“The Earth Is Flat!” The Literary Complexity of Truth, Lies and Fake Knowledge
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Svend Erik Larsen
Svend Erik Larsen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Yangtse River Visiting Professor at Sichuan University, and Honorary Professor at University College London. Vice-President of Academia Europaea and co-editor of
Orbis Litterarum. Latest book:Literature and the Experience of Globalization , Bloomsbury Press 2017.
Abstract
Truth is never self-evident or based on ocular proof alone. It has to be based on an argument and, thus, to be shaped for communication, which makes knowledge with a truth-claim a social phenomenon that can only be obtained through a complex mediation of theoretical preconditions, research technology, interdisciplinary collaboration and significant financial investments. Moreover, it is always disseminated in a politically charged context through complex media platforms, today ranging from journals and monographs to social media. The contemporary debate on truth-claims, and thus on ontology and epistemology, often lacks historical perspective beyond its contemporaneity nurtured by the debates about fake news. Yet, the awareness of the lies and fake knowledge this modern complexity may release was clear already in the emerging modern entanglement of science and culture during the Enlightenment, before electronic media. A reading of the comedy “Erasmus Montanus” (1731) by Ludvig Holberg serves as a case in point.
About the author
Svend Erik Larsen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University, Yangtse River Visiting Professor at Sichuan University, and Honorary Professor at University College London. Vice-President of Academia Europaea and co-editor of Orbis Litterarum. Latest book: Literature and the Experience of Globalization, Bloomsbury Press 2017.
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Digital Ontology and Epistemology. Between Law, Literature and the Visual Arts
- “The Earth Is Flat!” The Literary Complexity of Truth, Lies and Fake Knowledge
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- Digital Justice: Shining Future or Illusory Chimera?
- “Select before You Collect”: Uses and Abuses of Profiling and Data Mining in Law and Literature
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- Digital Voodoo: Who Does What?
- Forensic Iconicity: The Experimental Law’s Whatness in Digital Culture
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- Law as Literature: The Interdisciplinary Endeavour of Oudropo,, and Their Interdisciplinary Play with Text
- The Merchant of Venice and the Paschal Moon
- Book Reviews
- Daniela Carpi: Monsters and Monstrosity. From the Canon to the Anti-Canon: Literary and Juridical Subversions
- Jonas Ross Kjærgård, Reimagining Society in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Digital Ontology and Epistemology. Between Law, Literature and the Visual Arts
- “The Earth Is Flat!” The Literary Complexity of Truth, Lies and Fake Knowledge
- Saving Content in Digital Surroundings: A Safe Solution?
- Digital Justice: Shining Future or Illusory Chimera?
- “Select before You Collect”: Uses and Abuses of Profiling and Data Mining in Law and Literature
- Supposing the Law: Nomos and Categorical Imperatives in Never Let Me Go
- Digital Voodoo: Who Does What?
- Forensic Iconicity: The Experimental Law’s Whatness in Digital Culture
- Research
- Digital Media, Fears, and Their Ontological Demagogic Power: Utopia, Homeland, Occupied
- Law as Literature: The Interdisciplinary Endeavour of Oudropo,, and Their Interdisciplinary Play with Text
- The Merchant of Venice and the Paschal Moon
- Book Reviews
- Daniela Carpi: Monsters and Monstrosity. From the Canon to the Anti-Canon: Literary and Juridical Subversions
- Jonas Ross Kjærgård, Reimagining Society in Eighteenth-Century French Literature
