Thoughts on the decline of knowledge.

History: l think that there are many ways you could write history and that in the way that you do (perhaps by highlighting the feats and qualities of those in power or perhaps by detailing the eccentricities of ten randomly chosen citizens), you end up inevitably expressing certain value judgments regardless of how indifferent the historian claims to be.  (Value judgments are figments of authority on how you should live your life.  For example, the historian writing "France had secular universities and France was a prosperous nation" might be more honestly rewritten, "we ought to have secular bodies of knowledge because they account for greater prosperity.)

Astrophysics and authority: People are constantly looking for one thing that has several names and that one thing is called meaning/purpose/authority/authenticity.  For example, in astronomy, man takes the assumption that what happened first must have authority on what happens second, what happened second must have authority on what happens third, and so on.  (Let's name this authority in causality.)  Therefore, they find it reasonable to look back as far as they can, at which point they theorize the big bang.  The desire behind examining the big bang is as follows.  The big bang set up the initial conditions and then the course of the universe is carried out based on these initial conditions.  Astronomers attempt to extract the rules or laws expressed in the initial conditions of the big bang; they are searching for the laws fundamental to this authority. (In other words, they are searching for the "the authority" of the authority.)  In finding the authority and the laws expressed by that authority, astronomers can then hope to become an authority, to gain control, and be able to adapt and manipulate matter based on an understanding of these laws.  Perhaps this can be labeled the Oedipus complex of science.  (Generously, though causing nausea, I hope their psyches are utterly shattered by the realization of lacking an "absolute" starting point.  e.g. Kurt Gödel with a hammer annihilating the proclaimed "absolute" status of the Principia Mathematica.)  Why are people petrified at the thought of lacking authority, or at the notion having to take responsibility and create that authority from themselves?

(excerpt from the Principia Mathematica)

Epidemiology: Why was Christianity so successful?—Christ dies and takes responsibility for the sins of others; the others accept the self-flagellating guilt of being indebted; the self-flagellating wave their wounds around inculpating the healthy.  Even if the myth and metaphors of Christianity become unfashionable, the values of Christianity (man serves society, humility, confession) can survive and persist by being carried over into the institutions of today.  

Free Will: Your ability to make a choice pends on you knowing that there is one.

(Yes, this statement intentionally fails to capture all the "pending" conditions and only mentions a single, necessary condition.  The statement also does not define what is "you".  For that I would turn to Hesse who writes in Steppenwolf, "Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads.")

Primacy: I think that philosophy is fundamental to all knowledge just like 'mathematical logic'/'axiomatic set theory'/'proof theory'/'model theory'/'recursion theory'/'the study of the foundations and methods of mathematics'/'philosophy of mathematics' might be considered fundamental to mathematics.  Therefore, if you do not question "who or what social or mental faculty is the source" or "authority" in your "decision making", you may not become aware of alternate ways of living your life, you may not become aware of alternative "authorities" on how you should live.  (Furthermore, you may never approach the notion of taking responsibility.  Additional points of thoughts: instincts are a source of authority for they dictate your actions/man sees punishment differently when there is intention perceived in a crime than when a man pleads insanity and attempts to renounce self-control.)

The right to ask questions about knowledge is reserved to those of authority on knowledge: the sophists, the "wisest".  Socrates, the dialectician, gave the sophists a bad reputation through the way he described the sophists as deceiving rhetoricians in the Platonic dialogs.  But I think it is important to emphasize that Socrates asked several inappropriate, objective questions like "what is virtue?" "what is beauty?" "what is knowledge?"  The inappropriateness of these questions is evident in how the Greeks were accustomed to answering the questions; they would instead respond to Socrates by replacing his question with a question they were accustomed to: "who designates virtue?" "who represents beauty?" "who is the authority on knowledge?"  Ever since Socrates the ape's bad manners have infected thought, the ill spirit of indifference and objectivity has contaminated knowledge.  In the dialog, following custom, Socrates usually proceeds to say something like: if we want to learn something about horses, then we go to the horse breeder; if we want to learn something about virtue, then we don't go to those deceiving sophists, we come to me, Socrates, the dialectician.  Through asking "what" questions and hiding behind the spirit of indifference, Socrates tried to make himself the authority in regard to knowledge by attempting to confuse though finally infuriating passerby, level-headed Greeks.  I'm not entirely certain as to why the Platonic dialogs are found in every bookstore, and yet why only fragments of the sophists remain---Its sad.  Ah yes, for example, noticing the great indifference in claiming to want a Platonic relationship is not without its suspicious connotations.  

