Knowledge Is Powerless

 By David Warren

Scientia potentia est – “Knowledge is power” – was launched upon the world by Francis Bacon, and entered flight with Thomas Hobbes. The phrase was among the watchwords of the new, post-Catholic, “scientific” order, or “Reformation” as its exponents came to call themselves. They had a new, nominalist, appreciation of technology.

Yet the phrase, or some near variant, may be found in the Hebrew Book of Proverbs, and here and there over the many intervening centuries. The difference was that Bacon, and his secretary, Hobbes, used it like thugs. They meant political power – the power over others. They did not mean the power to fuel virtue.

That “information” is power was a decisive step down, into mediocrity. It seems to have come about when the generations of advertising salesmen co-opted the phrase, and began using it in their promotions.

“Information is power” was among the clichés by which my little mind was poisoned, when I was very young. This was towards the end of the 1960s, and for a few years thereafter. Even today, I still hear it – this deathless cliche – though often from a speaker who is trying to be droll.

I will concede some specialized application. When a piece of information is discovered, that can serve as blackmail bait, I must allow that the knowledge has potential power. If the victim is Christian, however, he may refuse to pay, to save the blackmailer from Hell – making the knowledge useless.

Read the rest: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/05/17/knowledge-is-powerless/