The task of activating KKBBS begins… Last week I tried testing the waters by posting a report, only to discover that there isn’t just a shortage of water there—it’s a complete desert! Where on earth am I supposed to begin…………
Let’s be a little honest first and finish the basic task of reporting on each instance of the KeKe Forum~
But this post of mine doesn’t seem to be a news report; rather, it’s a discussion. I think news copy is pretty dull anyway, and besides, I’m not good at writing it. So I might as well keep hurling bricks and see whether I can stir up even a tiny bit of splash…
KeKe Forum Lecture No. 41: Two Kinds of Local Knowledge (November 2)
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=110
Lecture No. 41 of the Peking University Forum on History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
Time: Friday, November 2, 2007, 3:30–5:30 p.m.
Venue: Academic Lecture Hall, Science-Society Center, Chengze Garden
Speaker: Wu Tong (Professor, Institute for Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University)
Topic: Two Kinds of Local Knowledge
Commentator: Jiang Jinsong (Associate Professor, Institute for Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University)
Today there could also have been an intense discussion, but due to time constraints, that was a bit of a pity~~
The three questions in Wu laoshi’s final “summary” were very on point:
1． Can knowledge fail to be universal?
2． Is locality the same as conditionality?
3． Distinguish the three senses of “locality”: “originative,” “justificatory,” and “effectual.”
Wu laoshi’s first question was said to be “extremely powerful,” but in the end it seems to have been brushed aside by Wu Tong in a rather offhand way~ In fact, the second question I raised at the time was connected to this question of Wu laoshi’s—can science not take universality as its ideal? If it does not possess universality (this is not to demand the attainment of absolute universality, but rather the pursuit of universality as such), then how can it be called knowledge? And if science does not pursue universal knowledge, then what is science for?
The problem here is that it is easy for people to admit that there is of course no “absolute” universality: precisely because scientists acknowledge that scientific knowledge is never absolutely universal at any given time, science will therefore keep progressing. If research on local knowledge merely reveals that “there is no absolutely universal knowledge,” then that is nothing but a truism.
There is no absolute universality, but likewise there is no “absolute locality.” Wu laoshi mentioned Wittgenstein’s claim that “a private language is impossible,” that is to say, knowledge after all has a public character. Any kind of “local” knowledge is also “universal” knowledge within a certain range.
If research on local knowledge, when all is said and done, still acknowledges “universality” as the “ideal” of science, then where exactly does its attempted contribution lie? This connects to something that Su laoshi mentioned: that what most enables one to feel its point is the case of the Japanese clock. This case tries to show that the reason Japan’s original timekeeping method was replaced by the Western method was not anything else, but rather that Japan had been culturally Westernized.
In this way, research on local knowledge can be linked to questions of postcolonialism, feminism, and so on. Thus in fact here the word “conquest” is quite important. It connects the spread and replacement of knowledge and technology with cultural conquest, implying that the universalization of knowledge is due to “power,” through “conquest,” rather than due to its truth or validity or the like—according to Wu laoshi’s distinction, if one simultaneously insists on localities in the justificatory and effectual senses, then what follows is that a set of local knowledge cannot be recognized in another place unless it goes and “conquers” its opponent.
But Wu Tong laoshi evaded this issue. In the end he explained that “conquest” simply means “being recognized by other places,” without implying force. But in that case, the basic intent of the research on local knowledge is negated. And the original radical claim becomes a mere tautology—the initial question was how the apparent “de-localization” occurs. In other words, the question is how knowledge originally derived from locality could possibly become generally recognized elsewhere. Wu laoshi’s answer is through one locality’s “conquest” of other localities. But if “conquest” means “being recognized,” then the whole claim becomes: “local knowledge is recognized by other places because local knowledge is recognized by other places,” and turns into a tautology. In short, to make “local knowledge” meaningful, this “implication” of “conquest” should not be weakened.
So when I asked a question, I said that between place and place, between culture and culture, it is not always necessary to conquer one another. But in any case, communication and exchange will always take place. And “consensus” is both a precondition for communication and the aim of many forms of communication (by the way, the aim of communication is not necessarily sameness; see my “Preserving Differences while Preserving Commonality—A Pluralist View of Dialogue” and its supplement), and in the process of communication, there necessarily has to be some process of “universalizing” local knowledge. Whether this process is described with “conquest” or with “being recognized” clearly makes a world of difference.
If local knowledge refers to knowledge as always rooted in local “culture,” “customs,” or “institutions” (that is, the later Wittgenstein’s way of putting it), then the possibility of “universal knowledge” still cannot be ruled out. For since what is called knowledge is nothing other than “human” knowledge, and human beings as a species, although richly diverse, still have even more commonalities. Compared with the difference between human beings and another species, the differences between two local human cultures are almost negligible. That is to say, although human culture and custom exhibit tremendous diversity, their consistency or commonality is even more striking. Different languages can after all be translated into one another (of course translation cannot be accomplished by a formal procedure), which proves that different ways of life among human beings still do possess common features. Since knowledge originates in ways of life, and human ways of life after all have common features, then why should it be impossible for there to exist a kind of knowledge recognized universally by humans living under various ways of life? Even if absolute universality remains ultimately unattainable, why can’t we pursue universal knowledge? Because the universal commonality of human ways of life after all does indeed exist.
November 2, 2007
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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