Dr. Allen's book was given to me for its "interesting theory of human nature," a view which occupies a small part towards the end of the work.Before the advertised payoff, though, there are a couple hundred pages of polemic aimed towards traditional conceptions of knowledge in Western Civilization. Starting with the notion that the Greek philosopohers appropriated the concept of knowledge from the artisans early on, Dr. Allen goes on to show how many of our knowledge concepts are inherently biased towards dialogue, argument and language, and are so in fact wrapped up in concepts of academic truth as to have no real grasp on what knowledge really is. Allen's view, echoed throughout the book, is that knowledge is embedded in artifacts that admit superlative performance, and that the superlative is the only viable measuring stick of having knowledge or not. His view flies in the face of common knowledge conceptions and notably combats the language centered discussions of the second half of the 20th century. Allen ties this view into the concepts of civilization and especially urbanity, claiming that as knowledge is embedded in our artifacts, at this point it is entirely inseparable from the cities in which we live. It is here that he develops the payoff, a view of human nature as uncentered, multi-faceted and free, but ultimately cooperative, not the self-centered model that so many purport.
At the end of the 200+ page polemic, Allen neatly summarizes his argument in seven pages, a subsummary of which I'll supply here. Western philospophy's traditional conception of knowledge is biased by its requirements of being a proposition and being true. It is representational and boils down to "belief-plus," the idea that "knowledge" means believing something that is indeed, true. Western knowledge is also notoriously verbal and dialectical; much favor is paid to those who orate over those who "do." Allen argues that our knowledge cannot be limited to our language, because our language in turn serves as referent to artifacts in the world. And it is these artifacts, not our language, in which our humanity / knowledge is expressed. Humans alone are requisite tool-users; we would be nothing sans artifacts, while the few animals who allegedly use tools would not be destroyed by the tools' disasppearance.
Allen also notes that the split of epistemology lies along the lines of "pure ideas" in the mind and positivistic approaches exemplified by the scientific method. The former would fall in the category of "knowledge for its own sake;" the latter in more pragmatic categories. Allen interprets Nietzsche as having identifed knowledge with the superlative and at the edges of human accomplishment; it is therefore neither apart from the world as in the pure ideas or limited to formulation and testing as in the positivistic matter. Knowledge is, in short, transcendent, not something that permits reductionist analysis. (Allen does find Nietschze's cynical interpretations and willingness to sacrifice the present for the unproven-but-promised transcendant future to be problematic). Allen interprets Foucault as missing the point of knowlege, and says that what he really trafficks in is "what passes for knowledge" in a given culture. Without tests, Foucault's knowledge is useless to Allen's concept. And Allen finds Rorty to have successfully abandoned the dialogue heavy assoications of knowledge = truth, only to return to similar notions, this time founded on "consensus" and with what "we call knowledge." Again, this too heavily relies on language. The more we grow toward a golbal culture, the more important is that we abandon these ethnocentric, localized versions of knowledge for a more readily evaluable one. (Allen also tosses aside the division of "knowing-that" v."knowing-how," ultimately stating that "knowing-that" is really a performance, a subset of knowing-how, subject to his same general rule of superlative performance).
Allen then describes stages of our evolutionary development which have left us with a neural plasticity that is utterly dependent on pre-existing structures and artifacts for survival. He claims that as our artifacts and neurolgy have evolved side by side, the neurology itself is therefore an artifact intertwined in the knowledge game. He comments on freedom within this context - "today's preferences settle tomorrows necessities" - and how while we may be trapped into certain problems, we are not trapped w/r/t our approach to solve them. Human nature, it seems, lies in its own indeterminism, in its variety, and not any underlying structure or way of being (other than the afore-mentioned notion that we must be cooperative at base as our city-based way of living fundamentally necessitates/d that cooperation). And despite this role of knowledge within our evolution and development, he finds restricting "knowledge" to the concept of "a survival adaptation" to be ridiculous - "adaptation and natural selection are inadequate to explain the evolution of life and therefore cannot be presumed to explain the evolution of knowledge." Our knowledge and its embededness in our artifacts surely has rational components, but no rule of survival is dictating how it develops; he points to developments of artifacts some 50,000 years after the split of our evolutionary branch from other hominid species as evidence that our knowledge was not a driving force in our speciation. Knowledge is something of a spandrel, for all of you Gould fans out there. He points to cave art as exemplary of our knowledge, and not as exemplary of increased survival; agriculture, too, is a choice that reflects knowledge but not necessarily increased survival rates. Once farming was optional, now it is not; once cites were optional, now they are not (Allen points out that while we have always been dependednt on culture, it is only recently that we hav ebecome dependent on civilization, i.e., urbanity).. Knowledge of the ecosystem has always been vital, and now that knowledge - and a coherent theory of it - must be based on life in the city.
I very much enjoyed this work; like Foucault, Allen exercises a dizzyingly vast knowledge base in support of his arguments (and unlike Foucault, he cites his works coherently!). I do agree with criticisms that call this all polemic without construction - while his takedown of the biases inherent in our conception of knowledge is impressive, the construction, his repeated talk of "the superlative," leaves a lot to be desired. His definition of artifacts is so broad that he may as well be saying "things" at some points, a nasty aspect which reminded me of others' use of "memes" in place of "ideas" or "things." His superlative rhetoric demands the questions: whose superlative? What is the measuring stick? It seems that he is making some kind of definition of "high knowledge," and if so, that's another invitation to criticisms of an ethnocentrically biased defintion of knowledge. He also runs himself into a couple of classics (for me): one, some rather rampant "it is so because I say so" type philosophical constructions. There is one section in particular in which he discusses the concept of knowledge in a world without humans, and his answer to this difficult question is "Sorry, without humans, there is no knowledge." This reminded me heavily of the "This is mistaken" sentence seen in many a philosophical rebuttal. Two, he exercises - what I am now trademarking - something I call Chapter Seven Syndrome, where the final chapter of the work goes into high speculation mode and makes some pretty absurd assertions in areas where the writer is perhaps not qualified to assert. I note here his simplistic take on building codes and regulations - he makes sweeping claims that these codes impinge on our creativity, development and knowledge because they are really only in place to protect the investors in the buildings, not the inhabitants. I'm no architect, but I'm willing to bet that without building codes and regulations, there would be a whole lot of underhanded dealings and corner-cutting taking place, regardless of his "cooperative" view of human nature. Of course these regulations impede artisit development and possibility - any restriction must, by nature, restrict - but to say that we'd clearly be better off without them seems to be ignoring all of the problems those codes are meant to address. Again, I can no more speak authoritatively on this than Allen, and there probably are a slew of unnecessary architecture codes that serve no good purpose. But the "get rid of them!" response is, quite frankly, silly.
A really great work, and anything that cogently challenges your concept of something as pervasive as knowledge with this much force, example and brilliant scholarship is well worth your time. Just don't be surprised if the book leaves a void rather than answers.
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