Docta ignorantia or why lay people reject science

Why do lay people doubt or outright reject science?  Why do they deny scientific claims such as climate change, evolution, effects of additions on human brain, biological and environmental effects on cognitive abilities, expert findings on the causes of highly publicized disasters etc.? Popular answers circulated by academics and intellectuals stipulate two possibilities: that lay people are either stupid, brainwashed or both.   They either are not as rational as the learned folk are, and thus cannot grasp the intricate complexity of connections that the superior minds can see, or they are consumed by irrational passions, such as bigotry, ideology, or religion that clouds their judgment (“motivate cognition” is the technical term). 

Aside the fact that these “explanations” are self-serving, as they perpetuate the myth of the superiority of the learned folk who circulate these stories, they are not explanations at all.  They are thinly disguised attempts to demonize people who disagree with us instead of a far more intellectually challenging task of trying to understand how those people actually think.  The shortcoming of these explanations become evident when we realize that these supposedly dumb and biased people behave quite rationally in most aspects of everyday life.  Folks who deny the laws of thermodynamics as they apply to the climate, nonetheless accept in any other area of life – they would never deny for example that car interiors or hot houses heat up to a much higher temperature than the outside temperature.  Folks who deny the effects of evolution on the human species, nonetheless rely on those effects when breeding chicken, dogs, horses or plants.  So clearly the lay folks are not as irrational as the university credentialed folks want us to believe.

To solve this puzzle we first need to examine the nature of scientific claims themselves. A good starting point of this inquiry is the times when science as we understand it today, i.e. deductive reasoning based on systematic empirical observations, was struggling and competing for recognition with other forms of human cognition.  Although few people today doubt the ability of science to penetrate and explain the universe, that proposition was not so obvious when science could not claim the accomplishments that the modern science can.  The problem that the learned folk in these supposedly “dark” ages faced was quite real and can be summarized as follows: given the narrow limits of human cognitive capacity and the infinite nature of the subject matter that humans attempt to understand (whether its deity or the nature itself), how can we say that we know anything at all?  There are only two possible solutions of this problem, either reject the possibility of any true knowledge at all, or to claim that true knowledge can be derived from sources other than scientific reasoning. 

The first answer is a non-starter for people who make their living by creating knowledge, so the philosophers naturally opted for the second solution. Thus, the 15^th century German philosopher Nicolas of Cusa claimed that true knowledge must necessarily involve both rational and extra-rational means, a synthesis which he called docta ignorantia (learned ignorance).  Rational in this context means deductive reasoning (especially mathematics), whereas non-rational means are less clear.  In the conventional theological interpretation it is religious faith as laid out and endorsed by ecclesiastic g authorities, but in the mystic tradition it implies a special human capacity of insight or seeing things ‘as they are.’  Thus, the 13^th century Italian philosopher Saint Bonaventure talks about the highest state of knowledge (apex mentis) achieved through spiritual union with deity, while the 17^th century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza identifies this source of highest knowledge as intuition or knowledge derived directly (rather than through deduction) from an adequate idea of attributes of god (or nature, which in Spinoza’s system is one and the same thing).

The critical element here is the belief that knowledge is not based on reason alone, that is, something else is needed to transform reasoning into knowledge.  The particular solutions of what that something is that the philosophers provided are not important, what really matters is the concept of knowledge as a synthesis of the rational (i.e. deductive and empirical) and the non-rational (not to be confused with irrational) components.  With that in mind, it is quite possible to be rational and reject science at the same time.  All one needs to do is to question the non-rational components of scientific knowledge.  This provides a partial answer to our puzzle why otherwise rational lay people sometimes doubt scientific claims.  However, to provide a fuller answer we need to examine what that non-rational component of science is.

The solutions provided by the medieval philosophers – the claim of a special cognitive faculty- have one shortcoming, they all boarder on circular reasoning, or assuming the answer in their premises.  That is, the claim to that special faculty – apex mentis or intuition – is valid only if we assume that we have true knowledge of it, that is, if we assume that we have that special faculty.  So we need to look elsewhere. One promising place is the work of the contemporary French sociologist Bruno Latour who examined the actual process by which science is actually created.

