Knowledge And Decisions

There are many variations on the two basic ways of verifying ideas, and many combinations of these variations are used — often involving combinations from both systematic and consensual methods of verification in the same argument. For example, a scientific presentation may avoid — indeed, must avoid — unlimited verification of every incidental aspect of its arguments by saying, in effect, “everybody knows” this or that, and getting on with proving the things that need proving.¹ Similarly, beliefs resting essentially on consensual approval — religious beliefs, for example — may also employ logical and empirical techniques, such as the scientific “proofs” of the existence of God, which were common in the eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century, before Darwin. These more or less open combinations present no special problems. A problem does arise, however, when one method masquerades as another — for example, when the results of essentially consensual processes choose to present themselves as scientific, as in the case of much so-called “social science.”

This brief and general sketch of the production of authenticated knowledge from raw, unsubstantiated ideas must be elaborated more specifically in later discussions of economic, legal, and political organizations. At this point, it is necessary to consider — in equally brief and general terms — the amount and kinds of knowledge produced, and the manner in which it is used.

THE QUANTITY OF KNOWLEDGE

It is widely believed that modern society has a larger quantity of knowledge than more primitive societies, that this quantity of knowledge is growing, and that the knowledge “required” for the average citizen to live in a modern society is also growing. Certainly the complex apparatus of modern life is beyond the grasp of most non-modern peoples, past or present. What is not so obvious, but true nonetheless, is that most modern peoples would find it equally — or more — difficult to survive individually in a “primitive” or non-modern world. In short, it is not clear or demonstrable that the total quantity of knowledge differs as between “savage” and “civilized” man. What is more readily established is that the kinds of knowledge possessed by the average inhabitant of the primitive and the modern world are very different, and that each would be at considerable hazard in the world of the other.

Consider a modern civilized man suddenly stranded in a primitive jungle, cut off from modern technology, and unaided by such primitive peoples as might exist in that environment. Although the civilized man might be a well educated individual, working in a complex profession such as accounting or electronics, it is doubtful whether his knowledge would be sufficient to merely sustain his life in an environment where primitive peoples have lived for untold generations. The civilized man might often have a choice of going hungry or eating wild vegetation which could prove either nutritious or poisonous. Finding a safe place to sleep at night would require more knowledge of the habits and capabilities of wild animals than he possessed. Avoiding snake bites, infected water, and predatory beasts would be among his other problems, and ordinary illnesses easily cured in a civilized community could be far more dangerous away from scientific medical knowledge and without the herbal and other folk remedies available to primitive man. In the same environment, the savage could not merely survive, but thrive, producing housing, clothing, and other amenities. But of course the primitive man’s chances of survival if suddenly dropped down in the midst of New York or Los Angeles might also be bleak.