The question

What is at stake in this chapter is my desire to understand and systematise the conditions for the spread and acceptance as well as the rejection of knowledge. The notion of knowledge is here taken in its broad and classical Platonian sense as justified true belief, still a workable definition. This implies a rejection of the relativist idea that conflicting truth holdings of the same phenomenon could coexist as different ‘knowledges’. Witchcraft cannot have both existed and not existed. It was as false an idea in the seventeenth century, when most people believed that it was real, as it is in retrospect today – or will remain from any vantage point in the future. Thus, knowledge is not just ‘whatever is taken to be knowledge in a given milieu or culture’.

The societal as well as the scientific significance of the question is obvious. Resistance to knowledge is as ever present in humankind as its restless quest for knowledge. To overcome such resistance is as pivotal for all science that intends to have an impact on society as it is for the destiny of humankind itself. Rejected or ignored knowledge, whatever its importance and quality, is of little use, and people making decisions on false grounds are potentially behaving contrary to their own interests and sometimes also contrary to the interests of humankind as a whole.

Is it possible to discern dissimilar or even contrasting intrinsic traits of knowledge that generally either invite its adoption or trigger its repulsion per se (i.e. irrespective of its specific cultural or historical context)? Self-evidently, counterintuitive knowledge is more difficult to assimilate than knowledge which suits people's preconceptions or ideological leanings. This is well known and may be covered by the psychological mechanism conventionally called ‘confirmation bias’. But could other such traits of knowledge be identified that affect its varying reception or impact? In addition, what is the significance in this respect of certain pivotal situations, such as certain societal atmospheres, certain human experiences or attitudes?

Cultural evolution

Human interaction is uniquely dynamic in relation to what goes in other parts of the animal world, leading to incessant large- and small-scale transitions in our societies. This is due to an unrivalled ability among humans to intellectually handle what is not present, either because it is concealed or because it is absent from the actual setting. In turn, this ability depends on a similarly unique capacity for sequential thinking, not seen in other parts of the animal world.

Through the ages, the magnitude of human interaction has grown immensely; today it is profoundly global in many respects. This also means that an ever-growing number of increasingly differentiated activities are increasingly coordinated, which is to say that human interaction is getting increasingly complex. This is so since, by my definition, the more coordination there is between the interactive parts in a system, the more complex it is – provided that other factors or circumstances remain the same. Or, differently put, given the level of coordination, the more differentiated it is, the more complex it is, as illustrated in Figure 1.

It should be added that growing complexity often goes hand in hand with ‘simplification’.

These long-term transformations are culturally driven in the sense that they do not have any modifications of the human genome as preconditions, despite the fact that such modifications nevertheless do evolve, although at a slow pace in comparison to the pace of cultural change. Of course, this does not mean that cultural change ever gets disconnected from or becomesindependent of its peculiar genetic basis that we, as humans, embody. There would be no cultural evolution without the ever-ongoing ‘investment’ of our species-specific genome into the cultural system. Furthermore, it cannot be excluded that the gradual gene modifications that do take place may have an impact on the cultural fate of the human society, and probably have had such an impact. Still, cultural change would happen nevertheless, that is, with or without such an impact.

The dynamism of human society manifests itself in many different ways, partly as a process directed towards the differentiation of functions, habits and things, and partly as an oscillation between differentiation and homogenisation.

Introduction

This chapter is about the very long-term destiny of equality and egalitarianism, where equality between women and men is regarded as an integrated aspect. Taking an imagined immortal bird's eye view on the question, one gets sight of two seemingly contrasting processes. On the one hand, there is spontaneously growing inequality, although partly offset by some counteracting trends. On the other hand, there is a gradual long-term expansion and the ever more widespread presence of egalitarian visions of how human society should be organised. Such visions are not being cancelled out by anti-egalitarian world views, which, nonetheless, never seem to become extinct either. To formulate this even more distinctly, one would be inclined to state that an innate need for equality among humans is as evident as a trend towards the opposite in real life.

In his classical treatise Equality, originally published in 1931, R. H. Tawney once succinctly expressed this inconsistency:

How come inequality seems to go hand in hand with egalitarianism? That is the question discussed below that will hopefully be more energetically addressed by the community of researchers than it is today.

