BOOKS
Campus Correctness
KINDLY INQUISITORS: THE NEW ATTACKS ON FREE
THOUGHT. By
Jonathan Rauch.
University of Chicago Press. $17.95.
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This is a thoughtful and refreshing book - and a surprising one. Its
title suggests that it will be another of those "ain't it awfu]?" books
about speech codes on campus, but - though it contains an adequate va–
riety of adequately horrific anecdotes in that vein - it is much more than
that. Its central argument is not, as one might expect, focused on the
First Amendment, nor is it exclusively political; it is primarily epistemo–
logical. One might best describe the book as an extended reflection on
the observation from Charles Sanders Peirce with which it opens: "that
upon this first ... rule of reason, that in order to learn, you must desire
to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline
to think, there follows one corollary, which ... deserves to be written
upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of in–
qUIry."
Like Peirce, Rauch looks at science (by which, like Peirce, he means
inquiry, generally, not just inquiry in the sciences) as a social enterprise, in
the sense that it involves a community of inquirers, sometimes cooperat–
ing, sometimes competing with each other, both within and across gen–
erations. Like Popper and Polanyi, Rauch stresses the importance of un–
derstanding that genuine inquiry can flourish only in an environment of
free thought and critical discussion. The " new attacks on free thought"
to which his subtitle refers are, therefore, threats of a more than purely
political character; they are threats, above all, to the integrity of inquiry.
Central to Rauch's reflections is his conception of "liberal science,"
which he characterizes as a system for settling which beliefs get to count
as knowledge by a kind of free competition in the market of ideas. An
idea has a legitimate claim
to
objective truth only if it has withstood
checking; such claims are always provisional; and the checking depends
on no one's personal authority; it could in principle be done by anyone
with the same result.
The first main theme of the book is that this system, summed up in
"the liberal principle" - "checking of each by each through public criti–
cism" - is the only acceptable way to settle disputes about what is the
case. "The only acceptable way" both epistemologically and morally;
for, Rauch argues, if disputes are not settled by unfettered criticism, they
will be settled in "creed wars," by violence instead of evidence and ar–
gument. The second main theme of the book is that the liberal principle
is presently losing ground to "the fundamentalist principle" - "those who
know the truth should decide who is right" - to "the egalitarian
