Reviews for Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet... And Ourselves

The average rating for Invisible Walls: Why We Ignore the Damage We Inflict on the Planet... And Ourselves based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-12-03 00:00:00 Kimberly Lee What Makes You So Smart? "There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society than the era in which we live." True or not, for Sowell this is not a good thing. According to him "An intellectual's work begins and ends with ideas." But since ideas are not facts, intellectuals, particularly 'public' intellectuals, often speak unintelligently and when those to whom they speak have power, the rest of us suffer. This widespread lack of intelligence among intellectuals comes about because intellectuals live in closed communities, usually among academics, who provide confirmation of each other's ideas without reference to the "world outside". Such isolation creates ideologies which "seek to explain conflicting social visions by differing 'value premises' among those on opposing sides of various issues." Sowell believes this is a dead end because "Ideological differences based on differing value premises are ultimately differing tastes, on which there is said to be no disputing." Sowell has a different vision. He seeks "to explain ideological differences by differing underlying assumptions about the facts of life, the nature of human beings and the nature and distribution of knowledge." This is the clearly preferred option, he believes, because "differences based on beliefs about facts, causation, human nature, and the character and distribution of knowledge, are ultimately questions about different perceptions of the real world, leading to hypotheses which can be tested empirically." The method suggested by Sowell to carry out these empirical tests is basically common sense. At this point he has a problem however. He doesn't approve of consensus politics as verification of what constitutes reality because "the consensus of the group about a particular new idea depends on what that group already believes in general'and says nothing about the empirical validity of that idea in the external world." Yet he also doesn't like 'experts' because they may be knowledgeable but lack judgment in a manner typical of all intellectuals. His presumption that there is common agreement about human nature and causation, much less what constitutes factual information is startling but he doesn't seem to feel the need for its factual confirmation. Sowell provides no solution to this impasse except to say that those carrying out the necessary empirical verification of ideas must be "held accountable". To whom these researchers should be accountable is not clear. Their disciplinary colleagues are obviously not adequate since they will simply confirm existing biases. The electorate, one presumes, is not competent to make such judgments. By default it appears that some sort of government agency, perhaps a Directorate of Scientific Validity should be established. Stalinist perhaps, but unfortunately necessary. This last remark is transparently sarcastic. But it is difficult to take any other stance toward Sowell's thought. There are factoids from a wide range of sources, usually intellectuals, strewn about on every page. But these are selected tendentiously to make the point that he already had in mind. Most of the material he presents as supporting his argument is subject to vastly different interpretations than he chooses to give it. One tires quickly from his glib use of 'notable' opinions from economists, historians, and social scientists of which he approves and the offhand rejection of others as merely 'intellectual'. Sowell puts great store in science. But he seems to have little grasp of what constitutes scientific method or the content of discussions carried for centuries about the philosophy of science and the meaning of scientific results. For him scientific verification is presumed casually as a 'thing' that is obtainable by some pretty basic, down to earth, kick the tires, type of tests. The intellectual elites make the business of observation, experimentation and fact-checking far more complicated than it is to ensure their control over the process. And, as he has shown, these elites cannot be trusted. Sowell quotes Eric Hoffer approvingly: "One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation." Indeed this accusation should be directed at Sowell himself. After all, this is a book of ideas condemning books about ideas. It is written by an intellectual who is trashing the work of intellectuals. It is a parody of itself, from its asinine descriptions of those who work with their minds, to the scandal of suggesting that those who do are self-serving con men (and women presumably, but there aren't many mentioned by Sowell). Intellectuals and Society is a polemic - or perhaps, better said, a parody of a polemic - not a serious study in how ideas are generated, or criticised, or get transformed into technology or social policy. It is facile and only superficially erudite. It is meant to play to a crowd that feels that society is on a downhill path and is looking for someone to blame, pillory, and replace. So it fits rather well with the current politics of the Right in the United States. It simultaneously justifies their skepticism about the results of science from climate change to educational curricula, and suggests that they are actually more competent than everyone else thinks they are. More dangerously, It feeds their paranoia as well as their feelings of judgmental competence. Sowell's brand of political partisanship posing as intellect was described and castigated a century ago by Julien Benda []. Benda called it treason. I think that's the correct word. I think it was John dos Passos who said that Americans believe that their neighbors have no right to know more than they do. Intellectuals and Society is a confirmation of that hypothesis. Postscript: Sowell's populist message has a pedigree in American philosophy. George Santayana was the darling at Harvard of what would now be called the neo-liberal set at the turn of the 20th century. Sowell shares many of the same prejudices, misconceptions, and contradictions with Santayana. See:

Review # 2 was written on 2010-02-10 00:00:00 Greg Wrench The influence of the establishment political intelligentsia has helped spread many misconceptions about economics, race, history, foreign policy, and justice. Sowell, using empirical evidence and wit, tears down these misconceptions and shows the reader how proposals offered to problems are misguided. Among the notable intellectuals called out in this book are Arthur Schlesinger, John Rawls, Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, and John Dewey. I'm glad an updated and revised version of this book was released.