The more we think, the more we have to think about our thinking. Thinking does not end with thinking. By using our knowledge, we transform the world around us to suit our needs and desires. In so doing, the manmade world becomes a source of growing problems for us and so does our rational behavior. The more we know and the more we act to the best of our knowledge, the more we render our life complex, and the more we have to know in order to cope with problems confronting us. The more we know, the more there are questions to ask, not less, and the more we are forced to ask questions. Apparently, thinking and the simplicity of the existential situation do not go hand in hand. Knowledge has allowed humans to replace, to a large extent, muscles with brains, liberating them from physical effort. It also gives people more free time, but it does not liberate them from effort in general nor from stress. Humans are now confronted with evermore varied causes of stress than their less knowledgeable forebears. Obviously, rationality is neither a warranty for existential simplicity nor a safeguard against existential difficulties. Quite the contrary! Let us express this unpleasant but fundamental fact in the form of a law:

Law I: "The number and the variety of causes of stress are proportional to the amount of knowledge."

 

Psychoanalysts specializing in stress therapy have a bright future.

Had knowledge and thinking been marginal factors in human life, their complexity-producing causality could, perhaps, be overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant; but this is not the case. Knowledge is an evermore powerful factor of human existence, and thinking is an increasingly common time- and effort-consuming occupation. Moreover, we live in an epoch in which the Baconian thesis that knowledge is power has become obvious. The impact of knowledge and its importance in everyday life are now understood by the general public. From a preoccupation of a few specialists working on the fringes of society, knowledge, its development and its consequences moved to the center of national and international life and became a growing concern for governments and international bodies. Knowledge ceased to be mainly a theoretical problem and acquired great practical importance because, whether one likes it or not, knowledge and its progress affects everybody to an ever greater degree.

It is easy to say that individuals, societies and humanity as a whole are evermore knowledgeable and think more and more. The fact is at the same time both obvious and overwhelming, and its consequences are mind-boggling. They are too complex and far-reaching to be imaginable in their totality, let alone to be understood adequately. One thing is certain: knowledge produces an increasingly more rapid and profound cultural evolution. The cultural evolution of the human species is the most advanced form of evolution in the living kingdom, and biological evolution is the most advanced form of evolution in the cosmic evolution of which we are aware. Consequently, knowledge is the most recent, most advanced and increasingly most powerful factor producing change and novelty in the world.

The impact of knowledge on humans should not be surprising, for persons are thinking creatures. Their rationality specifies their nature, sets them apart from other creatures, shapes their behavior and environment. These statements are commonplace and could easily be dismissed as platitudes not worthy of mention had it not been for the evermore complex, surprising and far-reaching consequences of the use of reason. Had these consequences been simple, easy to foresee, easy to understand and uniformly beneficial, they could have been taken for granted like many other good things in life. They would not be a source of problems and, as such, would not merit special attention. But, as we have already mentioned, unfortunately, this is not the case.

"Man proposes, God disposes." Humans think, but the consequences of this most perfect human act go beyond our expectations and provisions; they escape our control. While the relationship between the individual knower and his or her thinking may appear simple and understandable, the relationship between them and the body of existing knowledge is neither simple nor fully known, perhaps not even fully intelligible. After 25 centuries of philosophical reflection about knowledge, this statement may appear shocking, but it is true nevertheless. What is worse, the relationship between humans and knowledge (which will be referred to as the human-knowledge relationship) is not only is not fully understood; it now becomes apparent that it is also not exclusively beneficial.

In light of this situation, it becomes necessary to analyze the human-knowledge relationship in a more critical manner than traditionally is done by philosophers and from a different perspective. It is the present writer’s conviction that the study of this relationship is at once interesting from a theoretical point of view and necessary for practical reasons. The study may be viewed as an extension of the traditional philosophical approach to the problem of knowledge. It amounts to a meta-critique of knowledge. This type of approach does not require the discussion of the time-honored issues of the problem of the philosophy of knowledge. All that is needed to initiate the study of the ecology of knowledge, i.e., of the human-knowledge relationship, is the admission of the following, rather obvious, propositions: a) rational knowledge exists; b) it grows; c) it impacts on knowers; d) the knowledge construct is an entity distinct from knowers and from the act of thinking.

Knowledge and knowing have preoccupied philosophers since the birth of their discipline. It is therefore important to explain the difference existing among the ecology of knowledge and the traditional philosophical analyses of knowledge as well as the contemporary anthropological and sociological approaches to this subject. The act of knowing is essentially an act of relationship between the knower and the object of knowledge. Philosophers recognize this fact and concentrate their attention on the nature of this relationship. The ecology of knowledge, instead, attempts to discuss the relationship between knowers and the knowledge construct and its consequences. There was an important reason why the traditional concern with knowledge did not address itself to the problem, which the present development of knowledge forces upon us. It has been customary in our culture to consider reason as the noblest human faculty. Consequently, knowing as the act of this faculty was seen as the loftiest occupation and its result, i.e., knowledge, as man’s greatest achievement, which, no doubt, it is. Equally, it has therefore been assumed that the consequences of knowledge were unambiguously positive. This is why philosophers did not become interested in analyzing more adequately the multiple problems which knowledge generates. It is also true that these problems were less visible in the past than they are now. Generally speaking:

Law II: "The perception of the complexity of the consequences of knowledge is proportional to the development of knowledge."

 

Whatever was the attitude of philosophers in the past toward the problem of the consequences of knowledge, it is obvious that in the future they will have to take this problem into consideration in their study of knowledge.

Although the philosophers’ love affair with knowledge was the expression of a quite common attitude, it did not result from the lack of other perceptions of knowledge. Neither was it due to the total absence of warnings about the dangers involved in man’s temerarious forays into the field of reason. But these warnings, in general, were not to be found in the writings of philosophers. They were usually contained in myths, like the myth of Prometheus, or in religious sources such as the Book of Genesis. Interestingly enough, before humans embarked in earnest on the extraordinary intellectual adventure, they were warned about the dangers which this adventure entailed. In the light of the presentday situation of humanity these ancient warnings appear astonishingly far-sighted. At the same time, it becomes obvious that the uncritical belief in the value of rationality and the exclusively positive nature of its consequences, perhaps useful in earlier stages of the development of knowledge, are far too simplistic to be accepted as satisfactory.

Let it be stated without ambiguity: the novel approach to the problem of knowledge in the theory of the ecology of knowledge is the result of and justified by objective changes in the situation of mankind and the evidence of the complexity of the noetic situation. In the presence of the increasingly massive, and often threatening consequences of knowledge, and in the perspective of the evermore rapid development of knowledge, a new look at knowledge is called for. The purpose of the present book is to introduce the issue of humans’ uneasy coexistence with knowledge. May it firstly be a contribution to the discussion of the nature and role of knowledge, and secondly throw some light on the fast growing problem of man’s relationship with his products, i.e., with the manmade world.

Whether man is the measure of all things, as Protagoras claimed, is an open question. But there is little doubt that the human being is the measure of manmade things. They are produced and exist to satisfy human needs and desires. In this sense, the manmade world is a complement and extension of its maker and, thereby, also his image. The issue of the relationship between humans and the sphere of their products is, in the final analysis, a question of self-knowledge and a problem of man’s coexistence with himself and of the future of humanity. At the present stage of the development of humanity, the quest for self-knowledge has to involve a reflection on his growing demiurgic powers and their source, namely, reason and the consequences of its evermore perfect and efficient activity.

Before engaging in the discussion of the consequences of knowledge, let us, first of all, discuss the perplexing question of knowing knowledge. This we will attempt to do in the next chapter.