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The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch

Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.

In this path-breaking book, Jonathan Rauch reaches back to the parallel eighteenth-century developments of liberal democracy and science to explain what he calls the ‘Constitution of Knowledge’, our social system for turning disagreement into truth.

By explicating the Constitution of Knowledge and probing the war on reality, Rauch arms defenders of truth with a clearer understanding of what they must protect, why they must do, and how they can do it (from Amazon.com).

"It’s a great book, truly important in the pantheon of defenses of free speech, free thought, and the commitment to truth, the perfect counter to post-truth claims on the left and populist truth claims on the right. Destined to be a classic, in the tradition of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.” – Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic magazine