The equality–inequality gradient

It is likely that, in the absence of political initiatives, the spontaneous development of society in the long run would lead to continuously widening gaps in the distribution of material resources. In turn, it is suggestible that this would also condition the unequal distribution of other resources (such as health and lifespan) between social classes, as well as between women and men, young and old, and people in sparsely populated areas and people in the urban centres. As recently reported by Augusto López-Claros and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, one rarely noticed expression of this is that there are more males than females in the world, although the opposite ‘should’ be the case.

Note: The following was jointly written by Janken Myrdal and me.

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What explains large-scale migration flows over the very long term?

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What explains that some kinds of knowledge are widely accepted whereas other kinds of knowledge are rejected?

The overarching aim is to understand and systematise the conditions for the spread and acceptance of knowledge, as well as the rejection of knowledge – the notion of knowledge here taken in a broad sense. Is it possible to discern dissimilar or even contrasting intrinsic traits of knowledge that generally either invite its adoption or trigger its repulsion per se (i.e. irrespective of its specific cultural or historical context)? Self-evidently, counter-intuitive knowledge is more difficult to assimilate than knowledge that suits people's preconceptions or ideological leanings. But could other such traits of knowledge be identified that affect its varying reception or impact? In addition, what is the significance in this respect of certain pivotal situations, such as certain societal atmospheres, certain human experiences or attitudes? Finally, which are the general cognitive, emotional and ideological factors that can help explain the adoption of knowledge, as well as the repulsion of knowledge?

One relevant circumstance is that the growth of the total stock of knowledge seems to be far more rapid than the growth of what an individual human being is able to incorporate. This means that the gap inexorably widens between the former and the latter. This might speed up the incessant process of specialisation, its wake more than ever forcing people to select what knowledge to adopt and what to neglect. This might reduce or block people's readiness to encompass an increasingly vast mass of information, even risking alienating people from an interest in gathering knowledge altogether.

Why do social norms change despite the fact that their mission is to be sustained?

Generally, human interaction is regulated – if not from the very outset in the development of all societies, at some early stage. Such regulation is enacted both by means of physical power and with the aid of norms. But to a substantial degree, physical power also relies on norms since it would not function without the loyalty of strategic groups and ultimately loyalty from the subjects or citizens in general. Norms serve to stabilise social interaction, be it peaceful or characterised by more or less violent conflicts.

The relevance and importance of the question

With this chapter I would like to encourage humanities scholars to step up their intellectual efforts to understand the societal significance of people's ability to postpone the fulfilment of their needs and desires – except the sexual ones (see appendix B). Optimally, such a task should be a concerted undertaking by historians, psychologists, sociologists and others to advance our knowledge of both the long-term destiny of this faculty and the mechanisms behind its varying presence among different peoples and cultures.

The ability to postpone rewards or the fulfilment of needs and desires is essential for all human development – both at the individual and societal level. Otherwise, we would not survive, and no society would cohere without some balance between the fulfilment and postponement or suspension of some of our cravings or even definite abstention from some of our cravings. As stated by Roger Scruton in a little book about beauty, ‘desire […] is inherently bound by prohibitions’.

For the sake of our personal interests, we already have good reasons to resist and postpone some of our needs, either to forget them once and for all or to fulfil them at a point in the future when the opportunity cost of doing so is as low as possible. We only live once; true, but all our days, from the first to the last, are parts of that life – why each one of them deserve to be equally valued and enjoyed. Let alone the fact that such an even distribution of pleasure will never come true. In passing, the temptation to procrastinate (i.e. to delay what should be done at once) is just another aspect of the issue at stake in this chapter.

Furthermore, since most resources are scarce in relation to their overall attractiveness, all of us also have good reason to step back sometimes for the sake of other people's desires. Clearly, such deliberate willingness to suppress one's immediate impulses for the benefit of other people's access to muchwanted material or immaterial resources implies the presence of some sort of empathy among humans.

Thematic clusters

It is rather easy to discern certain thematic clusters among my suggestions (including the ones in appendix B).

First, I have repeatedly addressed matters of societal transitions, whether enacted as dramatic leaps or as gradual changes. This testifies to an interest in identifying processes that do not evolve cumulatively but appear as intermittently recurring constancies throughout history.

