Knowledge and its Enemies: Towards a New Case for Higher Learning ...

aside because there is a large gap between these positions that needs some reconciliation in order to move forward (see chapter 3).

The stubbornness of the material evidence that goes towards existing human knowledge, comprising all that is known within the universe about such matters as galaxies and planets, quantum reactions, neural networks, and so forth leaves much that is discovered by science fully intact. However, the political motives and social determinants that have prompted some initial questions and delivered particular forms of knowledge are now much more transparent, due to constructionism. It has helped to locate claims of ‘objective knowledge’ within their social and political context. The proposition here is that human norms and values can serve to mediate the generation of knowledge rather than serving to fully ‘construct’ knowledge.

Supporting this idea, wholly relativistic conceptions of knowledge are waning among critical theorists (Norris 1997). Philosophers have also observed a polar shift from Kant to Dewey (Rorty 2007, 184–202), through which there is less emphasis on the contemplative and speculative aspects of knowledge. This is also a response to the excesses of postmodernity and the associated cultural preference for ‘literature over science’ (Rorty 2007, 89–104). These shifts are moving debate about the complex interrelationships between science and society towards a more sophisticated experimentalist approach, explored by Unger. This represents a radical departure from American naturalism and reclaims the central idea that ‘the connection between thought and practice is most intimately and fully realized only when our minds are addressed to our own affairs—the concerns of humanity’ (2007, 28–31).

It is not the purpose here to delve deeply into the epistemological issues surrounding the true nature of knowledge. Rather, the purpose is to elucidate a coherent definition that coincides with trends in current theory and is therefore useful to thinking about the purpose of the university. In this respect, a theoretical case is advanced here that a pragmatic conception of knowledge, including a neopragmatic account that acknowledges the key postmodernist critiques, is vital to understanding the nature and purpose of higher learning in civil society and what is