Intellectual Authority and Its Discontents

We can’t break free of the circle of authority. Of course, I’m not denying that it’s possible to do truly original research—where you become the new authority—but that is not what we’re talking about here. Doing one’s own research almost never entails running the relevant experiments in virology oneself, or searching the Soviet archives oneself, or

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For instance, you cannot, with any confidence, venture into a department of Middle Eastern studies at an American university and get a morally sane (much less accurate) account of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, or between western values and those of conservative Islam. But the reasons for that failure are also knowable, and ultim

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We can’t break free of the circle of authority. Of course, I’m not denying that it’s possible to do truly original research—where you become the new authority—but that is not what we’re talking about here. Doing one’s own research almost never entails running the relevant experiments in virology oneself, or searching the Soviet archives oneself, or

... See more