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The social construction of knowledge: how far does it go?
Joe Kincheloe invited me to post a blog and suggested I maybe talk about one of the recent books he helped me get published. I really appreciate Joe’s help, scholarship, and activism, and I would like to briefly discuss a topic I think is of extreme importance to critical pedagogy. I am intending this to form part of a chapter for a book due out in 2010 (Engaged Pedagogy, Enraged Pedagogy, Springer). So I would really appreciate any comments and constructive criticism (the forums here or tmonchinski@juno.com). Let me say at the beginning that I am not striving for to be comprehensive here and am leaving out a lot of stuff that I intend to work into the chapter (e.g., the social construction of the self, legitimate peripheral participation, socio-historical development, metaphor, etc.). I also won’t be citing references here as I will in the chapter; hopefully I am not plagiarizing too badly (!) and if anyone wants citations email me and I will provide them.
I think an important question, and one Critical Pedagogy confronts, is where knowledge comes from. Critical pedagogy is critical of positivist epistemologies that hold that knowledge is disembodied, “out there,” that this knowledge is “true” and scientifically “verifiable” with these terms conveying a sense of permanence through the ages; that knowledge is accessible through reason and rational thought. A positivist framework argues that the methods of studying the physical world can be applied to the study of the social and educational worlds; that the apparent neutrality and objectivity of the researcher in the physical sciences is desirable and can be applied to the study of human beings, our relations, and the institutions we create. According to NCLB supporter, Dr. Valerie Reyna, the same experimental rules and logic apply “whether you are talking about a treatment for cancer or whether you’re talking about an intervention to help children learn.” (NCLB, incidentally, uses the phrase “scientifically based research” one hundred and nineteen times by my count). Implicit in this conception of knowledge is that it is, in many ways, divorced from our lives; though some of us, through education and training, can tap into this knowledge. Pedagogical theories and institutions (e.g., schools) mirror the positivist framework through the banking system of education and behaviorism which play out in the classroom via one-way lecturing, scripted reading programs, multiple-choice standardized exams, and such.
Scholars and activists in the field of critical pedagogy have argued that knowledge is a social construction, a product of our human species’ interaction with the world. An issue I’ve long wrestled with is how far a social construction of knowledge epistemology goes. Much of the critical pedagogy stuff I’ve read dwells on the social construction of knowledge in the “soft” or social sciences, usually only paying “lip service” (perhaps too harsh a term?) to a social construction of knowledge in the natural or “hard” sciences (maybe I’m just not reading the correct stuff). I can understand why but I think this is a deficit critical pedagogy needs to address in language laypersons like myself can understand.
In the social sciences, a social construction of knowledge epistemology holds that we human beings create knowledge and ascribe meaning and definitions to terms and concepts; that our epistemologies originate with us and within us and not outside of or beyond us. So, for example, Christopher Columbus is viewed as a courageous and intrepid adventurer and explorer or a greedy imperialistic-figure, responsible for the enslavement and deaths of millions of Native Americans; the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are viewed as necessary otherwise a million or more American lives would be sacrificed island-hopping to conquer Japan, or they were a warning to the Soviet Union at a time when Japan was on the verge of capitulating, a warning of American military/technological superiority ushering in the Cold War. These may appear as mere alternative, competing “interpretations” of events and people, but just such interpretations provide the foundations for accepted knowledge. Legislation like Florida’s “A + K-12 education bill” recognizes this, demanding that American history be viewed as “knowable, teachable and testable”, and as “factual, not as constructed.” Obviously, such legislation is not so much a challenge to a social construction of knowledge as it is a privileging of one construction of said knowledge and a positivist epistemology.
But how far does a social construction of knowledge go? Can a social construction of knowledge apply to the natural world without giving way to a form of relativism? By relativism I mean the idea that all points of view are equally valid, that all cultures with their individual practices are equally legitimate, that we cannot distinguish between creationists and evolutionists because everything is valid and therefore everything goes. In a nutshell and a turn of phrase, is it necessarily so that “everything is true, everything is permitted”? I do not think so.
