This article by Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post has been getting quite a bit of attention; she claims that the United States is in the midst of an "epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism." Her thesis, fairly summed up in the article's sub-headline, is that we are a "nation of dunces."

It's not much of an article, really; more like a rant you might find on a mediocre blog. Jacoby bemoans the rise of video and takes a ritual pass at Bush bashing, but her heart doesn't seem to be in it. Even Democrats don't seriously believe that the President has made Americans stupid.

Jacoby offers no data to indicate how today's Americans compare with those in the past, or in other countries. She cites familiar scare statistics, such as the finding in the 2007 General Social Survey, carried out by the National Science Foundation, that close to twenty percent of respondents think the sun revolves around the earth. That sounds shocking, all right, but I've observed that you can ask virtually any question in a survey, and ten to twenty percent of respondents will give you an off-the-wall answer. Whether they are irresponsible young people pimping the questioner, distracted mothers with crying infants on their hips, or genuinely dumb people is hard to say. Actually, you can find scarier data on the GSS web site, like the 32 percent--more than the number who think the sun revolves around the earth!--who believe that astrology is either "very scientific" or "sort of scientific."

In general, I think, people deal competently with things that affect them in their daily lives, with which they have personal experience, and less effectively with abstractions. Recall this exchange from A Study In Scarlet, in which Dr. Watson describes his new roommate, Sherlock Holmes:

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naïvest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

Ms. Jacoby denounces the attitudes of Americans as "anti-rational," but Holmes, probably the most rational figure in literature, found that the workings of the solar system made little difference to him. No doubt a certain percentage of Americans share his perspective.

What bothers me most about the GSS data has to do with economics, not astronomy. In my judgment, the most destructive thing that any government can do, second only to hauling its citizens out of their beds and having them shot, it to endeavor to fix prices. The folly of price controls is as well established as heliocentrism, and, when a populace is ignorant on this basic point of economics, disastrous consequences can result. Yet, according to the GSS, when asked whether the government should "control...prices by legislation," the public is almost evenly split, with nine percent strongly in favor, 27 percent in favor, and 24 percent "neither." This level of ignorance, which is most likely to manifest itself in the form of support for socialized medicine, poses a clear danger to our children's futures.

As to the question whether there are more dumb Americans today than in former times, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure, though, that things have changed in one respect: a lot more of them are working for major newspapers and other news organizations.

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Posted by John at 8:19 PM  |    |