Beyond the Knowledge Crisis

A Synthesis Framework for Socio-Environmental Studies and Guide to Social Change

Debbie Kasper

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030483692
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030483708
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

In the face of complex, interwoven, planet-scale problems, many cite the need for more integrated knowledge—especially across the natural and social sciences. Excessive specialization, they argue, gets in the way of knowing what we know, much less being able to use it to address urgent socio-environmental crises. These concerns, it turns out, go back centuries. This book picks up where most leave off, exploring the history of how we got here and proposing a way forward. Along the way, readers find that the synthesis long called for depends on theoretical advancements in social science. Fortunately, the author argues, we have everything we need to achieve those advancements, thanks largely to the contributions of Norbert Elias. Integrating his insights with history, science, sociological theory, and more, this book neatly packages the upgraded paradigm we need to be able to meaningfully address complex socio-environmental problems and more intentionally shape humanity's collective future.

© The Author(s) 2021

D. KasperBeyond the Knowledge CrisisPalgrave Studies on Norbert Eliashttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48370-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Crisis of the Librarian

Debbie Kasper¹

(1)

Environmental Studies, Hiram College, Hiram, OH, USA

Debbie Kasper

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The greatest crisis we face, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein argued in the middle of the twentieth century,

is not Russia, not the Atom bomb, not corruption in government, not encroaching hunger, nor the morals of the young. It is a crisis in the organization and accessibility of human knowledge. We own an enormous ‘encyclopedia’ which isn’t even arranged alphabetically. Our ‘file cards’ are spilled on the floor, nor were they ever in order. The answers we want may be buried somewhere in the heap, but it might take a lifetime to locate two already known facts, place them side by side and derive a third fact, the one we urgently need. Call it the Crisis of the Librarian. (1952:21–22)

Given the many urgent planet-scale problems we face—global climate change, mass extinction, and persistent social conflict, to name just a few—it may seem strange to call the organization and accessibility of human knowledge our “greatest crisis.” If the world as we know it is ending, is it really appropriate to get all worked up about flaws in our information-organizing systems? Heinlein thought so.

He didn’t get everything right in his prognostications about the then-mythical year 2000, but he was uncannily alert to the crisis of knowledge. Before computer, internet, and portable wireless technologies came to define our way of life, there was already a widespread sense that something was wrong. Despite the massive amounts of information and knowledge humans have accumulated at ever-increasing rates, and despite our growing abilities to manipulate physical and biological processes for our own ends, we seem to be relatively incapable of dealing with complex social problems, as evidenced by serial wars, ongoing violence, widespread deprivation, and now, global environmental catastrophe.

Assuredly, the trouble is not that we don’t know enough. We know more than ever about how Earth systems work and the havoc human activities are wreaking in them. We have a pretty good sense of what’s necessary to mitigate some of the worst outcomes for humanity and other life forms. We have loads of data about really specific things too, like how much carbon dioxide particular nations, activities, and appliances emit each year on average, rates of increase in ocean acidity, which species are likely to be directly and indirectly affected by certain environmental changes, and so much more. In short, even with all the usual caveats about scientific knowledge being provisional, we know an awful lot.

The current fragmentation of knowledge, however, makes it difficult to even know what we know, much less act on it in meaningful ways. In particular, we lack a clear sense of how to implement the changes we know are needed. This simultaneous knowing and impotence is the real tragedy, the ultimate crisis. If there is to be any hope of overcoming it, we need a more workable system for organizing, accessing, and using what we know. In a nutshell, that’s what this book is about. But before we can move beyond the crisis of abundant yet disconnected specialized knowledge, it’s helpful to have a sense of how we got here in the first place.

Toward Specialization: A Brief History

From the earliest days of formal education, some way of dividing scholarly labor appears to have been indispensable. The curriculum in ancient Greece, for instance, was organized into the language-oriented trivium (consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the math-focused quadrivium (comprised of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). By the late medieval era, these traditional Greek courses of study had become preliminary for education in the professions of medicine, law, and theology. Still, up to this point, the emphasis was on establishing and using a general method of academic inquiry, rather than on discovering new knowledge (Dirks 1996). This was to change in the coming centuries.

