Counterknowledge

Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science, and Fake History by Damian Thompson, 139 pages

"Counterknowledge" is journalist Damian Thompson's term for the opposite of knowledge - not ignorance, not mistakes, but claims made in direct contradiction of the facts.  It is, he demonstrates, a booming industry.  Old standards have fallen as mainstream television programs have endorsed 9/11 conspiracy theories and The Secret, while books purporting to give the "real story" behind The Da Vinci Code have found their way into the history sections of bookstores and libraries, and major universities have dabbled in alternative medicine.  Most dramatically, of course, the Internet has proven to be a uniquely successful vector for counterknowledge, not only disseminating untruths more broadly, but allowing the cross-fertilization of ideas between groups that would not normally interact, such as Christian and Muslim creationists or white and black racists.

Thompson is not primarily interested in either cataloging or systematically debunking different forms of counterknowledge, rather, the book is an analysis of what makes counterknowledge so widespread in such an allegedly rational, skeptical age.  According to the author, a decline in standards, increased specialization, and a general failure of education all play important parts.  More significantly, the dual triumphs of postmodernism and identity politics have established a relativist ideology which refuses to judge between competing truth claims and which is particularly strong among the very elites who might otherwise act as responsible gatekeepers.  Meanwhile, consumerism promotes the attitude that objective truth matters less than how a "truth" makes the consumer feel while simultaneously encouraging a profits-first mentality among producers.  Most important, however, has been the dissolution of public trust - in a culture that habitually confuses consensus with conspiracy, fact and fantasy are indistinguishable.  Unfortunately, Thompson's preferred tactic against counterknowledge - merciless mockery - will not solve that problem.

Flat Earth

Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea by Christine Garwood, 362 pages

Once upon a time, every American schoolchild knew that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and proved, despite the obscurantism of swarthy Inquisitors, that the earth was round.  Many are still taught this, if not as pure history, at least as part of the mythical war between Science and Faith.  Of course, by the time of Columbus the fact of the sphericity of the earth had been virtually unchallenged for two thousand years and was firmly embedded in medieval culture, as witness The Divine Comedy and the emblem of the globus cruciger, the orb topped with a cross, used as a symbol of Christ's dominion over the world.

As Christine Garwood explains, the legend of Columbus as the conqueror of flat earth superstition had its origins in the early nineteenth century and the desire to cast Science as the liberator of mankind from the slavery of religion.  Ironically, it was this same narrative that helped to generate the first genuine flat earth theorists in a millennium, as a few extreme fundamentalists, believing that science was the inveterate enemy of what they were convinced was the Biblical view of the universe, declared that the supposed roundness of the earth was, in fact, a massive deception.  Turning the tables on their opponents, they claimed that their "zetetic" mode of inquiry, which relied entirely on personal observation and experience, was more objective than conventional science.  Indeed, they even attacked the round earth "theory" as an ancient superstition with no place in a more enlightened age.

Garwood traces the history of flat earth belief from the debating societies of Victorian England to the desert of twentieth century California.  Along the way, she includes a colorful assortment of cranks and charlatans, from aristocratic dilettantes to fire-breathing faith healers to playful Canadian academics, all of whom Garwood treats with admirable sympathy.  In addition to being consistently interesting, Flat Earth reveals that, far from being a survival of "medieval superstition", flat earth belief is a form of modern pseudo-science, which not only helps to explain the fringe appeal of a flat earth, but more popular forms of pseudo-science such as "creation science".