote for Savage Minds in “Aboriginal Science“:
The problem is that to accept all belief systems about the natural world as science makes nonsense of the term science. Whether it is intelligent design or aboriginal knowledge, these forms of knowledge are important to those who embrace them, but why do we need to label them as being “scientific�? as well? It is true that many things aborigines know through their traditional forms of knowledge have, in fact, been proven to coincide with scientific knowledge as well. But some have not. This alone shows that traditional forms of knowledge can never be coterminous with science….
But the solution to the relative status of traditional knowledge compared to science is not to simply label knowledge as “science.�? It is to find ways create space within which it can find legitimate expression in our society and be accorded a status other than “superstition.�? It is also to better educate people about scientific knowledge and its limits, so that all citizens can better distinguish between good and bad science. Seeking to give traditional forms of knowledge the same status of science accomplishes neither of these goals. Even worse, it makes it harder for us to understand why we should care about traditional knowledge. After all, if it is simply science with another name, why bother?
Many of us believe that science is the only worthwhile way of knowing, and everything else is superstition. This is a false dichotomy created by the peculiar nature of our particular epistemological history. The Enlightenment was a reactionary movement that ultimately owes itself to the Protestant Reformation, being in many ways a more extreme reaction to “the Age of Faith.” These are not the only two possible poles, nor are these necessarily opposites. Religion can spring out of reason and support it. Pantheism has often been espoused by scientists as a type of religion that melds easily with scientific thought–being, at its base, nothing more than a sense of awe for the unvierse we inhabit. Shamanism and animism can be close natural allies of pantheism. Shamanism is ever adaptive, willing to change its most basic conceptions to fit new visions or evidence–just as science does, allowing it to grow and change with our changing ideas and theories. Shamanism can also prompt scientific discovery and the curiosity that leads to greater knowledge, because of its insistence on experiencing the numinous for oneself and learning from the spirits themselves. It would be a contradiction in terms to propose a shamanic fundamentalism.
The basic curiosity that underlies all science is evident in all cultures. As the Evans-Pritchard passage above indicates, the Azande showed “experimental keenness” in their methodical, systematic testing. In their 1970 study, Nicholas Blurton Jones & Melvin J. Konner of the Harvard Kalahari Research Group supposed that such methodical hypothesis testing might be a basic function of the human brain that was necessary for tracking. They wrote:
Such an intellective process is familiar to us from detective stories and indeed also from science itself. Evidently it is a basic feature of human mental life. It would be surprising indeed if repeated activation of hypotheses, trying them out against new data, integrating them with previously known facts, and rejecting ones which do not stand up, were habits of mind peculiar to western scientists and detectives. !Kung behavior indicates that, on the contrary, the very way of life for which the human brain evolved required them. That they are brought to impressive fruition by the technology of scientists and the liesure of novelists should not be allowed to persuade us that we invented them. Man is the only hunting mammal with so rudimentary a sense of smell, that he could only have come to successful hunting through intellectual evolution.
The knowledge thus achieved by primitive peoples is truly staggering when we consider it. The proliferation of invention and technology we currently characterize as “civilized” is a very recent development, stemming from the peculiar nature of the Industrial Revolution. Before then, even civilized invention was generally frowned upon, though the Agricultural Revolution did usher a surge of invention to cope with such a radically different, maladaptive lifestyle. Nonetheless, the most impressive intellectual feats that our species has achieved have been made not by civilized men working within the paradigms thus set down, but by the primitives who discovered those paradigms in the first place.
For instance, the most pure science of mathematics. In “Two Precursors of Writing: Plain and Complex Tokens,” Denise Schmandt-Besserat writes:
The invention of zero and place notation has been heralded as a major accomplishment of the civilized world, but the literature does not treat the advent of abstract numerals because of the common but erroneous assumption that abstract numbers are intuitive to humans. The token system is one piece of artifactural evidence proving that counting, like anything else, is not spontaneous. Instead, counting is cultural and has to be learned.