I think a social construction of knowledge is commensurate with the “hard” sciences as well as the “soft” sciences; I think that the nature of our being (our ontologies) and the developmental history of our individual selves and our species (our ontogenies and phylogenies), are, in fact, socially constructed to a degree we have long ignored and been ignorant of.
Well then, what about the idea that we appear closer to “the truth” in the natural sciences? There are predictable regularities in this physical world we (our species) have evolved in. These regularities have seemingly remained constant for thousands or more years and therefore do not change all that often in a human lifetime (if at all). This lends an appearance of permanence, even of immutability, to the natural world and the disciplines that study it.
But does epistemic sovereignty exist in the human or natural sciences? The more I study this and think about it the more I come to think it does not. The scientific paradigms constituting “normal science” – the concepts, laws, and theories accepted at any time as the scientific outlook—shift and change over time. For example,Ptolemaic astronomy gives way to Copernican astronomy; corpuscular optics to wave optics; the idea that diseases were spontaneously generated to the germ theory of disease. John Dewey sounded similar to Bruno Latour three quarters of a century before Latour when he expressed the thought that “the sciences themselves are outgrowths of some phase of social culture, from which they derive their instruments, physical and intellectual, and by which their problems and aims are set.”
Though scientists claim to strive for a culture-free production of scientific knowledge, Latour shows that what goes on in scientific laboratories and classrooms isn’t a mere reflection of an objective reality; that laboratory practices and equipment and conflict and negotiation between scientists shape the outcome of scientific work, shape the outcome of what is then accepted as scientific knowledge and truth. For instance, Latour says for a physicist it would never occur to say “I’ve come to posit the existence of quasars despite the existence of radio telescopes and all the equipment and theories connected to them.” No, without the radio telescopes, equipment and theories there would be no quasars and if there were different radio telescopes, equipment and theories, quasars would be different too. A recent NY Times Science Times article posited that one of the basic principles underlying the search for medical truth and the use of clinical trials is the application of a question to what is being hypothesized, the question being, “What is the strength of all the supporting evidence separate from the study at hand?”
Citing Latour here (and Donna Haraway below) is a bit problematic for me after having written above that what we need to see critical pedagogy doing is presenting these ideas (of the social construction of knowledge in the social and natural sciences) in as clear a manner as possible. (For me at least) Latour, and many others we should make use of, is a difficult read. A lot of times when I am reading and re-reading some of these authors I am reminded of Nietzsche’s aphorism that “Those who know they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity”; which is a shame because, as I hope is evident, I do feel many of these people have important things to say.
Scientific “truths” are lived and experienced, but just because we humans all experience a phenomena in a similar way does not mean that experience reveals the phenomena’s “true” nature in some Platonic sense. For example, we humans see with a color spectrum where other animals see in black and white, in shades of grey. Who is seeing things as they really are, us or dogs? We see colors as a part of things but colors do not exist in the external world. For example, on a clear day the sky appears blue, but the sky has no reflective surface for blue or any other color to inhere in. Our color concept is “interactional,” having arisen from the interactions of our bodies (with three kinds of color cones in our retinas), our brains (with neural circuitry connected to these cones), electromagnetic radiation and the reflective properties of objects. In this way our color vision is a “synchronic construction,” neither completely “out there” beyond us in the physical world nor completely “in here” within our brains and bodies.
Color vision is not relative to individual humans but to our species as a whole because of our evolution. We see the way we do and dogs see the way they do because of how human beings and canines have evolved in and with our environments. It isn’t true that one species apprehends some static reality better than another. Human beings and other living systems effect our mediums, our environments, and these mediums in turn effect the living system. Our knowledge—including our color vision-- is embodied and enacted, it (in the words of Maturana and Varela, 92) “depends on being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history…” In short, “all knowing depends on the structure of the knower” and “every act of knowing brings forth a world”.