Contrary to how they are presented in scientific literature, scientific facts do not emerge from nature by themselves, they are derived from it by humans.  I use the term “derived” rather than “constructed” to avoid certain misleading post-modernist interpretations of science as a collection purely subjective claims.  Such views are a modern version of the first answer to the medieval question about the possibility of knowledge – that no objective knowledge exists.  We reject that interpretation because it is self-contradicting, as it necessarily implies its opposite – that at least one claim about the subjectivity of knowledge is objective.  But I am digressing.

Latour’s work focuses on the process of the derivation of scientific facts.  This process starts with claims made by people who engage in scientific research.  Claims are not facts until they are accepted as facts by the scientific community.  Today, we may consider the Earth orbiting the Sun to be the fact, but it was anything but a fact in the Middle Ages when the ‘established fact’ was that every celestial body orbits the Earth.  What is more, that medieval “fact” was what everyone could see with their own eyes whereas we do not see the modern fact of Earth orbiting the Sun.  So in the period of a few hundred years, a fact ceased to be a fact and became an unsupported claim, and another claim about the very same reality became a fact.  How did that happen? 

Latour’s answer to this question is: by a social process of convincing sufficient number of people that a claim made by a researcher is, in fact, a fact.  The initial research claim if far from being a fact. It can go unnoticed and soon be forgotten, it can be contested by others and rejected, or it can be examined by others and eventually accepted as fact, if enough scientists accept its validity.  It is therefore clear that the acceptance of others is a critical element of establishing facts, that is, modern knowledge. Although evidence plays a critical role in that process, procurement of that evidence itself requires convincing  others.  It is so, because the procurement of evidence requires considerable resources, research funds, laboratories, research programs, expeditions that involve many people – those who control the resources necessary to finance these endeavors, and those who are willing to engage in those endeavors rather than in other less risky pursuits.  The bottom line is that science is produced by a group of people collaborating with each other in different capacities on establishing or ‘deriving from nature’ scientific facts.  Stated differently, the production of science has two components – one rational based on empirical observation and deductive reasoning and one social (i.e. non-rational) based on collaboration of people involved in the process of establishing or deriving facts.

Latour describes this social element of modern knowledge as a “network” – which implies a relatively small number of individuals, including scientists, sponsors, promoters, publicists, or implementers, all of whom have stakes in the success of a particular research program.  This implies the existence of efficient means of communication among network members, which means not having to explain anew what has been already accepted or “stock knowledge” in sociological lingo, using specialized technical language or jargon , and knowledge of what other members of the network are doing.  The “network” concept also implies that the group of involved individuals is spread and embedded in different socio-cultural settings that are not a part of their networks, including family members, neighbors, communities, countries. 

This social division between scientific networks and broader communities in which these networks are embedded explains, in my view, the roots of the rejection of scientific claims by the lay public, or certain segments of that public.  There are two inter-related elements of that explanation – one linked to communication and the other one to power relations. 

The communication element is linked to a difficulty that members of scientific networks have in communicating with non-members.  One aspect of that difficulty is the specialized technical language or jargon that non-members may not understand.  But a more critical aspect is what sociologists call ‘stock knowledge’ or knowledge that members of a particular social group treat as self-evident and accepted on faith without further proof.  One of the most important insights of Latour’s work is that scientists accept most scientific facts on faith, without further proof.  This is, of course necessary, because current science is based on vast amount of previous research already accepted by the scientific community or assumed as valid in building scientific instruments.  No researcher has the time or expertise to verify each of these previous claims anew, and any attempt to do so would not only distract him from his current research but also cast doubt about his knowledge of science. 

