by David D. Horowitz.
“Look out! Look out!” I yelled to a man beginning to cross a downtown Seattle street as vehicles sped through the intersection. Glancing up from his smartphone he saw a car zooming towards him, and he jumped back to the crowded noontime curb. “I wasn’t looking,” he acknowledged, a bit jangled. “Thanks.” “There’s a time,” I hinted, “to look at your smartphone, and there’s a time…” “Not to. Absolutely. Again, thanks.”
Over the years my “Look out!” has warned a few pedestrians about an approaching car, and alert onlookers’ shouts have occasionally warned me, too. These incidents deepened my respect for sense data. Decades ago, some of my university humanities teachers dismissed sense data as unreliable and subjective, and they believed tolerance meant never claiming to know anything. Okay, Professor: try crossing busy downtown intersections ignoring reticulated buses, delivery trucks, and SUVs driven by cellphone-distracted yakkers. Try pretending an onrushing Ford pickup doesn’t really exist and that it wouldn’t hurt if it hit you. Or, rather, don’t try it. Just recall the adage: “Look both ways before you cross the street.”
So, sense data, fallible though it might be, helps guide me in a world of continuously changing physical details. I do not want to be hit by a pick-up truck zooming along at fifty miles per hour, but I do want to sniff freshly bloomed scarlet roses on a late June evening. This is no accident, as I am part of nature and share in its apparent order. And sense data connects me to nature. Indeed, I have a human “nature,” and that generally means I need functioning senses to stay safe, empathetic, and effective.
That said, sense data resonates most deeply when connected to conscience and historical awareness. Consider how during earlier centuries many people presumed that “natural order” entailed legal slavery, divine right of kings, and subjugation of women. Many people today would consider these presumptions antiquated and immoral. Yet for centuries they were widely respectable. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching likely contributed to this change; beliefs are not simply rooted in disembodied philosophical principles. If you read a copy of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography; hear and sing spiritual songs of black Southerners; eat a lunch of mac and cheese, chicken and dumplings, collard greens, and pecan pie and at the table shake hands with people of all colors; and visit a black history museum and study the exhibits, you’ll more likely doubt legal slavery reflects a “natural order.”
But then, what should we consider a “natural order”? I have no perfect answer to offer, but I know I prefer a social order that lets me explore and engage with the cosmic order. I would need principles of free inquiry, expression, and dissent but also sense data. I would continuously reevaluate my premises and conclusions against empiricism’s stubborn insistence there is a physical reality, complex and difficult to know but not merely illusory. If I experience a sharp twinge in my right knee and feel forced to limp, I need to rest or seek medical assistance, not play soccer or dance the tango. If tonight eating pistachio ice cream upsets my stomach, tomorrow I might try a small piece of zucchini bread for dessert instead. If a clergyman insists earth is the center of the universe, but my observations suggest otherwise, then wanting to know the truth would prompt me to publicize my tentative views and learn about others’ views. And if someone discovers flaws in my research, then, fine, dispute my findings. And if that proves my perception of “order” is imperfect, well, what is more naturally human than imperfection?
Imperfect order, then, is solid enough to assert but fluid enough to evolve. This presumes both respect for sense data and awareness of its fallibility. Thus, our understanding of “natural order” might be imperfect, but we can still improve it. At the very least, we can learn to “look out” before we get hit.