One example of this, saccadic masking, is given by Maturana and Varela when they ask readers to stare at a cross drawn four inches from a solid circle while covering their left eye with the page held fifteen inches from the reader (see figure below). At fifteen inches the black dot disappears. This “blind spot” is always with us, but as Maturana and Varela explain “[u]nless we do these ingenious manipulations, we will not perceive the discontinuity that is always there”; in short, “we do not see that we do not see” (92: 19). Our minds enact an environment in lieu of these blind spots, an environment that corresponds to our visual perceptions of the outer world when such perceptions are not suppressed.
Briefly, what are some of the implications of a social construction of knowledge?
Well, for starters, “truth” is what works, a pragmatic conception.For us as a species who have evolved and continue to evolve a particular way, we help construct the truth, it isn’t out there. That said, ours isn’t a relativist position:as in the case of color vision this construction occurs is at a species level. We do need to be alert as to how any science and its claims to truth is used and constructed. For example, Donna Haraway has shown that when male primatologists study primates they stress reproductive competition and sex relations between aggressive males and receptive females; whereas female primatologists tend towards observations that require more communication and basic survival activities. These perspectives lead to divergent positions regarding the origins of culture, the idea of “nature”, and the construction of the natural.
There are democratic implications inherent in a social construction of knowledge. Science has often been used and constructed as a mask for power. Science does not have to be used the way it is today. It can be used to make people’s lives better and not for the pecuniary gain of a few. In this sense we get back to positivism as a social construction, a masking of power as objectivity and reality, as truth.
There are existential implications as well that we must face. Wherever we see knowledge abused or misused, whether in a scientist’s lab or a philosopher’s book or a classroom, I think we have to critically investigate it and when need be actively challenge and work to change it. In a way it’s a sobering and scary thought when we recognize that certainty isn’t as certain as we’d hoped it would be; hence the import of Nietzsche’s injunction that god is dead. Critical pedagogy is incomplete if all we use it for is to compile a laundry list of wrongs. Waa, waa, waa! must not be our refrain. Critical pedagogy is a praxis of theory, yes, and also action; action for change, activism. Action based on critical reflection and volition is a necessity. To paraphrase Sartre, the choice not to choose is a choice itself. I think one thing we should choose to do with our scholarship is be as clear as possible and follow our premises to their conclusions, which for me at this point entails working out the extent of the social construction of knowledge in all facets of human experience.
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Tony
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Monchinski
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High school teacher, PhD candidate, freelance writer and photographer, family man
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Tony I have two "welcome"s for you! One is for the Freire blogosphere. I am glad that you joined us. The second one is for misery. I call my misery "a black hole". I have been feeling lonely here. So I am glad to know that there are others like me. Even though my black hole does not put the constructivism in the center, I have long suffered with general epistemological questions. I was not even able to attempt to post my questions and concerns here about this. My central agony (the word 'problem' does not compensate what i have been going through. I think you understand this) is about the situation that you beautifully described when you say
While we are enthusiastically attack to positivism via enlightenment (I am not saying we are wrong criticizing), we tend to neglect what our criticism also support or open space for other things that might be totally wrong and more harmful for the dialectical evaluation of science and knowledge. I mean, Tony you are so right on when you describe the current epistemological situation as “everything goes”. As if every knowledge-claim has become a self legitimading. Most importantly I feel I do not have any criteria (any tool, any logic, any etc) to examine any knowledge-claim anymore. Some postmodernist claim I have to get used to live in ambiguity. Because there is no ONE FORM of truth. But who said that there was only one truth? Positivism? No, positivism never said it. In fact it was positivism that said that there is no absolute truth. It was positivism that stood up against all dogmatic knowledge forms of middle age. I think the real problem is not positivism or reason ( I also recognize its shortcomings and vulnerabilities). The real problem is how capitalistic ideology has instrumentalized positivism and its methodology for its surplus value.
