The Problem of Knowledge: An Exerpt

The authenticity of knowledge is a complicated question that has many angles and pitfalls. Throughout the history of the human race, progress has always been looked upon as an upward slope. Scientists and historians will find figures and events in order to validate claims for the present, calling attention to this history as evidence to support their claims. People look back at the path of civilization and attribute inherent qualities to knowledge, viewing the theories that won out as just plain better than those that were dismissed. This view is not only anachronistic but also pollutes the past with the climate of the present.
It is easy for a scientist who is a student of the modern world to look back and claim that Robert Boyle’s theories of experimentation, laboratory and the air pump were inherently better than Thomas Hobbes and his backwards thinking of materialism. However, it is impossible to call any one theory better or worse because these are qualities that humans attribute to knowledge, and, as Shapin and Schaffer discuss in their book Leviathan and the Air Pump, these attributes are inescapably tied to one’s personal, political, social, and religious beliefs. For Hobbes, there is no knowledge that is not political and to pretend otherwise is madness.
When Robert Boyle formulated his ideas on what Natural Philosophy should be, he decided that to worry about causation and origin were pointless, as God had the ability to create an observed effect in many different ways. It was feeble to try and create theories as to the why of things and should fall second to the production of effects in a contained space. In order to do this he came up with an environment that, in theory, would be free of all outside influences. A group of intellectuals would meet and observe an experiment in an effort to prove a “matter of fact”. In Boyle’s mind, this was the aim of Natural Philosophy. Not to concern itself with grand ideas of why or purpose, but simply to prove effects brought about by experimentation. This was the beginning foundation of the laboratory as it is known today. Boyle wanted to use his laboratory and his formation of a vacuum to show that true knowledge can be generated outside of the religious and political realm. He wanted to show that it is possible for people to separate themselves from the personal beliefs in the name of Natural Philosophy. Boyle believed that by limiting Natural Philosophy to these matters of fact, there would be a reduction in the conflict and crisis that would occur. Hobbes could not have disagreed any more.
Thomas Hobbes was a materialist. There was nothing that could not be measured and touched. For him, God was a physical entity that existed somewhere in the universe, just as the soul was an object that could be quantified. From the outset, Hobbes attacked Boyle’s experiments and laboratory because of how far it stayed from what he saw was true Natural Philosophy. He took that air pump that Boyle had developed and pointed out that it could not produce the desired effect, leaking and losing the pressure that would generate the vacuum.1 He used Boyle’s own terminology against him, stating that since the pump could not produce there was no matter of fact.
He used this to tear apart Boyle’s very generation of facts, claiming that the integrity of the experiment as an idea was flawed and could never give any such matter of fact. It was on these grounds that Hobbes stated that Boyle’s methods were not Natural Philosophy at all. 2 All of Boyle’s work, for Hobbes, was also flawed because it relied on the human perception. Hobbes doubted the senses so much that he believed it impossible to actually witness something real. For Hobbes, the laboratory had failed before it began because the witnesses, that would validate the matters of fact, were themselves unreliable. This all further underlined the point that Hobbes repeated throughout his life. Man, in the state of nature, was, and always would be, nasty, brutish and short lived.
For Hobbes, there was very much at stake with Boyle’s methods. Because he was a materialist there could not be such a thing as a vacuum. The fact that something immaterial could exist tore through the core of his beliefs. For Hobbes there was nothing that was not political. There was no such thing as matters of fact. There would never be a laboratory that could separate itself from the outside world. Hobbes only saw this as an avenue for dissention, the thing that he feared the most. Hobbes believed that people could not agree on anything and would eventually turn to killing each other.
For Hobbes it was about staving off disaster and the only way to do that was to have a sovereign, a leviathan, which would have the powers of a god on earth. This sovereign would decide what knowledge was authentic and what was not. Each individual would be free to believe as he saw fit, however there would be a common standard set by the sovereign that all would live by in order to prevent chaos. This was the way things had to be for Hobbes because of intertwining of knowledge with political
and religious beliefs. Boyle responded to Hobbes’ criticism, refining and defending his new found ideas. Boyle tried to construct an image of the experimental process that could withstand the scrutiny of Hobbes and other materialists. He used these attacks as pathways to show how his method could endure the conflict created by dissenting opinions. Shapin and Schaffer point out that Boyle viewed and responded to Hobbes as more of a “failed experimentalist” and not as a colleague that was presenting another way to unveil the mysteries of Natural Philosophy 3.
In doing this, Boyle seems to be barricading himself inside of a fort that he would pass off as inherently superior to Hobbes’ materialism, however it is worth noting the larger role that Hobbes seems to play in the development of what is seen as authentic today. Boyle was forced to adapt to Hobbes’ criticisms and therefore refined the air pump and the experiment. Without Hobbes to counteract and fight against Boyle’s theories, they might have just slipped by unnoticed because of the exclusion of causation and the inability to produce any real matters of fact. By calling attention to Boyle, Hobbes gave the air pump and the experiment the fighting chance it needed to formulate into what we know it as today. This is essence of authentic knowledge and the true process by which humans come to it.
As Hobbes saw it, Boyle’s method did not uncover any ideas of causation and therefore it fell short of what true Natural Philosophy was supposed to be. He saw the Natural Philosopher as kin to the civic philosopher, and although the natural could never be as certain as the civic, there was a correct way to go about the discovery of knowledge that Boyle was straying from. Shapin and Schaffer quote Hobbes in their book as saying, “We cannot from experience conclude … any proposition universal whatsoever” 4. Without causation or explanation of origin, that form of natural philosophy, to Hobbes, is a pointless endeavor.
