PSEUDOSCHOLARS RULE! OR THEY SHOULD

With the advent of deep theorizing upon the ‘unexplained’ from the 1940s onwards, an old term was given new definitions. This is the ‘pseudoscholar’, a term heaped on many from Immanuel Velikovsky to Erich von Daniken.
Now, some pseudoscholars maybe deserve ridicule, mainly because of bad research, but to academe the term has come in for much derision, to the point that they are virtually ignored, regardless of their methodology.

Researching spurious subjects is nonsense.

Or so much of academe claims. Yet how ignored are they? Consider the new discipline of reconstructive archaeology. Here, experts build ancient structures to learn how they were done.
What was the main prompter for this discipline? It was the constant ‘chatter’ of pseudoscholars, annoying the archaeologists to the point that they went out of their way to prove them wrong. So, even in the negative, this is a case of pseudoscholars doing good.

‘Pseudo’ means false.

How accurate is this name? Well, a scholar is a person who researches something in a rational way in order to provide conclusions about the subject. This IS what pseudoscholars do, so the detractors’ inference of ‘false’ is a perfect example of pseudoscholarship.
It seems to me that ‘pseudo’ is a tag placed by academe on scholars who do not follow the accepted line or paradigm. The established view rules, and no ‘nonsense’ outside this worldview will be tolerated.

This is a natural consequence of our paradigm.

In the east knowledge is seen as cyclical, in that things go round in never ending sequences. The intellectual west broke from this form of knowledge by devising ‘linear’ thought.
Essentially, such thought is based on the idea that we can act upon the world and change it, thus ‘advancing’. This process suggests a beginning, and by definition must have an end. Hence, ‘cycles’ are broken.

There is a distinct politicism in this.

As knowledge provides action, our society and culture goes on to reflect a particular form of knowledge, usually based on the most powerful theorists around. This is defined as ‘normal’, and anything that disagrees becomes ‘abnormal’.
This is the root of good and evil, and by associating knowledge with power, evil can be persecuted, wiped out, or, in today’s more enlightened times, marginalized. Hence the term ‘pseudo’, a perfect word to marginalize ‘evil’ knowledge appraisal.
The problem with this system is the ‘power’ invested in an established view. The reality is, very few scholars ARE scholars in its pure meaning. The great scholars CAUSED paradigm shifts. The scholars who follow are merely caretakers intent upon upholding the new paradigm – in essence, people who maintain old knowledge. After all, knowledge DOES move on, doesn’t it?
What can we say of the people who created these new paradigms? Well, we can include people such as Newton, Darwin, Mendel in the scientific sphere. Of course, seeing they worked in a field that was yet to be defined, they were all pseudoscholars, weren’t they?
The modern usage of pseudoscholar should be redefined as those scholars who research those things outside the accepted paradigm, rather than as ‘false’. Yes, many of them will come up with spurious ideas. But to condemn all because of this is to break one of the most cherished rules of knowledge appraisal.
The enquiring mind should be left free to roam where it will, often getting it wrong, but nonetheless working towards a new ‘truth’. For as I’ve often said in the past: a brilliant idea crawls out of the corpses of a hundred failures.

© Anthony North, December 2008