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analytical and critical - something that, I readily confess, takes energy, self-
confidence and a certain degree of self-discipline. Relatedly, I'd argue that
a sceptical mind tolerates uncertainty, and is neither threatened nor inca-
pacitated when confronted by a myriad of conflicting messages or opposed
viewpoints. Scepticism is (or should be) a positive disposition, and a bul-
wark against the negative aspects of epistemic dependence. In the words of
the much-quoted British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, 'What the age
calls for
...
...
more enlightened
scepticism, more questioning, more toleration of idiosyncracies
is not more faith. Rather it is the opposite:
' (Berlin,
1969: 92). As I've argued, one element of this should be to question the
commonplace assumptions made about communicative genres.
Thus, while natural scientists apparently search for culture-free and value-
neutral 'truths' about nature, we should regard their statements and findings
as purposeful constructions akin (in this respect) to the work of nature poets.
Likewise, just because actor-director Sean Penn's 2007 film
Into the wild
is a
work of audio-visual fiction, we shouldn't assume that its potential effects
on us as viewers are any less significant than the pronouncements of a tele-
vision scientist like David Attenborough - mere 'entertainment' rather than
something 'serious'. Taking a 'symmetrical' approach to the representations
of all epistemic communities does not entail
denying
the genre differences
that exist or their current social functions. Instead, it's a way of sensitising
ourselves to the fact that by taking an 'asymmetrical' approach we risk plac-
ing too much trust in some communities, dismissing or ignoring others, and
mistaking the actual or potential affects on us of still other ones.
Positive scepticism
is, clearly, not something that can thrive when private
individuals merely 'talk back' in their heads to what they read in newspapers,
see on television or hear on the radio. It's more robust where it arises from,
and helps reproduce, a civic and political culture that encourages debate -
be it face-to-face or virtual. Such debate presumes that people's views can
be changed, especially if they conduct dialogue with people holding dis-
similar views and values. In this way, positive scepticism becomes a
social
disposition as much as an individual one. It leads to informed judgements,
decisions and actions; it's the enemy of spontaneous 'opinion' and unexam-
ined 'belief '. In some cases it can be used in procedures designed to allow
us to get 'up close and personal' with epistemic workers whose knowledge
we may need to rely on (more on this in
Chapter 8)
.
Second, unlike elected politicians who can be voted out of office every
few years, most of the epistemic communities whose representations of
nature we consume are
self
-governing, and will remain so. I earlier bor-
rowed Foucault's neologism 'governmentality' to describe their combined
influence on the wider society. The term
governance
, by contrast, means
two things in the present context. On the one hand, it refers us to the
way in which epistemic communities consciously regulate the practices of
their members and constituent institutions. The operational word here is
...