So where does this lead humanity in the quest for authentic knowledge and who really does have authority to choose what is and is not to be labeled authentic? According to Hobbes, there is no knowledge that is not political. All matters of knowledge and discovery point back to the political machine. The government that is put in place to protect the people from each other should be the source of all authentic knowledge in Hobbes’ point of view. Boyle believed in the society of enlightened thinkers all discerning matters of fact from the experimentation carried out in the isolated environments. He saw the upper class as the witnesses to the world and it was their responsibility to delineate authentic knowledge to the masses. In many ways, the end result of these two solutions is very similar; it only comes back to who has the power to say what is right and wrong. Much in the way Galileo and the church locked horns, Hobbes and Boyle’s biggest disagreement seems to stem from who is given the power to inform the people.
For Hobbes, everyday people could not handle this responsibility. To allow a normal person this authority is to invite dissention into the social system. If a person claims a belief and does not have absolute authority to back it up, others are allowed to disagree with this person. Hobbes saw this as the shortcut to anarchy. People were unable to agree on anything, let alone things as important at authentic knowledge. Hobbes saw Boyle’s method of thinking as only an avenue for other institutions to lay claim to this authority, which by right was the sovereign’s, and this would lead to dissention and civil war.
Boyle proposed that people could, in fact, handle matters of dispute and tried to point to Hobbes’ attack on the air pump as proof. He continued to try and stave off the materialists in his effort to create the perfect vacuum, and, while it did lack a sound structural composition, the witnesses claimed the desired effect was reached. Boyle would suffocate animals inside the air pump in order to prove that there is something that is immaterial, and his witnesses, supposedly from different backgrounds and classes, agreed. Furthermore, by purposefully leaving out any attempt to explain causation, Boyle saw his experiments as divorced from the religious or political implications that came along with it. For Hobbes this did nothing of the sort. In fact, he used it as evidence to the contrary and redoubled his criticism of Boyle and his pointless efforts.
Hobbes saw this as an example of Boyle’s “not real knowledge”. The entire situation was flawed from the start and continued to have problems as it progressed. Hobbes pointed out that his witnesses were not really of different persuasions or backgrounds. All were participating because they believed in Boyle’s method. On top of that, Hobbes doubted the senses so much that the witnesses’ testimonials meant nothing. It was impossible for an individual to discern authentic knowledge with just their site or hearing, hence the need for the true power of the sovereign. This, to Hobbes, was merely people relying on their fallible sensory perception, in order to arrive at a conclusion that had already made before the experiment even took place. In Hobbes’ mind, this further underlined the distrust of the individual and emphasized the need for government.
As previously discussed, Hobbes viewed this air pump as nothing but a window for other institutions to claim authority over knowledge. The leaky, unstable and pointless machine was dismissed by Hobbes because of his materialist beliefs. There was no such thing as vacuum and to try and prove otherwise was a fruitless endeavor, made even more unproductive because of the lack of causation. Boyle was not trying to explain the cause of the vacuum, simply the existence of it, which was the most important and, for that matter, sole purpose of natural philosophy to Hobbes. It is on this point that Hobbes takes the most issue with Boyle.
Simply put Hobbes believed causation was the ultimate goal and Boyle did not. This undermined everything Boyle did. Hobbes would examine the experiment and ask what was the point? Boyle would respond with his “matters of fact”. Hobbes would reply that such a thing cannot exist because of the flawed human senses. Boyle would conclude that “matters of fact” is the purpose of natural philosophy. Hobbes would disagree. Hobbes would not know what to call what Boyle was doing, but it certainly did not have a purpose and even more so it could not be called natural philosophy. However different their methods may have been, both of these thinkers were asking the same question and debating a similar answer. To assign one an inherent quality of being better than the other is to turn a blind eye to what knowledge really is.
This then raises the question of the substance of knowledge. What it is, how humans achieve it and what is authentic knowledge. Hobbes and Boyle would each give their previously stated theories, however these are just their own versions of knowledge. Each man reacts to his experience and adapts to his social construction. Hobbes and Boyle were merely reciting what they knew best because of their social, political,
personal and religious training 5. In this regard Hobbes was right. There is no knowledge that is not political, but it does not stop there. All knowledge that is received by a human being is filtered through these conditions. They will act and react based on these trainings, making it impossible to truly separate the experimentation of life from these constructs. This being the case, it becomes difficult to draw a definitive line around what is authentic knowledge. The present cannot look to the past and point at what is better or worse when it comes to knowledge.
The modern human views the events of history through the individual spectrum of beliefs and conditionings. It is impossible to see the air pump as Hobbes or Boyle would have saw it, just as it was impossible for them to see the importance of their work. The problem of knowledge, the true problem, is that knowledge is an individual experience crafted by the inner workings of the human consciousness. It cannot be shared completely and will never mean the same thing from person to person, this fact is inseparable. All that humans can do is rely on common “matters of fact” in order to interpret the stimulus that bombard the flawed senses every day.
This leads to a conclusion on what authentic knowledge truly is. Just as when Hobbes and Boyle conflicted with each other and as it happens to this very day, authentic knowledge is grown out of the interaction of opposing forces. There is no better or worse, it is simply the sparks that are created when two contrasting ideas come in contact with each other. The product is a fusion of both sides that evolves in order to suite humanity in an attempt at explaining the universe around us.