The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries brought major shifts in how people viewed the universe and sought knowledge about natural phenomena. Intense scientific activity and associated changes in social thought ushered in what is often called the Enlightenment era, a period of ongoing discovery spanning the mid-1700s to late 1800s. Especially significant was the establishment of a scientific method which prioritized empirical evidence, the role of mathematics, and the accumulation of new knowledge. As humanity’s store of scientific knowledge about the world grew, so did the need to organize it. Thus commenced a period of more intensive specialization in knowledge about particular aspects of reality.

The fact that specialization occurred is not surprising. Less inevitable, though, were the specific forms it took in the academy. One obvious manifestation of this increasing narrowness was the structure of academic disciplines, which gradually took shape within particular social and historical circumstances. Noteworthy among them were the professionalization of scholarly activity (which was formerly viewed as more of a natural gift or religious-like vocation) and the creation of institutional structures in the form of academic departments, journals, societies, and reward systems (Dirks 1996). This is particularly evident in the history of the American university.

Today it is nearly impossible for college students in the United States to imagine their schools without the departments and majors that seem so essential; they might be surprised to learn that this setup was far from normal in the nation’s young institutions. In 1765, for instance, the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) became the first among the nation’s nine chartered universities and colleges, and most of the non-chartered ones, to institute the co-existence of more than one department when it added a medical school to the existing “collegiate.” It was not until 1825 that Harvard created departments, with great resistance from its faculty, and the University of Virginia opened with parallel curricula in seven different departments they called “colleges.”

Following the US Civil War and the combination of discouraging enrollment trends, a desire to remain competitive with European universities, and an increase in available surplus wealth, a period of deep reform in higher education began. Tensions ran high as a result of competing ideas about the purpose of American higher education. While some advocated a unity of knowledge and cultural standards through the liberal arts, others prioritized research and the development of general empirical methods for solving particular problems, and yet another faction viewed practical public service through vocational training as the proper goal of higher education, one that would bridge the gap between lofty academic pursuits and “real life” (Vesey 1965). On top of these competing interests, educational reformers of all stripes had to contend with hostility to higher education from certain sectors. Industrial leaders and ill-educated Americans, in particular, had “little enthusiasm for the foreign, the abstract, or the esoteric” and expressed a general mistrust of bookishness and a skepticism about the material security that an education could bring (Vesey 1965:13).

The eventual success of universities and colleges in the United States came less from winning over an unsympathetic populace than from favorable political circumstances and strategic maneuvers through which promoters of education were able to incentivize the creation of universities across the states. Around 1890, as this period of intense reform was drawing to a close, it seemed that proponents of a unified academic culture, specialized research, and public service were peacefully coexisting, both within and between institutions. This tenuous harmony, however, would soon evaporate as education’s pendulum began to swing in a different direction.

The intellectual wholeness fought for by liberal arts advocates gave way to narrower elective courses of study. Interestingly, champions of research were also critical of this shift, arguing that it led to an excessive smattering, faulty preparation, and cultural amateurism. At the same time, science itself was becoming an object of contention. The word science went from referring to an organized body of information about a subject to an approach to knowledge-seeking that aspired to account for the entire universe. This shift inspired mistrust, especially by those who drew clear boundaries between Nature and Spirit. Ultimately, these tensions resulted in a series of fractures.

Psychology, with a new emphasis on scientific research, split off from the more idea-based philosophy. English was divided into different concentrations—one on culture, via literature, and the other on more empirical philological research. Sociology diverged from economics, which soon underwent its own internal division. Meanwhile, the very idea of topical specialization was reified into rigid academic divisions with the establishment of professionalized disciplinary training in graduate programs.

The first two decades of the twentieth century brough...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Crisis of the Librarian
• 2. Moving Toward Synthesis
• 3. A Science of Human Social Life? Present State, Future Prospects
• 4. Mapping the Territory
• 5. The Medium of Human Social Life
• 6. The Human Condition
• 7. Second Nature
• 8. Actions and Reactions
• 9. The Only Constant
• Back Matter