superstitious 

c.1386, from O.Fr. superstitieux, from L. superstitiosus, from superstitionem (nom. superstitio) "prophecy, soothsaying, excessive fear of the gods," perhaps originally "state of religious exaltation," related to superstes (gen. superstitis) "standing over or above," also "standing by, surviving," from superstare "stand on or over, survive," from super "above" (see super-) + stare "to stand," from PIE base *sta- "to stand" (see stet). There are many theories for the L. sense development, but none has yet triumphed. Superstition is attested from 1402. In Eng., originally especially of religion; sense of "unreasonable notion" is from 1794.

(http://www.etymonline.com/)

I particularly like sense in which superstition means "prophecy" for when you 'associate two categories', "wearing my lucky hat" = "doing well on test", you essentially make a prophecy about future situations.  I want to add that this is in defense of showing that superstition in science and religion are the same; these are different bodies of knowledge that differ predominantly because they have different restraints on that same superstition.  

Note: The experiment in which a panel that electrocuted fruit flies held food.  It would take ten attempts for a fruit fly to learn not to take food from that panel.  Geneticists found a gene in fruit flies that enhanced memory and they created a new batch of fruit flies with "photographic" memory who would learn not to take food from the panel after a single attempt.  The problem is that this could be metaphorically compared to a human developing a superstition or association between "going out on a sunny day" and "tripping and falling" after only one scenario, and therefore hiding indoors on all sunny days.  Forgetfulness is as important as superstition in developing an accurate memory; a memory which you use as a resource for predicting the future and dictating your own actions.  

"I think that philosophy is fundamental to all knowledge just like 'mathematical logic'/'axiomatic set theory'/'proof theory'/'model theory'/'recursion theory'/'the study of the foundations and methods of mathematics'/'philosophy of mathematics' might be considered fundamental to mathematics."  I think the sophist, or the "wisest", is the one divine enough in the subtleties of language and the philosophy of the will to power to speak properly.  Fuck the "indifferent", the dialectician.

Added 11/05/2008 at 18:30.

Responding to Fareed and his comment:

You said, "The historian is a product of that which produced him".

This is a supplement because I don't find disagreement in what you write.  You've drawn this conclusion through your search for authority/authenticity. That which produced the historian, both external and internal influences, were sensed by something within him.  For this reason I added the onion metaphor used by Herman Hesse in Steppenwolf, a story about a man who "believes, like Faust, that two souls are far too many for a single breast and must tear the breast asunder."  (If I tried to write more inclusively/completely/precisely, then I would certainly add a topic that connects the historian to his sources of authority.  Additionally, if in some extreme I tried to write too precisely, then I might have hallucinated into thinking that I could acutely represent the intricacies of the universe in text.  That I can't; language is too categorical and not at all particular; subjectivity relies on partial knowledge; we agree.)

I [red] that you describe a state in which each person is consumed by these enormous political and economic bodies and the abortive opposition to these bodies is cause for prison, asylum, drugs, or an escapade into nature.  However, these political and economic bodies, led by a small body of individuals, are held up by a fickle mass.  The concept of a collective body is composed of the interests of the many; the interests of the many are harnessed in the hands of few.  Machiavelli describes a Prince who must act cruel to maintain order; order results in social prosperity.  However, a Prince who, apart from in his rhetoric, pities and loves his people, leads society into displeasure and convoluted revolt.  Nietzsche speaks thus:

‘Freedom of will’ – is the expression for that complex condition of pleasure of the person who wills, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the command – who as such also enjoys the triumph over resistances involved but who thinks it was his will itself which overcame these resistances. He who wills adds in this way the sensations of pleasure of the successful executive agents, the serviceable ‘under-wills’ or under-souls – to his sensations of pleasure as commander. L’effet, c’est moi: what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. In all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as I have said already, of a social structure composed of many ‘souls’: on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing as such within the field of morality: that is, of morality understood as the theory of the relations of dominance under which the phenomenon ‘life’ arises. –

(Beyond Good and Evil 49)

You said, "[H]istory is born out of the necessity for the future."  Are you saying that the you've found authority in this "necessity for the future"?; you've found authority in the seemingly given that the future will come.  That's comparable to exclaiming, "I predict the future will come."  I scrutinize the concept of necessity, and find great cause for distaste in a reactive "hindsight bias".  The present is preserved in reactive words.  The future is born out of the cruel pleasures of its ruler.

