Knowledge on Trial
In my visits as a ‘townie’ to the Princeton University Art Museum, one painting, ‘The Death of Socrates’, never fails to grab me. Attributed to Jacques Louis David and his studio, this work dramatizes Plato’s account of the moment before his great teacher drinks a fatal cup of poison — the punishment required by his conviction at trial in Athens. The painting in Princeton is a copy of the original, which hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In both versions, David fudged details such as who was there and how old they would’ve been, but the power of his image endures: the sorrow and grief felt by Plato and the others at the death of “the best and wisest man he had ever known.” The sense of the work is that in that moment society killed a pioneer of knowledge, a person Emily Wilson described as “a man who spoke truth to power…who believed in a life devoted to the search for truth.” David illustrates a tragedy that is not just for Socrates and his friends but because of its rejection of knowledge tragic for all of humanity.
Like many others, knowledge matters to me; indeed figuring out how to generate, transfer, and share knowledge effectively was my career before retiring earlier this year. From an early age, the good nuns (and the other ones) taught me to value it, the Jesuits insisted on my mastering it, and so many others along the way persuaded me to keep searching for knowledge, to keep getting better answers to questions, or even admitting that there are no answers available. Socrates’ trial and death reflects those same concerns; of course, on a much grander scale. If we can trust the account of Xenophon, another disciple of Socrates and historian of that era, part of what convicts his mentor is the insistence on choosing knowledge over other forces in society. Accused of corrupting the youth of Athens by this instruction, Socrates defended his actions by not only admitting that he might have more influence over his pupils than their parents, but by also suggesting “when it comes to their health, people trust doctors rather than their parents. And in the meetings of the Assembly, I’m sure that all Athenians trust the ones who speak with the most intelligence rather than their own relations.” For Socrates, superior knowledge should count in deciding who we heed even as we beware those holding expertise in one area who attempt to claim a pervasive wisdom. That sense has guided many of us in our work and personal lives right into this century.
Further, Socrates argued that “it was the duty of man to learn whatever the gods had enabled men to do through learning, and to try to ascertain from the gods by augury whatever was obscure to men.” This appreciation of our responsibility to increase knowledge where we can, and to acknowledge uncertainty where it exists might seem obvious, but the jury hated it in Athens. For them, Socrates’ guilt stemmed in part from insisting on everyone’s right to pursue and portray knowledge as an element more important than personal opinions and biases. Despite or perhaps even because of this temporary victory by those citizens, the pursuit of knowledge, learning, and truth became even more important to people and their societies even though the tension between those who insist on hampering knowledge and those who champion it has never ceased.
Currently in these United States, knowledge is enduring its most critical trial, the culmination of a thousand thousand smaller accusations, indictments, and injunctions. The principle that knowledge constitutes a fundamental resource has suffered disregard previously in events as disparate as vaccinating kids and brokering mortgages: knowledge spurned and subverted when it should aid our sensemaking, inform our decisions, and guide our actions has led to building on floodplains and getting involved in land wars in Asia . Now a sizable contingent of fellow citizens contends more directly that knowledge is bunk: falsified, skewed, and distorted reality. Of course, there are useful differences of opinion as in Socrates’ time about what is justified and what is fallible in what anyone represents as knowledge. That dialogue is the crucible out of which better knowledge should emerge. The present attack on knowledge does not come with these credible, provable (or falsifiable) alternatives. Instead a hodgepodge of instincts and interests, conspiracies and cabals, stands for the prosecution.
The crowd in Athens didn’t trust Socrates, an odd duck who challenged rather than coddled, whose irony as Emily Wilson noted could come across as “superior or arrogant” to his contemporaries. The original ‘pointy headed Professor’ who drank red wine stuck out as an elitist even though he walked through the market, served as a soldier, and exercised in the gymnasium like others. At least part of the crowd in America doesn’t trust knowledge or its pointy-headed purveyors. Despite consequences at times fatal, resistance to the facts of our situation rages as feverishly as the virus itself, ‘the invisible enemy’.
As all leaders tell us, we eventually will ‘beat’ COVID-19. But beating the rap that a number of otherwise decent fellow Americans are pinning on knowledge will be much more difficult. I know this on a small scale from being a Chief Learning Officer at Educational Testing Service for almost twenty years: even there very smart people like my colleagues (and less smart ones like myself) had trouble overcoming cognitive biases and reactive emotions in order to stop ‘downloading’ outdated mental models,. Everyone finds it challenging to dislodge previous knowledge, and accept new information Whether that’s at the kitchen table, the conference room, or the cafeteria during a PTA meeting . But the current blitzkrieg against knowledge may now threaten the long-term health of the Republic and that requires every part of society taking on the causes of this condition.
Two factors complicate greatly such a defense: lack of both trust and education among many of those who denounce knowledge. Engendering the trust that is necessary for shared knowledge is a conundrum in an environment where assumptions of bad-faith lead to presumptions of fake news. Acting as if Socrates was right when he said it was “the duty of man to learn”, we can talk for the umpteenth time about education as the answer, but we are in this fix in part due to a decades long slide in the skills of American students that (according to the most recent Nation’s Report Card) sees only twelve percent of 12th graders now at or above proficiency in US history, and about two thirds of students in fourth grade through high school graduation below proficiency in reading. We are already behind the eight ball in so many ways because so much of what we have tried with these two causes of the assault on knowledge has not worked.
With those complexities in mind, signing up for this defense must not be just devising clever ads or clickbait banners. There has to be a better strategy than the current response of mutual assured derision on Twitter. This suit against knowledge has deeper stronger roots: as Michiko Kakutani wrote, “For decades now, objectivity — or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth — has been falling out of favour.” Tom Nichols eulogized The Death of Expertise what seems a lot longer than three years ago. Yet here we are in 2020 with convoys and conmen celebrating and fomenting… ignorance. We are running out of witnesses and objections in this trial.
Yet the lack of solutions to those facets of this ‘wicked problem’ isn’t as worrisome to me right now as the lack of urgency that people on both sides of our current political and cultural divide seem to feel regarding this kangaroo court for knowledge. Sneering won’t do and declaring this to be someone else’s problem is dangerously short-sighted. Just as all of us must be involved in mounting a defense of our health and our livelihoods, so we must all defend the very idea of knowledge, “The apprehension of fact or truth with the mind.” Disabused of ideas of constant progress and discerning the discontents of many people in a vastly inequal society, we have to figure out how to gain agreement on a few precepts; e.g., evidence matters, nobody knows everything, assuming bad intentions leads to bad endings. Start by sharing or responding to this essay and bring in others who are raising the alarm like David Dunning, Brendan Nyhan, Margaret Sullivan, and Kakutani. Demand elected officials who respect and employ knowledge. Volunteer to tutor in reading. Do something to reach what may be a minority remaining mindful of Sam Adams contention that “…it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen on setting brush fires in people’s minds…”. And if even that fails so that knowledge as a vital element of our healthy democracy goes the way of Socrates, this time the execution will be assisted suicide, one in which we all bear some responsibility.
From 2002 to 2017, T.J. Elliott was Vice President and Chief Learning Officer at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. Working again as a playwright, he is co-author with Joe Queenan of the plays Alms, Grudges, and Genealogy.
