, to see if you have full access to this publication.
Book Titles No access
The Constitution of Knowledge
A Defense of Truth
Authors:
Publisher:
2021
Summary
Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts
In what could be the timeliest book of the year, Rauch aims to arm his readers to engage with reason in an age of illiberalism.Newsweek
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.
In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood of falsehoods, and too often didn't even seem to try. Experts and some public officials began wondering if society was losing its grip on truth itself. Meanwhile, another new phenomenon appeared: cancel culture. At the push of a button, those armed with a cellphone could gang up by the thousands on anyone who ran afoul of their sanctimony.
In this pathbreaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the Constitution of Knowledgeour social system for turning disagreement into truth.
By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must doand how they can do it. His book is a sweeping and readable description of how every American can help defend objective truth and free inquiry from threats as far away as Russia and as close as the cellphone.
Keywords
Search publication
Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2021
ISBN-Print
978-0-8157-3886-2
ISBN-Online
978-0-8157-3887-9
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
backcover1
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Table of Contents No access
"A Terrible Statement Unless He Gets Away with It" No access Pages 1 - 19
The State of Nature: Tribal Truth No access Pages 20 - 42
Booting Reality: The Rise of Networked Knowledge No access Pages 43 - 78
The Constitution of Knowledge No access Pages 79 - 117
Disinformation Technology: The Challenge of Digital Media No access Pages 118 - 154
Troll Epistemology: "Flood the Zone with Shit" No access Pages 155 - 188
Canceling: Despotism of the Few No access Pages 189 - 231
Unmute Yourself: Pushing Back No access Pages 232 - 264
