In his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper comments that the battle against sophistry is a perennial problem. Satan’s primordial sophistry escaped the gates of Eden and has plagued mankind ever since. Progress, especially when it is not matched by moral progress, only causes sophistry to grow. Sophistication, Pieper says, usually entails greater degrees of sophistry. What the sophist seeks to do is to shut down all pursuit of the truth by playing with words, usually by inventing catch-phrases that slide off a forked tongue and convey some half-truth that is cleverly dressed up as the whole truth. It is most certainly an abuse of language; for the proper use of language is to convey ideas and tell the truth. But sophistry uses language in order to manipulate people.
The Sophistry of Today
The problem of sophistry in our own age is particularly acute. You might say that we are living under the tyranny of sophistry in which any objection to a sophist shibboleth is met by stupefied hostility. “Pro-choice”: how could you not be in favor of a woman’s right to choose? “Black lives matter”: so, you think Black lives don’t matter? The objection is not with the half-truth, but with the half-falsehood that is dressed up by the slogan. In other words, the objection is with the sophistry that manipulates language to hide what is really going on.
In general, we should all be pro-choice, but in particular it totally depends on what the object of choice is. If you are choosing to kill an innocent baby, then no, in fact we should not “Pro-choice”. Of course, Black lives matter. But what the honest person objects to is dressing up the Marxist aims of the further destruction of Black lives and society as a whole in this truth. It is sophistry plain and simple. And anyone who insists otherwise is a language tyrant.
Following the Science
There is a new slogan that is being peddled by the tyrant—“follow the science”. Science is a great weapon in the hand of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be made to say anything you want it to say. It is presented as somehow being about objective truth gathered by running controlled experiments in an unbiased setting. The method may be reliable, but the scientist himself is a fallen human being. He is prone to biases, lapses in attention, ignorance, faulty design and even outright lying. It does not help that his so-called peers who review his work also suffer from the same inherent problems. It is also not immune to the “Cancel Culture” with many scientists handcuffed by a cultural confirmation bias. All of this leads to what scientist Stuart Ritchie in his book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth calls a “replication crisis” in modern science. Experiments are run all the time. But the true test is when an experiment is replicated. Almost none of the so-called “science” has been replicated and very often is exposed as flawed when honest scientists attempt to do so. Like Ritchie we should not be anti-science but instead to use it in a manner that discovers the truth without succumbing to the sophist’s tactic of inventing it.
As I said, science is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be used to say whatever they want it to say. Herein lies the half-falsehood found within “following the science”. Science itself can never lead to certainty. To assert otherwise is to turn science into a religion that must be governed by faith. “Follow the science” is a credal statement.
Why is it that science can never lead to certainty? In short, science, because it deals in material being, always deals with contingencies and therefore only leads to contingent truth. The truth of what is being asserted always depends on certain conditions also being true. The point is that when “Science” is presented as certain, without any discussion upon the conditions in which the thing also depends, it is a manipulation.
Take, for example, the contention that “masks work”. This is most certainly not an absolute. What are the conditions under which they work? To mandate mask wearing without any reference to the conditions under which they work, is not about safety but control. If you want to keep people safe, then you will school them in the art of wearing the mask. If you want to control them then any mask will do. Likewise, the push for vaccination. What are the conditions under which the vaccines “work”? What are the conditions under which they don’t, or might even be harmful? Are we to believe that a vaccine was developed at warp speed that covers every contingency? To say they are “safe and effective” without observing a multitude of contingencies is not science but scientism. To even mention those contingencies is sacrosanct and will likely get you censored.
Science can say whatever I want it to say simply by playing with those contingencies. I simply design my experiment so that it leads to a positive result. Then I get peers to agree with the way it was run—never mind that these peers also have a vested interest in toeing the party line. If it leads to a negative result anyway, I simply put it in the file cabinet. Whenever you hear some scientific “fact” presented in some absolute manner, always seek the contingencies. Who or what does this apply to? When doesn’t it apply? When someone tells you that it applies across the board, they are presenting something that has some degree of uncertainty as certain. We may be willing to accept that degree of uncertainty and treat the proposition as true, but it is not anti-science to demand further uncertainty be removed. But either way, certainty will never be achieved.
In classical Greece, the sophists threatened to take over society until the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle stepped in. They were unafraid to call sophistry what it was. But that was not enough for them. They also rescued the victims of sophistry by teaching them how to reason. Perhaps in our own sophisticated age, we could do the same.