This may be obvious to members to scientific networks, but not necessarily to the lay public.  When scientists communicates something as a “fact” they assumes that there has been a long and arduous process of establishing this fact, claims and counter-claims, evidence and counter-evidence and increasingly greater number of scientists accepting the claim until it has become accepted as “fact.” An individual scientist may not be familiar with all the specifics, but she knows that this is the process and no claim would be considered a “fact” in scientific community if it did not successfully went through this process.  But that ‘stock knowledge’ of scientific networks gets lost in translation in communication with the lay public.  The lay public does not know the process by which a claim becomes a fact in scientific discourse.  All they see is claims accepted on faith or at best by reference to opinion of other people.  Those other people are, of course, scientists who provided the evidence, but members of the general public do not know that.  All they hear is that some guy the scientist knows says it is true, which is indistinguishable from claims made by some guy on the internet.

Scientists themselves have difficulty communicating the results of their research to non-scientists because they have very little practice doing it.  They communicate mainly with other scientists and do not need to justify their ‘stock knowledge.’  So if someone starts questioning that stock knowledge, they become annoyed as the subjects of the well-know ‘breaching experiments’ of the sociologist Harold Garfinkel, in which the experimenter deliberately questioned commonly accepted social norms and understanding.  As a consequence of such lay questioning, the scientists become defensive and dismissive, which the lay persons see as arrogance and patronizing.

The power relation element is linked to the fact scientific networks are frequently linked to power networks.  Not only people who occupy positions of power in a society are often members of scientific networks as sponsors, but the scientific research is used as an instrument of power.  Policy decisions are ostensibly based on scientific studies – for example, authorities may implement or refuse to implement a project claiming studies showing  supposed economic or environmental impact.  But more importantly science is directly linked to power exercised by elite over commoners.  The so called ‘scientific management’ or Taylorism was a deliberate tool to control and discipline workers.  Information technology is routinely used for the same purpose – to scrutinize, to discipline, and to punish.  Last but not least, social science, psychology and economics are widely used to discipline workers, manipulate and defraud consumers, to deny access to education or public services, to justify discrimination, and to spread political propaganda.  The “science” behind this research and surveys is often flimsy or outright fraud, but does not stop it from being used as a policy instrument. 

It does not take an Ivy League PhD to see a connection between science and exercise of power by the elite.  The general public may not be able to properly debunk the flimsy assumptions and procedures underlying this science, but they clearly see that science is being used against them.  So they have every reason to reject these claims regardless of their scientific merits or lack thereof.  Far from being irrational stubbornness in accepting the facts, this rejection is a rational and very sensible reaction against uses of science as an instrument of class war.

So next time you hear some smarty-panty PhD pontificating about stupid people denying science, you may tell him that it is the karma of the Brahmin and the pundit class.  Not only do they fail to communicate what they know but they prostitute it in the name of power and profit.  People see through their bullshit and react rationally to it, and the expertocracy should be thankful for that.  Had they been less rational, they would have brought guns and pitchforks to the conversation. 

Review of Thomas Frank, "Listen Liberal"

In this book the author takes another stab at one of the biggest paradoxes of American politics – why the political parties in the US do not represent the interests of their largest constituencies.  The short answer that Frank gives to this question is “betrayal of the working and the middle classes” by the leadership of both parties.  His previous work that gained international recognition, “What is the Matter with Kansas?” explores the process of capturing the “angry white voters” by the Republican Party leaders by manipulating anti-elite feelings (anti-liberal elite, to be more exact) of this group of voters.  In this book, he extends his exploration to trace how that group of voters was pushed away from the Democratic Party that used to represent their interests under the “New Deal” arrangement. 

Frank traces the roots of this process to the Vietnam War era struggles, when the anti-war protests created a rift within the party between the pro-war blue collar labor and their unions and the anti-war students and intellectuals.  The loss of the 1968 election to Richard Nixon sent the Democratic Party leadership on a long soul searching quest, in which the new social forces represented by professional and academic elites wrestled the control of the party from the labor unions and tied it to the socio-economic classes created by the “New Economy” – financial professionals and information technology specialists.  This process was finalized by Clinton administration that performed one of the most spectacular turn-arounds in modern American history –the open abandonment of social protections favoring the poor and passage of the free trade agreement that eliminated large number of well-paying blue collar jobs (which the Clinton administration called “counter-scheduling”) coupled with deregulation of financial markets that opened the door for financial speculation, and massive subsidies for “innovation economy,” that is, information technology and big pharma.

