THE NEW INQUISITION

by Robert Anton Wilson

[from the]

Introduction

This book speaks of a New Inquisition, a New Idol and a New Agnosticism.

By the New Inquisition I mean to designate certain habits of repression and intimidation that are becoming increasingly commonplace in the scientific community today. By New Idol I mean to designate the rigid beliefs that form the ideological superstructure of the New Inquisition. By the New Agnosticism I mean to designate an attitude of mind which has elsewhere been called "model agnosticism" and which applies the agnostic principle not just to the "God" concept but to ideas of all sorts in all areas of thoughts and ideology.

The agnostic principle refuses total belief or total denial and regards models as tools to be used only and always where appropriate and replaced (by other models) only and always where not appropriate. It does not regard any models, or any class of models, as more "profound" than any other models, or any class of models but asks only how a model serves, or fails to serve, those who use it. The agnostic principle is intended here in a broad "humanistic" or "existential" sense, and is not intended to be narrowly technical or philosophical only.

This book is deliberately polemical because I believe models, as tools, should be tested in that kind of combat which Nietzsche metaphorically called "war" and Marx called dialectical struggle. It is deliberately shocking because I do not want its ideas to seem any less stark or startling than they are.

Some of what I say here may seem to contradict and repudiate ideas espoused in some of my earlier works. In fact, it does not. I still support a high-technology society rather than a more primitive one; I still refuse to join those who glamorize the middle ages (which I regard as a time of madness and superstition); I still advocate space colonization, longevity research and other goals that seem Faustian (or worse) to lauditores temporis acti such as Theodore Rossack and the Pop Ecologists. Above all, I still think the scientific establishment being satirized here is not nearly as nefarious as various religious establishments, especially those of Christianity and Islam. In criticizing what I call Fundamentalist Materialism -- a term I coined over ten years ago, and have used in many articles and a few books -- I am opposing the Fundamentalism, not the Materialism. (This point will be clarified as we proceed.)

Some terms which may be unfamiliar to certain readers are used frequently in this book. They are defined briefly here, and will be explained further, by context and example, as the argument unfolds.