We have evidence for counting, and thus the basics of mathematics, even among Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, up to 70,000 years ago, in the form of counting sticks: bit of bone with sets of strikes cut into them in specific patterns. Some of these are quite complex, mathematically, and have even been described as “calculators” to aid in basic arithmetic in much the same fashion as an abacus. Many of these counting sticks appear also to be lunar calendars, indicating the beginnings of astronomy, as well. The Pleiades are known as “the Seven Sisters” among natives to North America, Siberia and Australia–suggesting that they must have been named before those groups went their separate ways, at least 40,000 years ago. While Stonehenge in England, and Woodhenge at Cahokia, were monolithic structures built by agricultural societies, the finely tuned astronomical knowledge they exhibit comes from the primitive societies they came from.
Perhaps the most powerful example of primitive mathematics comes from the quipu lines of the Andes. The Inka Empire was on par with any of the Old World civilizations for its bureaucracy, attention to detail, and supreme power. However, they did so without writing. Instead, they had quipu lines. One string would have a number of other strings tied to it; each, with some number of knots tied in it. In Ethnomathematics, Marcia Ascher describes the quipu lines as a data structure:
The Incas can be characterized as methodical, highly organized, concerned with detail, and intensive data users. The Inca bureaucracy continuously monitored the areas under its control. They received many messages and sent many instructions daily. The messages included details of resources such as items that were needed or available in sotrehouses, taxes owed or collecte,d encsus information, the output of mines, or the composition of work forces. The messages were transmitted rapaidly using the extensive road system via a simple, but effective, system of runners… The message had to be clear, compact, and partable. Quipu-makers were responsible for encoding and decoding the information.
A quipu is an assemblage of colored knotted cotton cords… The colors of the cords, the way the cords are connected together, the relative placement of the cords, the spaces between the cords, the types of knots on the individual cords, and the relative placement of the knots are all part of the logical-numerical recording.
Gary Urton’s Signs of the Inka Quipu shows that we can also see the quipu lines as encoding information in binary–a primitive sort of computer. Had the Spanish not conquered the Inka, might we have had computers centuries earlier? It is impossible to speculate, but the ingenious elegance of the quipu lines certainly show that the potential exists in primitive societies. Though the quipu lines were used to hold together the bureacracy-intensive Inka Empire, it was not an Inka invention. Rather, quipu lines predated the Inka, and are found first among the primitives the Inka conquered, “to bring civilization to them,” as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega–a half-Spaniard, half-Inkan historian soon after the Spanish conquest–might have put it. The quipu lines–and binary counting–may well have been primitive inventions the Inka took by conquest.
Native knowledge abounds–even systematic, experimental thought is found in abundance. Working from a definition of “civilization” dependent on advanced knowledge (a definition we rejected in thesis #13), Richard Rudgley’s Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age concludes that all societies are civilizations (making the term somewhat worthless). Along the way, Rudgley fills three hundred pages with examples of the impressive knowledge gathered by primitive peoples. That said, that knowledge is not science. It is often gathered systematically, and with “experimental keenness.” It is often retested and falsified, but there is no set scientific method that tribal peoples use. Their mode of investigation is very often inegrative, rather than reductionist. Native forms of knowledge are precisely the integrative forms of consilience that E.O. Wilson discusses as our next great epistemological need. We have followed the Enlightenment as far as it is likely to carry us; it is time to understand that it was a reactionary movement, and thus suffered from the same failings as all other reactionary movements. Science, as invaluable as it is, is not the only way of knowing, nor necessarily the best. Indigenous knowledge is also invaluable. Though science is unique to civilization, knowledge and reason are not. As Nicholas Blurton Jones & Melvin J. Konner of the Harvard Kalahari Research Group in their 1970 report:
The accuracy of observation, the patience, and the experiences of wildlife they have had and appreciate are enviable. The sheer, elegant logic of deductions from tracks would satiate the most avid crossword fan or reader of detective stories. The objectivity is also enviable to scientists who believe that they can identify it and that the progress of science is totally dependent upon it. Even the poor theorisation of our !Kung left one uneasy; their ‘errors,’ the errors of ‘Stone Age savages,’ are exactly those made today by many highly educated western scientists … Just as primitive life no longer can be characterised as nasty, brutish and short, no longer can it be characterised as stupid, ignorant, or superstition-dominated.