These policies continued under Obama administration, which abandoned the campaign promise of “hope” for the notion of “pragmatism,” which according to Frank is a subterfuge masquerading policy choices favoring the elites as historical or technological inevitability.  Despite his pro-working and middle class rhetoric, Obama filled his administration with experts of one particular mold – graduates of elite universities.  In sharp contrast to FDR, who picked experts from various backgrounds, often representing unorthodox opinions, Obama’s “expertocracy” was the paragon of professional orthodoxy and right thinking.  Frank explains this selection of experts by Obama, and Clinton’s, own personal histories – both men were of humble origins and propelled to the top of social hierarchy by elite university education.

Social science explanations of historical evens range between two polar opposites – voluntaristic and deterministic.  The voluntaristic narratives, also known as “great men history”, attribute the causes of the events they try to explain to the preferences and choices made by individuals, especially those in leadership positions.  The deterministic narratives, by contrast focus on impersonal factors – institutions, international relations, modes of production, natural events and the like that set the stage and define the roles for individual actors to play.  Of course, in reality both factors must be taken into account.  As Karl Marx aptly observed “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

Frank’s narrative falls on the voluntaristic side.  His explanation of why the Democratic Party does not represent the interests of its largest constituency is grounded in the moral judgment of its leadership.  The judgment that prefers “meritocracy” or social hierarchy built on the claim to superiority based on (actual or claimed) knowledge to social solidarity, which is the underlying principle of organized labor. The remedy that Frank offers is voluntaristic as well – it explicitly denies the possibility of any change in the US political party structure and calls for a moral transformation of party leadership consisting in the abandonment of the sense of moral superiority linked to college credentials. 

For someone who spent his entire adult life in the academia, Frank’s analysis certainly rings true.  This institution is filled with “stuffed shirts” who raise to the top by becoming adept in what passes for “right thinking” at the moment, hiding their lack of originality under obscure technical jargon, and collecting handsome rent from their credentials, titles, and positions.  Allowing this bunch near the halls of power can indeed be risky.  As William F. Buckley quipped “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”  Yet this moral explanation and moral remedy that Frank offers is somewhat disappointing when we consider the fact that similar transformations occurred in socialist and social democratic parties in many European countries as well.  This coincidence cannot be simply explained by the change of heart of the people leading those parties.  We must look into the structural determinants.

What structural elements are missing from Frank’s narrative, then?  One clue can be found in his bibliography – despite impressive documentation of his claims, his bibliography misses a rather obscure work by Walter Karp titled “Indispensable Enemies”.  This book attempts to answer the same question as Frank’s work does – why the US political parties do not represent the interests of their constituents – but the answer it provides emphasizes the structure of the party system rather than preferences of their leaders.  Karp’s explanation is a variant of what is known as Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” which in essence claims that the leadership of an institution is first and foremost concerned about its own power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.  In case of US political parties, the party bosses are more concerned with keeping their control of their respective parties than with winning elections, and they tacitly cooperate by excluding any challenge to their leadership by dividing up their respective turfs in which they maintain their respective monopolies.  Paradoxical as it may sound, such behavior is well known outside politics where it is referred to as oligopoly or niche seeking. 

Karp’s thesis offers a much better explanation of the abandonment of the working class and middle class constituents by both parties than the preference for meritocracy claimed by Frank.  Even from Frank’s own account of the Democratic Party’s ‘soul searching’ in the aftermath of Humphrey’s defeat in 1968 it is evident that that the emerging party leadership was not afraid of losing a series of elections (McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis) before they could cement their hold on the party under Clinton.  Clearly, a party whose leadership’s main goal is to win elections would not make such a cardinal mistake as losing elections for 20 years by abandoning their core constituency.  Likewise, Obama’s abandonment of the “hope” promise led to a spectacular loss of both houses of Congress and numerous state legislatures, but that did not persuade the party leadership to change the course.  Au contraire, they are determined to keep the course and undermine any challenge to the party leadership (cf. Sanders).  This is not the behavior of a general who wants to win a war (cf. Robert E. Lee), but of one who wants to keep his position in his own army (cf. George Brinton McClellan).

