The Root of Evil (Part 3)

How the belief that modern science is headed towards a comprehensive theory of nature participates in epistemic violence and oversimplification

In part 2 of this series, I suggested that the commonly held notion that modern Western civilization is at the cutting edge of historical “progress” functions to place modern Western knowledge and values at the top of a hierarchy, with all other cultural ways of knowing or being—past or present—at the bottom. You can read this here, if you want the full piece instead of the short summary I will give:

https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/the-root-of-evil-part-2

Contained within this commitment to historical “progress” is the belief that vectors of development focused on in the modern West, such as technological progress and the spread of democracy, are the proper dimensions of development that a society should focus on. By reifying the West’s values and practices as “correct,” we necessarily demote and devalue vectors of development in which other culture exceed modern Western civilization—such as the psycho-spiritual practices of ancient India or the methods of sustainable living still present in many Indigenous communities, to give just two of many possible examples. Although the establishment of a cultural hierarchy in the context of science or knowledge may seem innocent, the same hierarchical thinking that places one culture or group at the top and all others below has been invoked to justify economic exploitation, slavery, and genocide many times throughout human history.

Although many are willing to acknowledge that a diversity of cultural vectors of progress and development have value, I have observed that one of the primary barriers to truly decentering the West is the belief that human history tells a story of a gradual and linear acquisition of knowledge. Those who hold this commitment usually think of modern science as the most accurate and sophisticated grasp of nature that humankind has, since it is the latest product in this progressive project of knowledge acquisition. If we hold to this linear and teleological conception of knowledge, we necessarily place knowledge systems unaligned with the cutting edge of modern science in the “debunked” category —thus, again, reifying a hierarchy of ways of knowing, with modern Western knowing at the top and all others below.

I do not intend to suggest that we should dispose of this teleological understanding of knowledge only because it justifies a fixed hierarchy in which one culture has exclusive access to the most sophisticated forms of knowledge. To reject the claim only on these grounds would be philosophically irresponsible. If a claim is true, we want to acknowledge that truth regardless of its normative consequences. However, the fact that this way of interpreting the modern scientific paradigm establishes and justifies a hierarchy with our own culture at the top should encourage us to inquire whether the way of thinking is, in fact, true—or is rooted in an unconscious tribalist agenda that encourages us to argue that our tribe’s way is the right way.

In our inquiry into this truth of this conception of knowledge, we can receive assistance from philosopher and anthropologist Andrew Pickering. As a philosopher who researches the history of science, Pickering is interested in the nature of truth and its relationship to science, and as an anthropologist, he must reckon with the fact of a plurality of cultural knowledge systems. Firstly, Pickering helps us to see that this teleological conception of knowledge is rooted in the belief that nature is a fixed thing or a set of fixed things. If we believe that nature is a fixed set of “things,” whether those be objects, scientific laws, or waves of probability, then it makes sense that we would think of science as a process by which we gradually uncover the nature of those things. Further, if it is true that nature is a fixed thing or set of fixed things, then our teleological narratives would be true, as different systems of knowledge would either describe those things correctly or incorrectly in a straightforward way. Pickering calls this understanding of nature “asymmetric dualism” because it suggests that while humans are dynamic, unpredictable agents, the nature they study and interact with is a static, predictable non-agent. Pickering is skeptical that “asymmetric dualism” is the case. Firstly, he points out that if we look at pre-modern knowledge systems, we find a different conception of nature.

Pickering’s friend Kopenawa is a practitioner of Yanomami Shamanism. On the one hand, Yanomami Shamanism has a great deal of affinity with modern science. Pickering writes, “Kopenawa can reliably and repeatedly access a world populated by xapiri. He knows how to do it and what to expect—just like particle physicists when accessing their world of quarks and leptons.” In other words, Kopenawa understands the patterns and laws that govern the xapiri’s world (the spirits he works with in his shamanic practice), and based on this understanding, can act in ways that produce predictable results. Pickering likens Kopenawa’s relationship with the xapiri to a particle physicist’s ability to reproduce the same results repeatedly in their particle accelerator once they learn the laws and patterns that govern the world of subatomic particles. However, Pickering also points out a profound difference between Kopenawa’s work and that of our particle physicist. He writes, “But it is also crucial that the xapiri are genuine agents—profound and often dangerous and terrifying ones.” The particle physicist thinks their quarks and leptons are mechanical entities, fully subjugated to impersonal laws of nature. Kopenawa, however, sees the xapiri as active agents with their own will who cannot fully be predicted or controlled.