Less conclusional than most theses, but thusly, more inclusional when it comes to exapanding what knowledge is and how we think of it. Kind of appropriate, if you ask me.
I wanted to interject here about the artifical knowledge gradient taught to the children of the one right way.
By decided to teach abstract knowledge(mathematics) and concrete knowledge(language), instead of practical knowledge, we fuck our kids up from the very beginning.
Not very many people got the same education that I did. Not even many people in the same systems I was rasied uder got the same education I did (public schools, Boy Scouts, magnet programs, self-learning).
Civilization’s artificial knowledge gradient persists not in our continued patronage of grocery stores, but in the very first reasoned moments of our life.
I believe we are living still in an acient arms race. I believe that civilization is no more than an elaborate war effort to squeeze out a resource competitor. Once the war machine was built, we’ve been dividing labor ever since.
We should all strive to be learners, and we should all strive to be teachers, only then will the information gradient go beyond a concept known, rejected, yet followed religiously (yes, the grocery store trip is a mythic ritual).
TonyZ
Comment by TonyZ — 9 January 2006 @ 3:40 PM
Jason,
Just wanted to say this is currently one of my favorite theses! Good work!
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 10 January 2006 @ 6:31 PM
IMHO you make a valid distinction between knowledge and science and mention that civilization has no monopoly on knowledge.
I believe that conclusion to be true based upon your examples and the studies of others.
I also believe, though, that science is an elevated “class” of knowledge, a type of metaknowledge in that it allows prediction and extrapolation in a manner far beyond that possible by the possession of knowledge alone. To me that is a benefit that science (and perhaps civilization) brings that is not equaled in the knowledge of many primitives and that allows much more flexibility in responding to a changing environment and thus in group survival.
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 19 January 2006 @ 6:10 PM
That’s precisely the attitude I was arguing against in the article. Science is not the best or only way of knowing, and other ways can have just as much predictive power.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 January 2006 @ 11:50 AM
Jason
Would you please elaborate on the predictive power of other ways of knowing than science.
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 12:16 PM
Shamans report that they become animals and fly far away to witness distant events, or fly into the past or the future. Fairly incredible claims, I agree, but they report learning things from this that are eerily accurate. For example, shamans among the Austrlian Aborigines and the Yanamamo both reported having heard radio static before contact with anthropologists–they claimed it was the sound of creation, when they went back to witness the event. Noted by anthropologists as a strange tradition. Several years later, COBE established that radio static comes, at least in part, from background radiation from the Big Bang.
Or, take the case of the Inka:
Examples abound. Repeatable experimentation it is not, but your concern was with predictive power. This is no mere Barnum effect–there are very specific, non-inutive conclusions. I don’t pretend to understand the mechanism, and I’m not going to leap to outright mysticism, but it’s all far too commonplace for shamans for me to simply ignore.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 January 2006 @ 12:37 PM
Jason
Thanks for the very full response.
I do agree that there are documented instances of shamans or Australian aboriginal medicine men going into trances and coming out with drawings or vocal commentary that appear to provide a view of the future or of causes for local events, such as sickness.
One of the requirements for a hypothesis or theory of science is that it results in such very precise predictions that it can be unambiguously tested, such as - there is an 80% chance that Volcano Joe will explode in the next 6 months, or the rate of temperature increase will cause the migration of the deer that we eat away from our forest within two decades.
That degree of predictive power that science provides seems unequaled in the power of primitive knowledge. And perhaps those systems of primitive knowledge are drawn from unknown-today scientific bases.
