In Chapter Two of David Weinberger’s Too Big to Know, he opens the chapter by discussing how humans are built to stop searching for an answer once an answer is reached, so that we may search further for more information. In other words, we do not try to find the same answer four times over, we take the sources word for it, at least when the source is credentialed. Weinberger then goes on to discuss the emergence of facts and how knowledge in today’s world is built on the foundation of facts, but in the ancient world the foundation was, instead analogies, a way in which the ancients were able to draw connections in their world and explain things. Weinberger also traces the development of facts from being universals to being particulars, leading from deductive reasoning into inductive reasoning, causing scientific theories such as Francis Bacon's theory of gases. Next, Weinberger discusses the significance of facts, that, when used, demand trust and backup arguments; he later addresses that there are now so many facts that for virtually every fact in an argument there is a readily available counter fact. Weinberger continues to discuss the evolution of the use of facts when he discusses the 1830s, when Jeremy Bentham convinced Parliament to treat everyone in the society as equals by using facts to construct statistics in order to make decisions for the society. He then moves on to the 1890s-1930s where facts become the way to settle disputes, both local and international through fact-finding missions. Next, Weinberger discusses different types of facts that emerge through discussing Darwin’s “this is that” method of fact finding versus a service entitled Hunch, which asks questions to discover facts about you in order to use statistics to make suggestions for you. Further down the line the government creates “Data Commons,” which are data made public because they have no reason to be kept secret. Weinberger concludes this chapter by reviewing the phases of facts; he discusses Classic facts which are relatively sparse, painstakingly discovered and used to prove theories, database facts which cover a handful of fields, chosen and organized by a hand full of people, and networked facts which are facts linked to more information about the context of the fact as well as open to a network of disagreement. (38-39) This chapter discusses the emergence and the role that facts play.
In Chapter Two of Too Big to Know, according to Weinberger we are built to put stopping points on our inquisitions once we get an answer, we do this because this opens us up to further inquiries and once we get an answer from a credentialed source we see no reason to cross check as that would take more time, resources, energy, and money in most cases. Weinberger later moves on to the subject of facts, discussing how “facts” to the ancients meant universals from which there were able to use inductive reasoning to further their knowledge. Weinberger writes that rather than talk about this cat or that cat, they would talk about all cats. (25) This has helped us build knowledge today because we are able to adopt this inductive reasoning, instead of needing to know about or study each individual in a population, we are able to form generalizations that are applicable to each individual, which I believe helps us to compartmentalize and thus retain our knowledge. Additionally, this idea later developed into facts being specifics, or particulars, which are used to form scientific theories about universals. Weinberger brings up Thomas Robert Mathus’ book in his discussion about facts, starting by describing the initial volume that had very little factual information. He them goes on to discuss how this book seems almost appalling with its generalizations, but them discusses how Mathus implemented facts once they became more accessible and how this changed his piece. Weinberger discusses this book in order to contrast a time when facts were rare and hard to find, to a time where facts were more readily available and how this shifted society from having an objective to a more subjective point of view. Counter to the progression of the world around him at the time, Charles Dickens was against the implementation of facts; he thought that the implementation of facts would cause the destruction of imagination. While I see where Dickens was coming from, I do not think he took into account the fact that there is room for both facts and imagination in the world and much of imagination seems to be built by using pieces of facts. Weinberger continues his discussion about facts by comparing and contrasting Charles Darwin’s facts with facts generated by Hunch.com. Similarities between the two include that they are both facts and used to predict other things, but while Darwin’s facts are proving a scientific theory, Hunch’s facts are predicting things about the user. Additionally, Darwin’s facts were scarce and took years to discover and years to come together to prove his theory. On the other hand, Hunch’s facts are the result of asking questions, they do not specifically prove anything, they are used to compare to other users to predict what a specific user may like, but not necessarily. As time went on, Weinberger writes that networked facts emerge, providing more and more facts. As he points out, this leads to more facts about the context of a fact, but, as a downfall, this opens up a network of facts to cause disagreements. In other words, facts can no longer solve disagreements as easily as they used to.
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