Taking into account Karp’s explanation of partisan politics would also offer a far more dramatic finale for Frank’s book.  Instead pleading for a moral change in the existing party leadership, a more effective solution would be to replace that leadership with a new one by using the same gambit of counter-scheduling as Clinton did against labor, and voting against Hillary Clinton in November.  That would surely result in the electoral loss for the Democrats in the coming election, but it would certainly help to wrestle the control of the party from the leaders who “betrayed” their main constituents.  Perhaps this is not the road that Frank, and many life-long Democrats for that matter, are willing to travel, but it certainly makes a better and more uplifting story - one that gives the downtrodden masses, whose side Frank takes, a promise of doing something about the problem instead of pleading their superiors, hat in hand, for a change of heart. 

The Future of "Bernie Revolution" From a Historical Perspective

Whether Bernie’s run for the Democratic Party nomination has started a revolution or will soon be forgotten ultimately depends on its ability to form alliances with social groups outside the Democratic Party orbit.  This means forming alliances with groups that liberal Democrats love to disparage: Tea Partiers, religious groups, Trump supporters, militias and kindred anti-establishment groups.  Paradoxical as it may sound, forming alliances that cross over socio-economic class lines is a key to a successful social movement, and eventually a successful social revolution.

To successfully challenge the status quo, a movement needs to effectively challenge the existing power structures underlying the status, even if that challenge is initially defeated. Take for example the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya in the 1950s. It was brutally defeated by the Brits, leaving a really dark spot on the British history comparable to Nazi war crimes.  The fact that the Brits have not been tried for their war crimes in Kenya illustrates Herman Goering’s line in Nuremberg that international justice is but victors’ justice.  But I am digressing.  The important lesson of the Mau Mau Uprising is that it challenged the colonial power structures to the point that a few years later the Brits gave up their colonial rule in Kenya, which led to the country's independence.

One of the key elements underpinning British colonial rule in Kenya was ethnic divisions of the indigenous population, intentionally exacerbated by the colonial administration.  The Mau Mau Uprising started as a rebellion of the rural Kikuyu groups forced off the land by the white settlers, but eventually started to form alliances with the nascent urban working class. Although Mau Mau failed to bridge the internal ethnic divisions and were eventually defeated in the battle fields, their sent a signal to the British colonial administration that if the business as usual continues, the Brits will not be able to hold for long and the country may go Communist. So they decided to support more moderate Kenyan nationalist factions led by Jomo Kenyatta instead, and eventually conceding to Kenya’s national independence shortly after suppressing the Mau Mau Uprising.

A similar lesson can be learned from the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King. The movement was tolerated and even revered by the white liberal establishment until MLK started emphasizing the class dimension of Black poverty. That challenged the fundamental power structure of the US society - the rule of the "market" and resultant class stratification. Consequently, MLK got assassinated, nominally by a right wing lunatic while the white liberal establishment was looking the other way.

To be sure, the success of Kenya’s nationalists and US Civil Rights movement was aided by international power struggle aka ‘Cold War.”  The “specter of Communism haunting the world” was real and Western bourgeoisie really feared it.  They were ready to make some concessions to moderate social movements stave off more radical ones.  Once that specter faded, so did the willingness of the bourgeoisie to compromise. 

However, the lesson from these past struggles is that to pose a successful challenge to the status quo power structures, a protest movement must counter the divide and rule policies through which these power structures maintain their hegemony.  Liberal identity politics based on socio-demographic characteristics: women, Blacks, Whites, gay, religion etc. is a part of that divide and rule strategy that underpins the neoliberal hegemony of the "free" market.  This identity politics redefines the social effects of the market system as the effects of individual failures: lack of proper education or work ethics, prejudice, ignorance and the like.   