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 1:08 PM
Well, you can do the same with a shaman’s prediction, can’t you? Wait and see if it actually happens? I don’t know, I appreciate science and its rigor a great deal, but I’m not convinced it’s “better” so much as “different.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 January 2006 @ 1:17 PM
Jason
I agree. Let us not call one way of predicting “better” than another, but just understand the ways in which each are useful, both in terms of a) “seeing ahead” and b) meeting people’s needs, which includes psychological and sociological (community) components. That distinction may allow better understanding of differences and similarities.
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 1:44 PM
I agree. Let me take it one step further: since these two ways of knowing are very, very different, but neither one is necessarily “better” than the other, then we cannot say that civlization is superior for possessing one and not the other. On the other hand, now that both civilization and primitive society are in our heritage, and we know of both ways of knowing, might we not, in a post-civilized society, be able to use both ways of knowing? Might not a post-civilized society in fact be the first time that a society really could make a claim to superior knowledge?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 January 2006 @ 1:47 PM
Jason
You seem to be implying that civilization uses only science as a predictive tool, ignoring other predictive tools that primitive peoples have. Also, perhaps that primitive people do not use science. I wonder whether those distinctions are true
I can cite you several examples of top-notch “scientists” crediting breakthroughs in some of their discoveries to dreams or hunches or intuition that they then followed up scientifically.
And what about those people fully “within” our civilization that go to palm readers, tarot card readers, religious ministers, hucksters, etc. for advice and assistance. Civilization is not a united whole seeking “science” as its religion.
And you speak of primitive society’s use of technology elsewhere. Perhaps use of that technology by a few innovators within primitive society includes use of a primitive version of science?
Gary
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 2:08 PM
Another recent data point about the limitations and successes of science and technology
20 January 2006
Ancient lakes of the Sahara
The Sahara has not always been the arid, inhospitable place that it is today – it was once a savannah teeming with life, according to researchers at the Universities of Reading and Leicester. Eight years of studies in the Libyan desert area of Fazzan have revealed swings in its climate that have caused considerably wetter periods, lasting for thousands of years, when the desert turned to savannah and lakes provided water for people and animals. This, in turn, has given us vital clues about the history of humans in the area and how these ancient inhabitants coped with climate change as the land began to dry up around them again.
In their article ‘Ancient lakes of the Sahara’, which appears in the January-February issue of American Scientist magazine, Dr Kevin White of the University of Reading and Professor David Mattingly of the University of Leicester explain how they used satellite technology and archaeological evidence to reveal new clues about both the past environment of the Sahara and of human prehistory in the area. “The climate of the Sahara has been highly variable over the millennia and we have been able to provide much more specific dating of these changes,” said Dr White. “Over the last 10,000 years, there have been two distinct humid phases, separated by an interval of highly variable but generally drying conditions between roughly 8,000 and 7,000 years ago. Another drying trend took place after about 5,000 years ago, leading to today’s parched environment.”
The researchers determined where surface water was once present by using radar images of the desert taken from space. “This information was essential because archaeologists need to focus their efforts near ancient rivers, lakes and springs, where people used to congregate due to their basic need for water,” said Dr White. “We found large quantities of stone tools around the ancient water sources, indicating at least two separate phases of human occupation.”
The earliest humans in the area were Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, who lived in the Fazzan between about 400,000 and 70,000 years ago. A prolonged arid phase from about 70,000 to 12,000 years ago apparently drove humans out of the region, but then the rains returned – along with the people. Around 5,000 years ago the climate began to dry out again, but this time people adapted by developing an agricultural civilization with towns and villages based around oases. This process culminated with the emergence of the Garamantian society in the first millennium BCE.
