‘Post-Truth’ was Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 word of the year. While the term was coined by its disparagers, especially in light of the Brexit and US Presidential campaigns, the roots of post-truth lie deep in the history of Western social and political theory. This book reaches back to Plato, ranges across theology and philosophy, and focuses on the Machiavellian tradition in classical sociology. The key figure here is Vilfredo Pareto, who offered the original modern account of post-truth in terms of the ‘circulation of elites’, whereby ‘lions’ and ‘foxes’ vie for power by accusing each other of illegitimacy, based on allegations of speaking falsely either about what they have done (lions) or what they will do (foxes). The defining feature of ‘post-truth’ is a strong distinction between appearance and reality which is never quite resolved, which means that the strongest appearance ends up passing for reality. The only question is whether more is gained by rapid changes in appearance (foxes) or by stabilizing one such appearance (lions). This book plays out what all this means for both politics and science.
Author(s): Steve Fuller, Peter Kivisto
Series: Key Issues In Modern Sociology
Publisher: Anthem Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 220
Tags: Post-Truth, Knowledge, Power Game
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series information......Page 4
Title page......Page 5
Copyright information......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Table of contents......Page 9
Acknowledgements......Page 11
Introduction Science and Politics in a Post-Truth Era: Pareto'S Hidden Hand......Page 13
Introduction......Page 21
The Anti-expert Turn in Politics and Science......Page 22
How the Anti-experts Beat the Experts at Their Own Game in Brexit......Page 26
How the Anti-experts Ended Up Scoring an Own Goal in the Brexit Game......Page 30
A Post-Truth History of Truth......Page 37
The Birth of Rhetoric as the Crucible of the Post-Truth Imaginary......Page 40
The Modal Power of the Entertainment Industry......Page 49
How Truth Looks to Post-Truth: Veritism as ‘Fake Philosophy’......Page 53
Consensus: Manufactured Consent as the Regulative Ideal of Science?......Page 59
Sociology and the Social Construction of Identity......Page 65
Science and Technology Studies and Scientific Gamesmanship......Page 70
Introduction: Academia’s Epistemic Shortfalls and Entitlement Pretensions......Page 81
The Challenge of Academic Rentiership and Its Interdisciplinary Antidote......Page 86
The Cult of Success and the Military-Industrial Will to Knowledge......Page 93
The Corporation as the Hub of the Military-Industrial Will to Knowledge......Page 99
Conclusion: The Cautionary Tale of Fritz Haber and Larger Lessons for Interdisciplinarity......Page 104
Appendix: Prolegomena to a Deep History of ‘Information Overload’......Page 106
Protscience: Science Upfront and Personal......Page 119
The Public Intellectual as the Proto-Protscientist......Page 122
The Science Customer Who Need Not Be a Science Consumer......Page 126
The Role of Customized Science in the Future of Democracy and the University......Page 130
Interlude: Wikipedia – A Democratic Cure Worse Than Its Elitist Disease?......Page 137
Historical Precedents and Future Prospects for an Adequate Scientific Response to Customized Science......Page 142
The Weberian Dialectic: Where Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Science Meet......Page 147
Modal Power and the Fine Art of Actualizing the Possible......Page 151
‘As If’: The Politics and Science of the Fact-Fiction Distinction......Page 154
The Quantum Nature of Modal Power......Page 157
Prolegomena to a Quantum Historiography of Modal Power......Page 159
Introduction: The Alchemy of Deriving Truth from Error......Page 163
Prediction: The Past’s Relevance to the Future......Page 165
Does Science Help or Harm Forecasting? The Fate of Punditry as Expertise......Page 169
Learning to Think the Unthinkable: Post-Truth’s Proving Ground......Page 175
Superforecasting: The Fine Art of Always Preparing for Doomsday......Page 179
Conclusion: From Superforecasting to Precipitatory Governance......Page 186
The Argument in a Nutshell......Page 193
Glossary......Page 195
References......Page 207
Index......Page 217