Although fringe radicals never ceased to emphasize the centrality of social class and the market in the system of inequality and exploitation, the mainstream liberals remained willingly oblivious to it in favor of their infatuation with identity politics memes.  Bernie Sanders is the first mainstream political figure that reintroduced the centrality of capitalist markets and socio-economic class to the mainstream political discourse.  Even his liberal detractors noticed that, and got pretty much scared by it I suppose.  But Bernie did something of far greater importance for a successful revolution – he started crossing identity politics divisions reaching out to groups typically shunned by liberal Democrats, such as white working class, Christian groups, or even gun owners or at least refusing to alienate them if not actually courting them). 

This explains why the establishment, especially the liberal establishment, is so hell bent to defeat Bernie’s challenge.  Liberal Democrats play the role the Kenyan natives fighting alongside the British against the Mau Mau insurgents.  Or to use an analogy that is closer to home – quislings collaborating with enemy to help it conquer their own country. 

To make a difference, Bernie’s revolution needs to credibly challenge the tyranny of the "free" market and its intimate connection to power. The key word here is credible, as in credible threat. A bunch of middle class kids engaged in identity politics are not credible threat to the status quo, not even close, whereas a bunch of dispossessed peasants joining forces with urban workers in Kenya posed such a credible threat to the oligarchy. It follows that to credibly challenge the neoliberal hegemony, Bernie’s revolution must effectively undo the years of divide and conquer identity politics that brought this hegemony in the fists place.  This means forming strategic alliances with groups traditionally disparaged shunned by liberal Democrats – white working class supporting Trump, Christian groups, militias and similar anti-establishment groups.

I am not, of course, suggesting converting members of these groups to the liberal or radical leftist faith, force them to abandon their core values and beliefs in favor of ours, or engage in any other form of morality play.  What I suggest instead is that instead of trying to convert them – try to DO something with them instead, something that will further common political and economic interests.  I do not need to believe in the supernatural or in the magic effects of guns on public safety to work with church goers and gun owners to save my town from flood or tornado.  In such situations, people set aside their ideological differences and work together to secure what is best for their interest.

At this point, the common interest of people who work for a living, instead of collecting rent form their social position and status (investors, CEOs, experts, superstar professionals and academics, etc.), is to break the neoliberal hegemony that threatens their living standards.  However, to effectively fight that hegemony, people who work for a living need an “army” i.e. a political party.  At this point, they do not have such a party, because the system is monopolized by two parties that are controlled by neoliberal factions service the interests of the neoliberal elite that lives off collecting rent from their social position and status.  This means that either a new party should be created or the neoliberal elite in both parties taken away from the helms of both parties.

What does it men in practical terms?  What is to be done?  The long term strategy should involve what in social movement literature is called “frame bridging” or forming tactical alliances with groups that may not share the movement’s ideology, but share some of its goals – groups that are typically shunned by liberal Democrats This may include different anti-establishment players in different regions, Christian groups, veteran groups, gun owner clubs, libertarians, even militias – as long as everyone is willing to cooperate to achieve common objectives while respecting each other ideological differences.

The short term strategy, in turn should involve not resisting challengers to the neoliberal hegemony that comes from different sides. In this election year, Trump is clearly a challenge to the neoliberal hegemony, so it makes sense for those who take Bernie’s revolution seriously not to interfere with that challenge, even though they may feel revolted by what he says on the stump.  Sort of like Americans and Russians disliking each other but not interfering with each other’s military operations against ISIS.  A logical consequence for Bernie’s “revolutionaries” is to vote for ANYONE BUT CLINTON should she gets the Democratic Party nomination.  This means the typical approach of holding one’s note and voting for the lesser evil – in this instance Trump – or for those who do not have the stomach for such strong odors – voting for Jill Stein.  To be sure, Jill has not chance of winning the election, but she has the power of leveraging the opposition to neoliberal elite in the Democratic Party.  However, the benefit for voting for Jill Stein instead of Trump is that that it creates a visible public record of opposition against neoliberal elite in the Democratic party, instead of wasting that vote by voting for Trump or not voting at all. 

The ANYONE BUT CLINTON vote is the move that makes most tactical sense for Bernie’s “revolutionaries” – so do not waste that opportunity.  Do not be duped by liberal quislings in the Democratic Party.  Do not support collaborators with your class enemies.  Make alliances with forces that challenge your class enemies, or their quislings in both parties.