'Nullius in Verba' - Identity Ideology vs. the Scientific Disposition

The Dangers of Self-ID

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and stands as probably the most august academy of sciences in the West. Of course, by science we do not simply mean test tubes and geiger counters, but all manner of knowledge claims subject to rigorous interrogation and that hold our esteem as such.

Above the very doors of its Marble Hall in central London, etched into the stonework above the lintel, stands the bedrock statement of the scientific episteme – Nullius in Verba, On No One’s Word. This is the core of what we might call the scientific disposition and for centuries it has distinguished the broader scientific paradigm from the implosive circularity of mere faith, unbridled superstition, received knowledge, and obedience to authority.

Regardless of your take on Science with a capital S, and whatever might be your epistemological tastes, this ingrained skeptical disposition toward the word of others has been a keystone of modern reason for at least 364 years. One does not have to be a hardline adherent to positivism or some other vulgar version of empiricism to appreciate the importance of this central tenet of science with a small ‘s’.

The dislocations experienced around gender identity ideology have revealed the great threat couched in abnegation of the scientific disposition. Even the most stringent critics of scientific rationality worked within the minimal parameters of the scientific disposition as is expressed in the dictum of the Royal Society (think Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment).

The consequences in departing from this disposition are truly as dark as they are unacknowledged by the relativist iconoclasts who champion actually-existing identity politics. Above all else, the result is an inability to arrive at commonly accepted moral judgments by means of reason and demonstration, as well as the denial of a common material reality.

This is why intelligent journalist’s like Hannah Barnes, who courageously broke the Tavistock Clinic scandal in the UK, find themselves tied up in knots when trying to explain what happened in that organization. In a recent interview, she was asked how and why depressed, traumatized, confused, often homosexual and often autistic children were fast-tracked down the road of puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery, when staff and third-parties suspected something was going badly wrong. While fully recognizant of where the malpractice had come from, she still couldn’t say what had to be said.

Instead of explanation, we are subjected to ums and aghs, faltering and uber-qualified half statements, as well as the usual litany of paradigm words. But this is not surprising. With a background in the usual academic institutions, and having spent many years in the claustrophobic embrace of the metropolitan professional class, she is disarmed of the intellectual and ethical resources necessary to handle the problem.

It becomes clear through the interview (which I would definitely recommend watching) that she has been passively indoctrinated into the very ideological suppositions that transformed the Tavistock. Despite it ending in gross medical irresponsibility and a travesty of child safe-guarding, she nevertheless remains in thrall to the very ideas that have created the monster, and therefore cannot extricate herself from its labyrinth without the whole suit of armor falling off or without risking alienation from her society of right-thinking people.

The result is chilling. Watching her twist and turn as moral and analytical clarity struggles for expression within the fog of learned dogma is excruciating to watch. The viewer’s reaction will likely be a blend of sympathy and frustration. However, for those as yet untouched by the ideology, she probably presents as just another member of a cadre that has been hoist by it’s own petard and therefore unable really to grasp how and why we have come to where we are.

Extreme subjective self-identification that places knowledge claims about a given object (including one’s self) beyond the reach of disagreement and critique?

At some point in the interview she is discussing transitioners who claim that they are happier after the pharmacological and surgical interventions. Aside from the fact that we know such claims to be highly untrustworthy, Barnes’ attitude is to shrug and effectively say “but who am I to say otherwise”. This is Self-ID in a nutshell. The dictum “on no one’s word” has been ditched. Instead, the truth is determined precisely and exclusively on someone’s word and someone’s word alone. This is where the solipsism of Self-ID has brought us, to a regressive pre-modern form of idealism, mediated through language, and which perpetuates without adequate critical reflection a profoundly destructive set of relativist assumptions.

Of course, others suffer the real consequences, as we now know.

One wonders whether Barnes will come to realize how she is beholden to an intellectual framework that stands in opposition to the spirit of modern science (small s), but the result is plain to see: a slide into incoherence, muddle, fear, and moral impotence.

The question is whether journalists, intellectuals, and leaders can navigate their way out of this impasse and out of the forest of indoctrination in which they were lost during their formative years of higher education. This is exactly the kind of problem we are trying to address in The TransAtlantic, so have a look through our longer articles and subscribe if you want more!