Horrific

Horrific is my name.. horrific is the sound.. forgotten is the time.. forgotten is the fire.. left to my own devices.. left for fear of wonder.. taken is the mercy.. taken without regard.. forced is the formality.. forced is the compassion.. fellow man be damned.. fellow man can drown.. allow him to feast on his own flesh.. allow the floodgates to open.. ease the blood into the water.. ease is the curse of the new.. cry out for what has NOT been earned.. cry out when what is earned is given.. shake with fear and envy.. shake the hand of your false messiah.. give him your allegiance.. give only what you can take from others.. rob the other of his birthright.. rob me of my peace.. push to let me know you are scared.. push to try and get me to bend.. fall when i push back.. fall into your own filth.. crumble under my scrutiny.. crumble and show the worm of ignorance.. rely on your numbers to help you.. rely on the mob to save you.. bleed and they will turn on you.. bleed when i force your jaw apart.. receive what i give you.. receive the dark god's anger.. choke on the weight of the stone.. choke on the words of lost heroes.. realize the hollow men.. realize the lost generation.. look for the humanity.. look for some sort of sanity.. you will find none.. you will beg for some.. there is none to give.. there will be none for anyone.. cling to your decadence.. cling to your progress.. rape i will call it.. rape without reason or rhyme.. too much is already gone.. too much left without regain.. memory slips from me.. memory that i once treasured.. less and less each day.. less willing to forgive the other.. no more looking the other way.. no more letting it go.. you will be held responsible.. you will answer for your crimes.. consequence will find you.. consequence will open you.. heart torn, still beating the foul reek.. heart without, if you even still have one.. cowardice was your mother.. cowardice feeding your childish impulse.. apathy was your father.. apathy replacing the human in you.. turn from me.. turn away to your parents.. ask them will i stop the pain.. ask them will it be alright.. feel as my lash tears your flesh asunder.. feel as my boot crushes your bones.. beg your parents to stop the pain.. beg them to pull you from the fire.. empty gazes answer your pleas.. empty figures signifying nothing.. they will give you nothing.. they will comfort nothing.. sob as you cry for help.. sob as i twist even harder.. cry out for your mob.. cry for their help in this pain.. watch them cower before me.. watch as they look on from the shadows.. betrayal will serve your thoughts.. betrayal brought from you cowards.. when the flesh is broken and bashed.. when you lay strewn about the ground.. wonder at the loss.. wonder at the light.. glimpse again the forgotten fire.. glimpse the tears of bubbling pitch on my face.. watch my mouth open wide.. watch the song begin.. Horrific is my name.. horrific is the sound.. forgotten is the time.. forgotten is the fire..

Newton's Gift

It was of the greatest consequence for succeeding thought that now the great Newton's authority was squarely behind the view if the cosmos which saw in man a puny, irrelevant spectator of the vast mathematical system whose regular motions according to mechanical principles constituted the world of nature... The world that people had thought themselves living in - a world rich with color and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals - was crowded now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organics beings. The really important world outside was a world of hard, cold, colorless, silent and dead; a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity.