Much may be said about that other great rupture of continuity which
analytic realism would maintain: that between the world and the knower
as something outside of it, engaged in an otiose contemplative survey
of it. I can understand the social conditions which generated this
conception of an aloof knower. I can see how it protected the growth
of responsible inquiry which takes effect in change of the
environment, by cultivating a sense of the innocuousness of knowing,
and thus lulling to sleep the animosity of those who, being in
control, had no desire to permit reflection which had practical
import. I can see how specialists at any time, professional knowers,
so to speak, find in this doctrine a salve for conscience--a solace
which all thinkers need as long as an effective share in the conduct
of affairs is not permitted them. Above all, I can see how seclusion
and the absence of the pressure of immediate action developed a more
varied curiosity, greater impartiality, and a more generous outlook.
But all this is no reason for continuing the idealization of a remote
and separate mind or knower now that the method of intelligence is
perfected, and changed social conditions not only permit but demand
that intelligence be placed within the procession of events. An
intellectual integrity, an impartiality and detachment, which is
maintained only in seclusion is unpleasantly reminiscent of other
identifications of virtue with the innocence of ignorance. To place
knowledge where it arises and operates in experience is to know that,
as it arose because of the troubles of man, it is confirmed in
reconstructing the conditions which occasioned those troubles.
Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing. Until
this lesson is fully learned, it is not safe to dissociate knowledge
from experiment nor experiment from experience.
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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