“…Scientific knowledge does not represent the totality of knowledge; it has always existed in addition to, and in competition and conflict with, another kind of knowledge, which I will call narratives in the interest of simplicity.”

Source: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1977), p.7

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Jean-François Lyotard 26
French philosopher 1924–1998

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“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

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Context: Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

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“If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

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Context: If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.<!--p.76

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“What is knowledge? Ever since class society came into being the world has had only two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the struggle of production and knowledge of the class struggle. Natural science and social science are the crystallization of these two kinds of knowledge, and philosophy is the generalization and summation of the knowledge of nature.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Original: (zh-CN) 什么是知识?自从有阶级的社会存在以来,世界上的知识只有两门,一门叫做生产斗争知识,一门叫做阶级斗争知识。自然科学、社会科学,就是这两门知识的结晶,哲学则是关于自然知识和社会知识的概括和总结。 note: "整顿党的作风"
Source: "Rectify the Party's Style of Work" (1942)

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