Social Limits on Freedom of Knowledge, based on ”The Dead Past” by Isaac Asimov

At the end of the story, the four main characters are in agreement with regard to the dangerous impact of the chronoscope on society. Does this final agreement among these characters mean that all debates related to knowledge within the story are clearly resolved at the end of the story?

All the debatable aspects about knowledge and its freedom, its relationship with and accountability to the society raised in the text as well as the opinions are dominantly as per the perspectives of its four main characters. So analyzing the question via all these roles will eventually either converge or diverge while establishing a final viewpoint.

The first debate, through the perspective of Dr. Potterley, was about scientific research being driven by power/restrictions (within an organization) versus that driven by intellectual curiosity. (The direct linking between power to restrictions is evident from - Research, he said, forced into a predesigned pattern by the powers that held the purse strings became slavish and had to stagnate). At first, he claims that the former setup will eventually stagnate, but he later corrects himself after realizing the possible social implications of uncontrolled research by adding that I still believe directed research can be useful. I’m not in favor of a retreat to total anarchy. But there must be a middle ground. Directed research can retain flexibility. He agrees to the notion that a third necessary angle to this debate is the societal impact for the reason that for scientists and researchers, science or any other kind of knowledge is separate from its application while for the society it’s largely purposive. For example for Foster (a researcher/knowledge producer) his contributions in the field of chronoscopy was largely the result of his curiosity towards the subject and concerns for science being suppressed and is less focused around its various applications. While for the society, represented by Potterley’s wife, science is largely seen as technology. Potterley puts society over intellectual curiously and takes a middle ground in the debate by employing social factors as the limit for freedom of science by realizing that People like my wife would outweigh us. Or maybe he’s making the impact of his argument bigger by generalizing, but is largely concerned about his wife, Caroline.

Moving on to Prof. Foster, his position in the debate was Why should direction and order benefit a factory and a ship but not scientific research?, which shifts to where Potterley earlier was, after he himself practices anarchism. Though there were subtle differences in Potterley’s earlier and Foster’s current position in terms of the ideals: For Potterley it’s that the knowledge building will eventually hit a wall, while for Foster the concern is for the possibility of existence of gaps or the unexplored ways of exploring science as he says It was just that scientific research had been directed from above and holes were left that could be filled in by anyone who looked in the right direction. And anyone might have if the government hadn’t actively tried to prevent it. Foster stood by his notions of ideal research (absolute freedom for practicing science) even after being exposed to the “dead past” argument by Potterley which indicates that he’s not much concerned about the society or the societal impacts of science. But later when he realizes the privacy invasion problems that would arise with his findings being publicized, he particularly points out to how Araman might have known about the safety-deposit box, after which he readily admits that he won’t publish without any other dialogue. This could implicate anything about Foster, he might be concerned only about his own privacy, or maybe he understands the bigger picture put forth by Araman. The later seems less plausible by the virtue of the preceding argument and also since throughout the text Foster was either concerned about science and its development or about his own curiosity.

Nimmo on other hand is largely materialistically and emotionally driven. This is evident when Nimmo says …all the responsibility would be mine. His career would be saved. And if I were deprived of my science-writing license as a result, my exclusive possession of the chronometric data would set me up for life. Jonas would be angry, I expected that, but I could explain the motive and we would split the take fifty-fifty. He does not become the part of the debates related to knowledge, not significantly enough.

Hence what we could clearly see is that none of the above characters, specially those closely involved in the debate, were dominantly driven by their concerns about the society, while they do understand the implications when they suffered themselves. The debate on knowledge being free seems to stand right until and unless it hits the one back who is trying to establish it. The debate doesn’t resolve around social causes but personal concerns for individual entities who are largely minding their own business and they don’t concern themselves with the wider view, while for the government figure (represented by Araman) it is indeed a social factor. The text once more critiques on the narrow division of work (previously by showing that it handicaps certain research possibilities), since it promotes minding one’s own business, it critiques on the lack of awareness and rationality of individuals which is a product of the way the organisation, described in the text, is. This inculcation of narrowed down thinking is evident for Foster throughout the text, for Potterley one specific evidence could be his dialogue: I had envisioned a chronoscope used for research purposes. All she (his wife) could see was the personal pleasure of returning neurotically to a personal past, a dead past. The pure researcher, Foster, is in the minority. The researchers are trained in the way that they couldn’t figure out the connections of their work in various other spheres, they are limited to certain dimensions. This leaves us with the question that whether the system is responsible for getting the debate resolved at such a primary level, i.e., around personal concerns, for all the individuals making up the system. Is it also responsible for their ignorance of such adverse implications of their work? And would it have been a better scenario, as in what happened in the end wouldn’t have happened, if the system would have been such that the individuals (Potterley and Foster) could have realized the implications earlier than when they were made to by a rulekeeper (Araman). The debate raises questions on the credibility of the system. Would it have been a better scenario if the organisation would have been such that knowledge would have been unrestricted so that a scientist/historian/researcher could also think about the social impacts and could remain armed about their work without falling into the debate on freedom of knowledge? Thus the text, by becoming a critique of the present organization, presents a possibility of inexistence of the debate on knowledge being free or restricted by unrestricting it, and giving individuals the freedom to look across and the responsibility of being wholly aware of the implications of their work. And hence, the text presents a resolved scenario for the debate by critiquing the present unresolved scenario.