Elephants and Millions of Ants - II

2.

And the experts flourish with their expertise of knowledge.

They know very well on which side the bread is buttered or in which direction the westerly wind blows. This is their expertise, the expertise which knows for them where and when to start and where and when to finish. This is their expertise and that is why they are oft-quoted and self-styled 'experts'. They never partake of the forbidden fruit of knowledge as they very well know what to know and what not to know for supplementing their vested interest. Vested interest is the name of the game. They impart and spread knowledge about everything as though nothing can be challenged and nothing can be called into question. And their expertise will go scot-free.

The wretched of the earth has not the ability to falsify their knowledge which they claim to know. Their arrogance of knowledge foresees that the unknowledgeable will never dare to break the shackles of inertia of the culture of silence they will never ever strike back at the power-hegemony over them. They are the unknowledgeable and the unknowledgeable have had not the right kind of pedagogy to challenge their authority of knowledge. Culture of silence has made them lowdown and has taught them to accept reality lying down so much so that radicalization of their consciousness cannot be an impediment to the experts’ outright authority. But can that authority not be challenged by the pedagogy of the oppressed by proving them false?

Karl Popper propounded the idea of falsification to verify truth of any hypothetical knowledge which the preachers of knowledge claim to espouse so religiously in their attempts to fortify their reign of arrogance of knowledge. Popper’s methodology is that attempts should be made to falsify, rather than verify, the experts’ “scientific” knowledge. He said that if it was impossible in principles to be able to prove any specific idea false, then it was not “science”. Science is said to be a process of conjectures and refutations which razed all claims of arrogance of knowledge to the ground. So-called knowledge and doctrine can never be beyond human foibles. So, the experts themselves are always exposed to the threats of extinction. They and their expertise are vulnerable as vulnerable as they may be.

According to another new approach as propounded by Thomas Kuhn, knowledge of science normally progresses by small increments under a set of prevailing ideas and methods. This set of prevailing ideas and methods are what we know as paradigm. The normative incremental progress of knowledge of science from situational perspective is paradigm shift. From Newtonian science to Einstein’s relativity theory, there has been a continuous threat and challenge to the set pattern of knowledge. From the Kuhnian viewpoint, no knowledge is a stationary truth as claimed by the exponents of arrogance of knowledge and truth is relative in paradigmatic parameter, and truth is just not truth but approximate to truth as professed by Popper.

In this context, George Orwell’s once remarked, “We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts to show that we are right. Intellectually it is possible to carry on the process for an indefinite time : the only check on it is that sooner or later, a false belief bumps against solid reality…” As such, truth is too vulnerable to that extent that it is supposed to be challengeable and it is to be challenged by falsifying it.

So, truth or knowledge of truth, whether be it expert’s knowledge or simply unsullied truth, always holds a dwindling position depending on the value-added custom aided and abetted by its social functions. If the summum bonum of a truth or knowledge is of highest good to the common denominators, then the other fractional entities should be challenged, refuted and forsaken for the common good. And that truth or knowledge universally accepted, democratically and liberally propositioned in an open-ended frame of reference in which reality is set into motion to stand to the test of time.
(Contd.)