There are several bodies of knowledge that present themselves as having a steady, unwavering heart rate, and a cool indifference.  Science and history, as they have been presented, wear this attire of objectivity.  However, the process of deciding the course of science is in the hands of a few.  It's in the interest of these few to present science as objective so that most people are deceived into laboring away at research while these few choose what we should research.  In science, concealing the responsibility of personal interest differs little from talking to a pastor who might say, "It is not by my word that you should behave like this, it is because of God's judgment."  The indifferent take refuge in concealing their statements of personal interest as statements from an absolute and objective authority.  Dictating the course/path/future of science is an act reserved for the interested, those who impose their subjectivity amongst an academy of objective disciples.  The disciples of objectivity offer weak contest in the process of making choices; the sources of authority are the few that decide among choices and create new choices for the future.  For the honest, the contest is in overcoming the precept that those who wear the clothes of indifference won't allow anyone not wearing clothes to come in.

You said, "[T]o say something could be more honestly written is imposing your value of just what is 'honesty'.  I understand what you are saying though, because yes there are ways to say things that have less biased implications."

From what I interpret, that is not what I'm saying; I am not saying that we ought to write things in ways "that have less biased implications".  I am implying that every statement represents a bias and that it has as its elementary particles both the ability to associate and the ability to dissociate from other statements.  

I mean by "honesty" that I know that I'm biased, and I'm willing, in this conversation, to admit to taking bias; that is honesty; I honestly admit to taking bias.  Honesty cannot be determined by writing in one way or another; honesty is determined by judging whether the author acknowledges their own attempt at advocating/changing values through writing.  Dishonesty would then be 'the claiming to be objective either because you are deceptively hiding behind the veil of scientific indifference, or because you are not sensitive enough to perceive that you are functioning under authority and, due to insensitivity, are unable to analyze your sources of authority.'  This type of analysis is capable of extract a knowledge that may bring about a greater ability to choose.  (Only a dead man is objective.  i.e. Both instinct and 'learned prejudice' are sources of authority because they take command over your actions in choosing to consume a fruit or a rock, the fruit of knowledge or the fruit of self preservation.  e.g. I like how Al Pacino, as Satan, says in The Devil's Advocate that God grants us instincts but then gives man laws that oppose those instincts; thus, God must be a sadist.  I also like how Satan calls himself the greatest humanist; he condones all intention, desire, and perversity.)  

The concept of "honesty" can be extended into me admitting that in analyzing authority, I am trying to take authority—But authority over who?  Some people accuse authority while simultaneously trying to hypocritically become the authority through that process of "accusation".  This occurs in a society that values indifference over responsibility and in a scenario in which a person eliminates their responsibility through "accusation".  I take offense when those who condemn authority in order to take authority are not aware of their hypocrisy; I take offense toward a society that condones pleas of insanity and indifference.  What I am saying, distinct from moralizing, is that I prefer relations with people who are aware of their hypocrisy, and I value authors that acknowledge their own qualities of difference, such as Nietzsche and his virtue of distance.  The madman lacking self-control and self-composure is not sensitive enough to analyze and distinguish what are his sources of authority; the madman with control is Christ.

Someone who is acting indifferent is trying to establish an absolute by dissociating themselves from what they say.  (Disassociation and the loss of responsibility is a prevalent issue.  A criminal's actions are absolved if they dissociate themselves from their actions by pleading insanity.)  Listen to how Foucault speaks against the seemingly indifferent usage of the concept "justice" in his 1971 debate with Noam Chomsky.

If you like, I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this; in other words, it seems to me that the idea of justice in-itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power. But it seems to me that, in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as a justification for it.  

(Justice Vs. Power Part 1 / Part 2)