Professor Mattingly said: “We have been given a completely new view of this elusive and remarkable society. The Garamantes were known to the ancient Romans as a race of desert warriors, but archaeology has shown they had agriculture, cities and a phenomenally advanced system of water extraction that kept their civilisation going for 1,000 years as the land was drying up around them.” They cultivated a variety of high-grade cereals, such as wheat and barley, and other crops such as date palms, vines, olives, cotton, vegetables and pulses. As the Saharan climate began to dry out they drew their water from a large subterranean aquifer (an underground bed of rock that yields water) and transported it through a network of tunnels.
“The gradual drying up of springs and dessication of the surrounding landscape must have seemed ominous, but the Garamantes knew they had to develop sophisticated methods to cope with it. But even this remarkably adaptable society – one of the first urban civilisations built in a desert – could not cope forever with a falling water table and intensifying aridity. Sometime around 500 CE, the Garamantian society collapsed and their irrigation system fell into disuse,” Professor Mattingly said.
Source: Innovations report (19 January 2006)
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/001714.html
Comment by Gary Ewell — 20 January 2006 @ 5:23 PM
“I can cite you several examples of top-notch “scientists” crediting breakthroughs in some of their discoveries to dreams or hunches or intuition that they then followed up scientifically”
Yes indeedy. I contend that ALL good science comes from a place scientists don’t like to talk about. Science is subordinate to a greater phenomenon. Where do hypotheses come from, for example?
It’s good to remember where the scientific method itself came from: Decartes came up with it one day in a fevered vision. Having crawled into an oven to get warm, he fell asleep and dreamed of angels.
My whole approach to science, as a professional scientist, changed the day I realised that you can’t prove the validity of scientific method - because to do so, you’d have to assume the validity of scientific method, and that would be self-defeating.
Comment by speedbird — 2 March 2006 @ 7:35 AM
I think you go too far and are inaccurate in characterising the enlightenment as “reactionary”, if by reactionary is meant an attempt to “turn back the clock” and not merely, as is often stated, a “reaction” to a prevailing ideology. It is true that the Enlightenment was a response to the domnance of the Church at the time and was deeply inspired by the scientific revolution which promised another route to knowledge. It is also true that enlightenment thinkers cast as “superstition” all that had gone on before western science, including all “primitive” thought. But at the same time, they promoted the crucially important point that all belief must be subject to rational scrutiny, a belief which is apparently shared by you since you also provide empirical and rational grounds for your ideas. We don’t need to throw enlightenment thought completely out the window because of the excesses and limitations of some of their thinkers and I think it is positively dangerous to advocate a total rejection of enlightenment ideals in a time such as ours, in which the voice of reason is being increasingly drowned out (again) by religious extremisms both at home and elsewhere.
professorfunky@hotmail.com
Comment by Anonymous — 11 September 2007 @ 6:24 PM
Hmmm, I believe Jason does mean reactionary in terms of a “reaction”.
The Enlightenment brought the world a straw man argument that has confused the world ever since: Faith vs Reason. Reason wins that match easily.
And I don’t think it told us to “hold all beliefs up to rational scrutiny” (that’s a severe ethnocentricity), so much as “reductionist thinking is supreme in all ways to integrative thinking”. It seems that in the last few decades, we’ve started to realize the fallacies in that stance.
my 2 cents, take it or leave it….
Comment by jhereg — 12 September 2007 @ 7:48 AM
As jhereg mentions, the Enlightenment was reactionary in that it was a reaction. The problem with reactionary movements is that they’re so concerned with correcting the problems they’re reacting to that they’re prone to overcorrection. As argued in the article, while valuable, science is neither the only nor necessarily the best way of knowing, as the Enlightenment contends. It’s worth noting that when making this argument, Enlightenment authors didn’t prove the value of science scientifically (as speedbird pointed out, that’s impossible), but instead adopt the language of preachers and evangelists, because the unthinking, absolutist rhetoric that has surrounded science since the Enlightenment isn’t science. It’s really quite unscientific; it is, in fact, simply a profession of epistemological faith.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 September 2007 @ 9:29 PM