1110 digestion of knowledge

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The Digestion of 'Indigestible Knowledge'

from Richard Ostrofsky

of Second Thoughts Bookstore (now closed)www.secthoughts.com

[email protected]

October, 2011

Readers of my columns over the years may have noticed that 'indigestible

knowledge' is a hobby horse that I ride from time to time most recentlyin my piece of last June, on just that title. My obsession with this problem

stems from a remark by Otto Rank that I stumbled on once, quite a long

time ago. In 1933, in a letter to a friend, he said, "For the time being, I

gave up writing. There is already too much truth in the world anoverproduction which apparently cannot be consumed." In my own

writings, I have used the metaphor ofdigestion instead.

In that June piece I wrote, "It is not simply that people do not knowwhat the experts know, but that they fear and prefer to avoid full

awareness of the general character of current knowledge . . . The 'culture

wars' in the headlines today should not be surprising. They can be seen, Ithink, as a collective thought process on a global scale, trying to digest on

one hand the ineluctable pluralism of the world today, and this new,

disturbing knowledge on the other." It was the bottom-up paradigm of

evolution or more generally, of self-organization especially as applied

in current psychology and neuropsychology and social theory, that Iprimarily had in mind.

But looking back over these columns, I find that I have never saidexactly what 'the digestion of truth' would mean. We have to ask: For

current scientific knowledge to be fully and comfortably digested by

society at large, what would be needed? For today's culture wars to end innegotiated tranquility, what would it take? Two personal thoughts follow.

My first thought is that our habit of using metaphysical arguments

about the existence of God as weapons in the discussion of public policy isa disaster both for policy and for thought. Laws on abortion, recreational

drugs, stem cell research and other contentious matters must reflect the

current state of the body politic as a whole, not the beliefs of the factionthat happens to be in power or to have captured the votes of those inpower. Compromise and "spreading the discontent" are not sell-outs, but

the essence of any working political system. Policy need not really pleaseanyone, but must appease everyone sufficiently to keep the body politicfrom coming apart. In politics more than anywhere, "the best is the enemy
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of the good," because a polarization of society on competing visions of

'the best' makes sensible compromise impossible.

Likewise, confusion on this point renders clear thinking impossible.The famous dictum of Augustine and Anselm that 'one must believe in

order to understand' approaches, but turns away from a deep truth: To

understand anything to approach the matter in a way that will provideunderstanding some paradigm, some point of view, must be deployed in

doing so. That one accepts and uses such a paradigm is indeed an act of

faith, to the extent that other paradigms and points of view are possible.But one has to start somewhere, and inevitably from the place where one

is already standing. This is as much the case for the scientist as for the

Christian saint. Augustine was honest and correct to note that his faith had

led him out of existential confusion to coherence and a degree of clarity.But the choice of paradigm, of starting point, need not be the same for

everyone. In fact, thought makes better progress when it is not bound to a

single paradigm when the elephant of Truth can be approached, usually

by different people, from different angles. It's a mistake to confuse theworking faith that underlies and sustains any kind of serious effort with

the belief that one's assumptions are universally true.Clear thought demands the background of a good paradigm, embraced

in ironic awareness that other paradigms are possible and might even be

better than one's own, especially for some other purpose. Good policy

demands not the victory of some viewpoint over the others but a generalwillingness to live and let live. Society could 'digest' the diverging

paradigms that trouble it today if this point were generally understood.

In particular, nearly all of the current conflict between science andreligion would go away if twin concessions one from each side were

made and widely accepted: Religious types would have to concede that

their beliefs are constitutive myths rather than factual truths. As Carl Jungunderstood and taught, the intent behind every myth is to constitute a

human personality. The purpose of religious faith and practice is and

always was to constitute first a community, and then a whole society. Bycontrast, the purpose of the scientific faith and its practice is to learn what

we can about the world and how it works. These purposes are necessarily

antithetical, because research and critical thought will often call in

question or refute religious beliefs that have been taken too literally. Yetthe adherents to one or the other of these 'magisteria'(as Stephen Jay

Gould called them) need not be enemies.

For their part, science-minded types would have to concede the radicalincompleteness of critical reason as a basis for human lives. This may be

difficult temperamentally, because critical reason is as much an existential

strategy for those who cling to it as faith is for the true believer. But it's aconclusion that science itself especially the sciences of psychology and

anthropology demand. Adult minds need myths as much as children do,


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not just to allay anxieties, but to bind communities together and make the

world intelligible for human habitation. Science cannot do this job and still

be science. Religions must do the job and, for the sake of their ownintellectual integrity and long-term credibility must do it without

repressing what the critical thinkers have learned.

With twin concessions along these lines, our culture wars might be putto rest. What we are witnessing, I believe, is a clash between two

antithetical paradigms: the top-down perspective of a teleological world in

which things happen for a purpose, against the bottom-up perspective of aself-organizing, ecoDarwinian world which comes together spontaneously

as the merely probable (not necessary) outcome of a random process. Both

these perspectives have legitimate uses. Neither is complete on its own.

Each feels an urgent need to defend itself against the other, yet theresulting conflict helps neither. It's time to break this vicious circle, and

there is a feasible way of doing so.

1110 digestion of knowledge

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