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

Importantly, the academy might also be defined by the fact that it can make legitimate claims over the possession of certain facts that seek to explain the workings of the universe and all that it contains. Logically, it therefore follows that the academy needs to be the principal arbiter of what is accepted and conveyed as ‘new knowledge’, which suggests the need for a certain level of autonomy in determining how and where that knowledge is sought. This is where the boundaries of the academy press against and conflict with the ‘supervisory role of the state’ (Jaspers 1960, 134). Nonetheless, the academic profession usually claims legitimacy through possession of higher order facts and accepted wisdom that reflect the ‘natural order of things’, sometimes referred to as the reigning ‘cosmology’. There is normally dispute over aspects of the prevailing cosmology, especially how this relates to everyday existence, but the general structure of the universe and the nature of causation provide a basis for the academic community to function with some coherence and integrity.

At this point, this whole conceptual frame might be summarily dismissed as naïve realism in that it presents a universalistic account of knowledge. A constructionist account of higher learning, in which different cultures and individuals possess their own understanding of the universe, would suggest that the nature of the universe is contestable and perhaps unknowable. It may even be that there are parallel universes, or ‘pluriverses’ (Latour 2004). This contends that all knowledge is ultimately a construction, evident in the fact that it can be shaped by the methods of inquiry used and the tools and scientific instruments put to use. Ostensibly, these remove human values from the process of inquiry but instead ‘disguise the importation of another set of values’ (Latour 2004, 260–269). As will be discussed, the history of science testifies to the fact that this may occur but only up to a certain point where ‘stubborn facts’ intervene. The prospect of multiple universes existing is useful in generating speculative ideas, but the causal relations governing these imagined states are beyond verification. As a consequence, there is no evidence to support the thesis of ‘universal constructionism’ (Hacking 2000, 24). However, this whole debate cannot be readily put