Truth and networks

At the emotional climax of “Areopagitica,” Milton crafts the most memorable image of the piece—that of the dismembered body of Truth:

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on….then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who…took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear…went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming….To be still searching for what we know not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogenal and proportional), this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic… (741-742).

The fate of poor truth looks remarkably like Latour’s actor-network: a set of originally joined but now physically disparate parts coming together to form an increasingly complete whole. However, Milton’s Truth-network remains forever incomplete. Latour’s concept of a network, on the other hand, seems to imply eventual completion, given increasingly better data collection tools and social theories to fit. Given the correct mindset and appropriate theories, then, it seems possible to arrive at a semi-complete version of truth, or at least a fairly considerate working model.

In a post-Foucauldian world it’s easy to be suspicious of claims about truth, especially truth spelled with a capital T. But can it be productive to think of truth/knowledge as a network? To that end, I wish to juxtapose two quotes:

“Networks are a great way to get rid of phantoms such as nature, society, or power, notions that before, were able to expand mysteriously at no cost” (8).

“The social theory question of bypassing the individual versus society is exactly paralleled by the epistemological question of obtaining authority while bypassing the distinction between rational and irrational voices” (17).

If we think of truth as a network that includes all of its attributes, and therefore a set of endlessly relating actors (slash networks), the “smooth continuity” Latour speaks of emerges. Questions of precedence disappear, as no node has any spatial superiority over another, and each node is in some way related to many others. In cases of religion, the immediate context of Milton’s example, the focus shifts to similarities rather than differences, and the movement is toward inclusion. Societies, based on principles of exclusion, disappear, as do the attendant struggles for power that revolve around hierarchies. Truth may no longer be something that is produced to serve power’s ends, as Foucault claims, but something that simply is alongside the actors/nodes that comprise it. And in the ongoing search for component parts, we begin to discover voices and modes of being previously marginalized, whose existence demands inclusion and participation.

However, the presence of irrational voices—Milton’s “wicked race of deceivers”—is precisely what individualizes the parts of the network in the first place. Our current notions of truth largely depend on determining authority and “correctness,” sifting truth from not-truth. After Foucault’s assertion that truth is a power play, how can we return to a concept of truth not tainted by this suspicion?

Perhaps an answer lies in sidestepping the question, and returning to Milton’s original entrance of truth as a “perfect shape most glorious to look on.” Just as the body of Truth will never be Truth until all pieces are brought back together, we can never access truth until the networks are fully explored—and thus, we recognize that claims to truth that privilege one node over another simply cannot exist in an era where truth means inclusion, not distinction. The infinite connections prevent us from claiming truth in any other form except in inclusive totality. (Words: 651)