Guest Column:
KRUTCH, JOSEPH WOOD
GUEST COLUMN By Joseph Wood Krutch We Need More Than More Facts NEARLY EVERYBODY says nowadays that "what we need is more facts." Since I happen to be an essayist by habit, I have private reasons...
...Joseph Wood Krutch, for many years Brander Mathews Professor of Dramatic Literature at Columbia, is author of The Modern Temper, The Twelve Seasons and other books...
...But "wisdom," "conviction," "standards," even "general ideas," are all terms which suggest some part of it...
...Would any of them change his opinion if a new super-factual study were published tomorrow...
...Goodness only knows we have a lot of them already about a lot of different subjects—scientific, sociological and especially statistical...
...What does change them is thinking rather than fact-finding, discussion about general principles rather than about "the facts," and, in the end, Moral Discourse...
...They are not when ends are involved...
...And we love this kind of information...
...But we don't agree at all on the question of just who, if anybody, ought to be blown up by them...
...Unfortunately, there is no simple term which will define what it is that we need more than we need "more facts...
...No age before ours had one-tenth so many, or thought it did...
...There are a lot of things we need more than we need still more facts...
...But I don't believe that my doubts are purely professional...
...We know just how to build bridges, make aircraft fly faster, and make bombs more destructive...
...When men come to an agreement about what ought to be done, it is usually because some have been persuaded, not because they have been given new facts...
...Since I happen to be an essayist by habit, I have private reasons for doubting this statement and I admit them to begin with...
...At least they all indicate things for the lack of which we cannot agree where agreement is most vital...
...Even the semi-literate public dotes on facts—the batting averages of ball players, the number of TV sets sold last Christmas, how many movie theaters have closed their doors since the war...
...Unless we agree upon some of them pretty soon, there may not be much left to argue over or, for that matter, many people to argue...
...We might even do well to stop looking for them if that would release energy to be expended in examining those convictions, those standards and those general ideas which more facts are not going to change...
...Does the capitalist have any facts not available to the socialist...
...Ignorance of "the facts" would certainly not remedy the situation...
...But it cannot even be lived with successfully as long as we put our faith in "more facts" when they are not going to help...
...So, over a limited field, it does work out...
...Does the proponent of birth control have any factual information denied to its opponents...
...They didn't know to a decimal point the prevalence of illiteracy in every sub-division of every nation or just how many peanuts are produced in South Carolina...
...People in other days frequently had firmer convictions but, by our standards, they were absurdly short on facts...
...It isn't, indeed, one thing...
...Even a wrong answer, if only there were general agreement upon it, might have less catastrophic results than violent disagreement...
...Probably nothing will ever dispose completely of the problem...
...And it seems to be the ought questions which are causing a great deal of the trouble...
...An essayist deals with personal experiences, opinions, tastes, notions and prejudices...
...In most of the fields where facts are sufficient, we have been getting on very well...
...More facts are not going to settle that or any other "ought" question...
...Almost any popular article in a current magazine—about pearl fishing in Florida or the rise of juvenile delinquency in Detroit—gives more factual information on its subject than could have been given a century-and-a-half ago about any subject whatsoever...
...And it is the use...
...They didn't know how much stress a two-by-four would stand or what is the relative frequency of color blindness among men and women...
...Facts are decisive when the question is one of means...
...And the disagreements will continue to exist no matter how many new facts are made available...
...But does it work out that way in matters political, economic, social or moral...
...Yet even a familiar essay may sometimes persuade...
...The theory is, of course, that once "the facts are all in" there will be no more room for difference of opinion and all men will agree on what ought to be done...
...For him, a fact is at best a peg to hang something on...
...It may not remember any of them except the batting averages, but it loves the sense of having had "the facts" laid before it...
...Do the avowed Communist leaders sent to jail know any less about Russia than Senator McCarthy does...
...We do not come to blows over the question of how big the steel girders in a bridge ought to be...
...So, of course, does "good will...
...the respectability even, of persuasion in which a fact-worshipping age has lost all faith...
Vol. 37 • September 1954 • No. 39
