The public good: knowledge as the foundation for a democratic society.

While we have much to celebrate, our democracy needs continuing attention. (1) We might well take the view that it needs more attention now than it has in some time. Consider the terms "the public good," "Knowledge," and "a democratic society," for example. Who could possibly be opposed, in principle, to these concepts? But they are incomplete as we have assembled them and require a deeper foundation worthy of serious discussion.

Let's start with knowledge. A professor of philosophy in my undergraduate years once said that in answering an examination question on topic X it is never wrong to begin by saying, "That depends on what you mean by X." Indeed, any discussion of knowledge does depend onwhat you mean by knowledge. Even without plunging into a deep discussion of epistemology and post-epistemological views of what the term might mean, we would almost certainly wish to question the role in a democratic society of what a good many people would insist on calling knowledge. What, for example, about divine revelation? Our democracy protects the right of people to believe in divine revelation and to regard that revelation as knowledge. But some of the most contentious issues before this country today are rooted in clashes over whether what some regard as divinely revealed knowledge can be the foundation for laws that must be obeyed by everyone in a democracy. And no one viewing the history of Christianity should feel entitled to single out Islam or any other religion for criticism in this context.

Perhaps what we mean by knowledge, as a foundation for a democratic society, is instead the product of something like the scientific method, the set of propositions that we regard as accurately describing the world outside of ourselves-the "real world," in short. Here again let us avoid a deeper discussion of philosophy that might wish to explode this whole notion. Let us instead settle for common sense. We probably mean something more like the phrase used by the American Philosophical Society, namely, "useful knowledge": the set of propositions that work for going about the world, making things, causing certain things to happen.

This then raises the question, useful for what purposes? Today, and perhaps even in Benjamin Franklin's day, the answer to this question is most likely, in one way or another, "To keep the American economy stronger than any other." A close corollary is "To keep the national defense strong so as to keep our democracy strong so as to keep our economy strong." Advancing efforts toward this end, the National Academies recently published Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. The report argues powerfully for increased investments in education and research in science and technology:

 
  The United States takes deserved pride in the vitality of its economy, 
  which forms the foundation of our high quality of life, our national 
  security, and our hope that our children and grandchildren will 
  inherit ever-greater opportunities. That vitality is derived in large 
  part from the productivity of well-trained people and the steady 
  stream of scientific and technical innovations they produce. Without 
  high-quality, knowledge-intensive jobs and the innovative enterprises 
  that lead to discovery and new technology, our economy will suffer and 
  our people will face a lower standard of living. (2) 

Economic strength, which is to say global competitiveness, and national security are the twin motives for enhancing the production of knowledge, and this will enable us to remain free and democratic. (Medical knowledge, which is not entirely unrelated to economic strength and competitiveness, is the only other kind of useful knowledge that has anything like so strong a claim on the national attention.) If you doubt that these are the principal motives for the production of knowledge--or at least the motives most likely to gain traction in this country--consider some of the kinds of useful knowledge in which we do not invest. Everyone knows that the design of acoustically superior concert halls is far from being an established science. I have long feared that this is principally because the design of acoustically superior concert halls has never been seen as essential to the national defense. Perhaps if we can relate concert halls to the national defense we can make the case to the American people that perfecting acoustics in those halls is a matter of national concern.

This instrumental view of knowledge is surely not sufficient, however, and we ought to want to make that clear. Even if we were content with this as our operating definition, it would be insufficient as the foundation of a democratic society. This has to do with our beliefs about the uses to which any kind of useful knowledge can be put. The production of useful knowledge reached extraordinary heights in Germany in the second quarter of the twentieth century and in the former Soviet Union in the third; in neither case did it provide a sufficient foundation for a democratic society. In short, useful knowledge can be employed in the commission of the most heinous crimes and in the maintenance of the most repressive governments.