Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Do you have the Authority?

During the salon, one of the most impractical questions I encountered went something along the lines of this: which form of knowledge—folk, oral, written or print—is more dominant or effective? Arguing for or against a specific form of knowledge would be redundant due to the fact that legitimate arguments can be made both ways. However, there is one aspect that must be present in each form of knowledge for it to be considered effective or worthwhile. That aspect is authority. Whether it is folk, oral, written, or print, knowledge must derive from a central figure or source that has been previously established as legitimate.
Although the essence of folk knowledge comes through collaborating and working together to solve an unknown problem, an expert must reign supreme within a group of people. For example, consider a chemistry study group gets stuck on a homework problem. There must be at least one person who possesses a more solid understanding of the material else the study group would be rendered useless. The students could discuss for hours on end, but eventually it boils to whether or not someone understands how to apply thermodynamic laws to refrigerators. If no one does, the knowledge behind how to solve the problem remains undiscovered. Think about advances in science, if it weren’t for figures such as Newton who understood concepts more than any other, could people have collectively figured out the laws of physics?
The authoritative figure is especially significant in oral knowledge. Lectures or speeches depend on one figure emerging before an audience. The Bards in Medieval Scotland became the authorities on preserving Scottish culture in the form of song and story. In the Book of Mormon, we learn about King Benjamin and how his skills as an orator played a key role in converting an entire Nephite nation to the the gospel of Christ. In our class we simulated King Benjamin’s speech; the most interesting aspect was how even though there was a designated authority for each scripture, the audience still felt connected to the oral message as whole. That’s what made King Benjamin such a powerful leader: his decision to not esteem himself any higher than his subjects. The best orators are those that consider themselves a part of the audience. When the audience makes a personal connection with the orator, then authority is established, and the knowledge transmitted becomes valuable.
Once writing systems came into play, authority started to shift from a single person to a single text. We see this in religion all the time with scriptures such as the Bible, Quran, and the Book of Mormon that establish keystones of respective faiths. However, one of the more interesting examples of written authority I heard from one of my fellow group members during the Salon. He mentioned that the Ancient Greeks carved the literal word of law into their government structures. This symbolically represents the power that resides in a written that has been established by years of tradition and such. In fact, I learned from one of my comparative politics classes that one of the main indicators of a developed country is whether or not the people follow the authority of the written law. Without the proper authority established by textual information, the information becomes null and void; and in the case of law, lack of authority would spark anarchy.
Once the printing press had been established, the idea of authority changed not necessarily from where the source originally came from, but rather who could get themselves published and available to more people. In my studies, one of such people was Andreas Vesalius. Before the Renaissance, the authority on medical knowledge was the ancient Greek philosopher known as Galen. However, once Vesalius published his De Humani Corporis Fabrica complete with his revolutionary anatomical findings, the scientific community regarded his works as the authority. It’s interesting to see how today even, peer reviewed sources are what validate the legitimacy of knowledge.
The reoccurring pattern of knowledge requiring authority may seem somewhat corrupt and unfair. Only certain people or sources can be considered correct? While this may sound elitist, without established validity of sources, knowledge loses its value. As scholars, we draw from traditions, orators, and texts so that we can establish a firm foundation for our own epistemologies.

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