It is okay to live in ambiguity but since there is unparalleled power structure, this ambiguity will more likely favor those metaphysical, idealistic, and dogmatic knowledge and ideologies again. Call me insecure or paranoid (or whatever adjective is righteous) but I fear that we are going to be drifted to a new form of dark age in which dogmas determines everything because we have nothing to refute those dogmatic, religious, mystical, and mythical knowledge claim. In fact raising nationalism and fascism around the globe reinforce my fear. We have to ask right questions? We have to stand on a right side? We have to recognize that this problem is epistemological as well as it is ideological.
I hope I clearly explained my point.
Ilhan,
I think I feel what you are going through...does my post ask some of the questions we need to be asking? What are some more questions? I think that's you are right, we need to ask the "right questions."
Vanessa
Ilhan,
You stated, " Call me insecure or paranoid (or whatever adjective is righteous) but I fear that we are going to be drifted to a new form of dark age in which dogmas determines everything because we have nothing to refute those dogmatic, religious, mystical, and mythical knowledge claim. In fact raising nationalism and fascism around the globe reinforce my fear."
This is what I was referring to when I said "that sounds scary." It appears there has to be an appropriate balance with the social construction of knowledge. Too much freedom and democracy, whatever those mean precisely, leads one into an abyss - as I stated in my post below, we don't just don't "see" everything without considering mulitple perspectives (Kincheloe) so we have those blind spots that Tony was talking about and can fall right into an abyss. On the other hand, from what you are saying, too much social input can create another form of blindness for all of society -- the dark ages -- maybe due to it being limited in its perspectives, too, but coming from society (?). I just realized my entry may be the beginning of an alternative argument within my dissertation (I am assuming social construction of knowledge in online learning) if I pick up on it and expand it....I'm not sure. It seems dialectical and there is much missing here in all of our discussions for me to get a really clear picture of how social construction of knowledge is being defined and applied in the examples.I have some research to do. There are too many terms being used in these discussions currently that have not been defined well, which makes the discussion flounder for me. I have to know what we are talking about, so to speak (clear definitions). Oh well, I have far more questions than answers here -- which is good. I think I'll go do some research!
Vanessa
Tony,
I like the title of your blog and your books sound very interesting. Very thought-provoking and extensive topic and I will only comment briefly in a very limited way since I have not socially constructed much knowledge at this time. I would love to hear more of your thoughts.
I think there are severe constraints to socially constructed knowledge in many, many ways. Of course, I have no idea what is meant by "socially constructed knowledge," anyway - how is it even truly defined?...as just one example, consider the "group think" phenomenon which, if not guarded against during group consensus building, as used for example, in environmental decisionmaking, ethics committees, etc., the result can be some grotesquely unethical and unjust decisions.
While knowledge may originally be constructed within us as you suggest, it is intervened upon by the social and physical world and is continuously reconstructed. In my view, that does not feel much like knowledge being created "within me" due to the fact that this is a disempowering process, but I suppose it is a matter of perspective. No matter how one constructs or produces knowledge it will be constrained. The only way true and complete knowledge can be produced is through true and absolute freedom....but we need the social input to avoid falling into the deep abyss that we are not aware of (“we do not see that we do not see”) so in that sense socially constructed knowledge is needed for survival.
Defining "truth" as "what works" does not work for me. We need freedom to produce knowledge and truth -- and how does one define freedom? You mentioned "democratic implications." What is democracy, really? I don't think either democracy or freedom truly exist nor can they, but they do need to be better defined (for me) for praxis. These are topics I need to research further. I have read so much about democracy, freedom, and empowerment, but I don't experience these things very often at all. How do we define these? Who defines them? Why? How can we define them in such a way that we truly empower people to achieve unimaginable levels of knowledge production? We can talk about understanding power structures and we can understand them to a great extent, but unless we have freedom, we will always be limited by them, no matter what environment we are learning in. We are always operating under conditions of varying degrees of empowerment/disempowerment. What are we sacrificing?
Vanessa
Ilhan and Vanessa, Thanks for your replies, kind words, and welcoming me here!