A Brief History of Knowledge

A Brief History of Knowledge

I will continue here what I started earlier, dwelling on the later stages of the growth of human knowledge.[1]The overall sequence is as follows. First, we have bodily sensations such as pain, pleasure, hot and cold: these may be construed as themselves instances of knowledge of the body, or we can suppose the sensation to be known in some higher-order way. This is self-knowledge, not extending beyond the body’s boundaries. Next, we have knowledge of the world outside the body—material objects in space. This is where the senses come in, i.e., perception proper. Such knowledge is pre-propositional knowledge and has nothing to do with true justified belief. This stage in the evolution of knowledge is complex and multifaceted and evolved over millions of years: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. It might be called distal knowledge, as opposed to the proximal knowledge provided by bodily sensation. Then we reach a quite new stage of knowledge: knowledge of other minds—what is called “theory of mind”. This includes applying the knowledge to one’s own mind. It goes well beyond the knowledge of the previous two stages. What comes next?

Here we reach a watershed, roughly coincident with the rise of humankind. We could aptly describe this phase as “new knowledge” as opposed to the “old knowledge” obtaining heretofore. I am torn between ethical knowledge and linguistic knowledge: which came first? Initially, I thought ethical knowledge came first, but now I lean towards linguistic knowledge, probably with a strong dose of co-evolution. Maybe the rudiments of ethical knowledge were present before language came along (about 200,000 years ago), but language added to that primitive stock of knowledge (e.g., not stepping of other people’s toes). In fact, I have a nice jazzy hypothesis about the crucial transition: with language came the possibility of lying, and on a grand scale; with it a censorious sentiment reared up in the human heart. Not lying was the first true moral edict. And we do find it very deplorable, almost as a reflex—“Liar!” we exclaim, red in the face. Murder, we could tolerate—we do that all the time, to animals and in wartime—but lying we really can’t stomach. Language made lying an ever-present temptation and a common occurrence; it had to be stamped down upon. So, a streak of moralism entered our cognitive nature, which was extended to other no-no’s like stealing and adultery and (yes) murder (especially when lying is involved). And there is an overlap of a constitutive nature: both are “normative”. Both concern what ought to be done and ought not to done; both are evaluative. So, language ushered in a normative type of knowledge, extendable to morality. There are rules, and rules must not be broken. Both are learned from our elders and mark out our distinctive culture. In any case, language and ethics belong together in this middle stage of the long history of knowledge. I count this stage as the major break with the epistemic past, and it corresponds to the man-animal divide. Animals have the old kind of knowledge, but this new kind is alien to them, except in the most rudimentary form. It marks the onset of civilization, which might indeed be defined in terms of the knowledge available. The speaking evaluating animal: he that has the knowledge in question (if you have no ethics and no language, you are a savage). I would add politics at this stage, a type of social cognition—knowledge of how to run societies. Hence, rhetoric and exhortation—the language and tenor of the political animal.

What arrived next? I am going to say aesthetics—natural beauty and works of art. We come to know about what looks good, sounds good, tastes good: that is, we discover painting, music, and the culinary arts. Language and ethics are infused into this new type of knowledge: human culture is formed. This is a massive step forwards (religion is part of it). It builds on what came before, but expands substantially on it. This period goes on for quite a while until the next phase of the march of knowledge: science and philosophy. Now other animals are left far behind, those poor ignoramuses. This scholarly period has its ups and downs, recorded in those bricks we call books: mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, logic, epistemology, metaphysics. The next phase, taking us up to the present day, is the rise of knowledge technology: writing, books, computers, the internet. Now knowledge is no longer stored only in the head; it exists in our artifacts. It has been farmed out.

That is the general shape of the story, but I now want to draw some general lessons. What does history tell us about the dynamics of knowledge and our propensity to acquire it? We can first observe that knowledge moves from the self to the non-self: from me to other beings. It does not confine itself to my inner landscape—my body and its sensations. In this respect it is like life and the universe itself: it gets bigger all the time (the proliferation of species, the expanding universe). Animals tend to get bigger (except under exceptional circumstances). Minds also get bigger as more knowledge is stuffed into them. Correlatively, acquired knowledge tends to be retained: we know what our ancestors knew and then some. Knowledge started small (like a seed) and now it is enormous. It obeys a law of inertia and a law of expansion (like a slow explosion). It is passed on and multiplied. It grows, like a mighty tree. This is not to say that human knowledge inevitably grows; it might even diminish, because offloaded elsewhere. Our technology is the reason: it will contain the knowledge hitherto gathered and might generate more, but we will no longer harbor it. We will become more ignorant as our technology takes over from our brains; we might become ignorant sybarites while our technology takes care of our needs and desires. But the knowledge itself continues to expand even as we dwindle epistemically. Our brains get smaller, not being called upon to contain so much space-filling information (so energy consuming). It might even be that we will go extinct, perhaps wiped out by our machines, while our knowledge continues its ascent. The planet will be brimming with knowledge but with no living organisms to enjoy it (or resent having to acquire it). Knowledge will have taken on a life of its own. Or again, it too may be wiped out by some super-cataclysm, leaving the universe as it was before knowledge ever came into existence—a blank unknowing slate.

The general point is that knowledge is a living evolving thing, a chapter of biology, subject to the same laws; it had a biological beginning, a subsequent growth period, possibly a plateau, and then probably a demise. It might eventually go extinct. It underwent much transformation, happenstance, and vigorous natural selection. It began with self-centered sensation, but evolved into a mighty cognitive beast taking in the whole universe. A lot of animal physiology is designed to enable knowledge; it is a prized evolutionary adaptation. This isn’t to say knowledge is only that; it also has value, intrinsic and instrumental. It is one of evolution’s most impressive achievements. It had humble beginnings, like life itself, but it grew to be so much more—forever expanding into new territories. It is now all over the planet and penetrates every nook and cranny of reality. It seems driven by a powerful force that propels it ever onward and upward. Its history seems preordained. Could it have evolved once in some suitable slimy creature and then disappeared from the face of the earth never to return? That seems unlikely: it was inevitable and no doubt evolved in several locations (convergent evolution). Still, ancient remnants remain, tucked into the brain somewhere, telling tales of things once known and not forgotten. Itches and pains from eons ago are nestled among the most sublime products of human reason. Whenever you know something, you are bringing back traces of the distant past, when cognition breathed its first tentative breaths.[2]

[1] See my “A (Really) Brief History of Knowledge”. This investigation could be advertised as biological history or cultural history or both; I am not much concerned with the question of what is encoded in the genes or part of “culture”. However, it is surely clear that much of it evolved by mutation and natural selection, and hence is innate and instinctual. In fact, I believe that all of the historical divisions I talk about have biological roots and are not merely learned. They are no more learned than the organs of the body are learned.

[2] This kind of biological epistemology strikes me as a healthy addition to the usual epistemological menu. It is a form of Darwinian genealogical epistemology, to be set beside conceptual analysis and the study of particular branches of knowledge. Just as linguistics is really a branch of biology, so epistemology also is. We are born knowers, as we are born speakers (and born moralists). We are genetically programmed to know. Of course, particular items of knowledge are acquired by experience, but the general capacity is inborn (as are certain specific domains). It’s not all a matter of bombardment by stimuli or impressions received. Much the same story could be told about the history of knowing-how (ability knowledge).