Digifesto

I’ve put my finger on the problem I’ve had with scholarly discourse about intelligibility over the years.

It is so simple, really.

Sometimes, some group of scholars, A, will argue that the work of another group of scholars, B, is unintelligible. Because it is unintelligible, it should not be trusted. Rather, it has to be held accountable to the scholars in A.

Typically, the scholars in B are engaged in some technical science, while the scholars in A are writers.

Scholars in B meanwhile say: well, if you want to understand what we do, then you could always take some courses in it. Here (in the modern day): we’ve made an on-line course which you can take if you want to understand what we do.

The existence of the on-line course or whatever other resources expressing the knowledge of B tend to not impress those in A. If A is persistent, they will come up with reasons why these resources are insufficient, or why there are barriers to people in A making proper use of those resources.

But ultimately, what A is doing is demanding that B make itself understood. What B is offering is education. And though some people are averse to the idea that some things are just inherently hard to understand, this is a minority opinion that is rarely held by, for example, those who have undergone arduous training in B.

Generally speaking, if everybody were educated in B, then there wouldn’t be so much of a reason for demanding its intelligibility. Education, not intelligibility, seems to be the social outcome we would really like here. Naturally, only people in B will really understand how to educate others in B; this leaves those in A with little to say except to demand, as a stopgap, intelligibility.

But what if the only way for A to truly understand B is for A to be educated by B? Or to educate itself in something essentially equivalent to B?