Second, the above observation implies a preoccupation with the dialectical nature of cultural evolution, partly enacted as setbacks and even collapses that for some time suspend a process directed towards progress in a certain sense of the word. For example, during certain periods of history the secular trend towards declining interpersonal violence, growing acceptance of ‘the other’ and technical progress are curbed and even turned into the opposite trend. These turning points need to be explained.

A third interest concerns the mechanisms behind minor norm changes as well as major norm changes. Fourth, many of the questions revolve around the evolution of human needs and desires, both unmediated and mediated.

Last but not least, issues related to the societal significance of knowledge, knowledge advancement and resistance to knowledge should be mentioned here, being a kind of meta question (however, only explicitly addressed in one of the topics discussed here).

Such clustering gives an indication of the particular research interests that have guided me in the choice of questions. This is how it should be. It reveals and invites a critical examination of my scientific idiosyncrasies. Perhaps it also inspires some researchers to suggest that certain questions should be added, while others should be either modified or even removed from the list altogether. I welcome such initiatives. I would even appreciate it if exercises such as mine were carried out in other parts of the world, enabling academics worldwide to get sight of their own as well as other researcher's culturally biased scientific preferences.

Hopefully, repeated encounters around these questions would contribute to triggering a thought process which I think would be beneficial to science and society. Needless to say, I do not intend to exhort all researchers all over the academic world to gather around a limited set of questions, such as the ones suggested here – no more than Hilbert wanted his fellow mathematicians to exclusively focus on his 23 or 10 favourite mysteries.

Above, the reader finds a heading consisting of two questions. This is to stress that they are intimately related and deserve to be approached together. At the same time, however, they are separable, both as such and because the second question has developed into a large research domain in its own right over the years. So, the two questions will be treated in juxtaposition, one after the other. Moreover, the second question will be discussed in some detail whereas the first one will be only briefly touched upon, simply due to the fact that I have familiarised myself more with the second question.

Why do social norms change, despite the fact that their mission is to be sustained?

Generally, human interaction is regulated – if not from the very outset in the development of all societies, at some early stage. Such regulation is enacted both by means of physical power and with the aid of norms. But to a substantial degree, physical power also relies on something other than itself since it would not function without loyalty from strategic groups and ultimately from the subjects or citizens in general. Norms serve to stabilise social interaction, be it peaceful or characterised by more or less violent conflicts. If such stabilising measures are successful, they will strengthen the norms through a series of feedback loops. Norms are introduced in order to be preserved through vertical and horizontal transmission, and thus, they promote human action in accordance with the norms. But they change, nevertheless, some more than others and more so in certain situations and under certain circumstances – even those that appear especially stable, sometimes even timeless. Some become stricter vis-à-vis human needs and desires whereas others get more relaxed. According to a new study of meta norms in 57 countries, in modern, basically liberal countries, what is called spreading of information is the most typical informal sanction applied, whereas verbal confrontation and avoidance of norm breakers are more frequent in more hierarchical and less liberal countries. Since modernisation is a historical process, this clearly indicates that norms do change.

On the micro level, change of attitudes towards lethal violence as well as non-lethal violence are paradigmatic examples of such long-term normative shifts.

Chapter four focuses on Avicenna's endeavour in his famous Canon of Medicine to reassert the epistemic authority of philosophy by restoring the proper boundaries of medicine, which Galen had especially obscured through his engagements with Plato's Timaeus. I maintain that Avicenna, a student of Aristotle, formulates this polemic in response to the threat that Galen's defence of the dialogue's brain centred psycho-physiology posed to the credibility of Aristotelian cardiocentrism, which identified the heart as the source of sensation. This study examines how Avicenna appeals to the restrictive epistemic hierarchies of his intellectual milieu, which limit doctors to subjects only relevant to the production or preservation of bodily health, to delegitimize Galen's contributions to natural philosophy. The rhetorical, as opposed to normalizing, force of the disciplinary prescriptions that he levels at Galen in the Canon of Medicine will become clear from my analysis of Avicenna's discussions of the hegemonic organ and pleasure in his philosophical works, where he transgresses his own 'laws' when disputing or even adopting TImaean positions on these issues.