Kopenawa’s way of knowing is not the knowing of a fixed mechanical system of static things but what Pickering refers to as a “dance of agency.” Kopenawa has not reached some final state of “knowing” the nature of the xapiri in which he can comprehensively understand and predict their every move and behaviour. Rather, Kopenawa has learned to “dance” with the xapiri in a way that can produce results that are beneficial to both agents. There is a hierarchy to Kopenawa’s way of knowing, but it is a pragmatic hierarchy, not a tribalist one. If Kopenawa is trying to heal a patient, the highest form of knowledge is the set of practices that most reliably produce this concrete result of a healed patient. Further, this pragmatic hierarchy is not fixed. There is no “end” to knowing the xapiri, because there is no “end” to knowing another agent. It would be absurd to say that there is a final “end” to knowing our partner, our friend, or our dog.

For Pickering, this conception of knowledge is not only illuminating because it replaces a fixed, tribalist hierarchy with a dynamic, pragmatic hierarchy, but simply because it explains what happens in modern science better than the teleological narrative. If we look at the history of physics, we find a series of different theories for “dancing” with nature that each work in certain limited contexts. Although Newtonian mechanics is sufficient for certain calculations, scientists eventually discovered that in other domains, we need Einsteinian Relativity. Then scientists found that in the domain of subatomic particles, the assumptions of both Newton and Einstein break down, and we need to make use of Quantum Mechanics. Of course, scientists hold out the hope for a “theory of everything,” but if we look at the historical reality of science, we find this to be just a postulate, a regulative ideal—not the lived reality of the history of science.

We can also see scientific theories play out in this dynamic, pragmatic manner at a smaller scale., Pickering writes of power stations that they “do what we intend them to do (generate energy) but also what we do not intend them to do (generate carbon dioxide and global warming).” Pickering points out that even if we would like to think that power stations, or any other system, are determined mechanical systems, the history of science provides no evidence for this. Instead, scientific theories have provided us with theories that help human beings interact with these power stations in a way that produces somewhat reliable, but never completely reliable, results. Our scientific understanding of natural and man-made systems is not rooted in a comprehensive understanding of the fixed nature of what we are interacting with. Rather, these interactions are “mini dances of agency” in which we use these scientific theories to “dance” with whatever system we are interacting with in the same way Koepnawa “dances” with the xapiri.

Although viewing modern science as the pinnacle of all human knowledge establishes a cultural hierarchy, if we want to be responsible truth seekers, this fact alone should not cause us to shy away from making this claim if it is, in fact, true. Pickering, however, gives us quite good reason to be skeptical. If we look at the historical reality of both theoretical and applied science, evidence suggests that even if one face of nature can be revealed, understood, and mapped, there is another side that remains shrouded in mystery, overflowing any conceptual boundaries we use to confine it. If this is the case, why not embrace an understanding of science that puts it on a level playing field with other ways of knowing? Why not admit that science, like any theory, is a practical tool that allows us to “dance” with nature but never comprehensively comprehend or control it. Existentialist and decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon, whom I focused on in the first post of this series, gives us one answer: that to control our own identity and place in the world, we must control the entire web of relationships in which that identity gains its significance. In other words, we hold onto this narrative precisely because we want to fix ourselves as the “knower” that can comprehensively know, master, and control the world outside of us. Fanon suggests that we are so desperate to, in Pickering's words, “get rid of any trace of unpredictability and emergence” in other human communities and nature itself, because we fear opening to and participating in an unpredictable and untamable cosmos.

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