The Constitution of Knowledge

A defense of the institutions that turn disagreement into shared truth, the press, the academy, the courts, the professions, and an account of the forces now straining them. Rauch argues that knowledge, like government, depends on a constitution, an agreed set of rules for settling what is real, and that abandoning those rules leaves a society unable to know anything in common. The press-and-epistemics anchor for the whole shelf: how a republic decides what is true.

A writer on public argument, free thought, and the institutions that produce shared knowledge. The Constitution of Knowledge defends the system, the press, the academy, the courts, the professions, by which a free society turns disagreement into reliable truth, and examines the forces now straining it. He writes about epistemics as a civic concern: how a republic knows what it knows.