In recent articles, the NY Times and the Washington Post cite new surveys which show that lies spread faster than truth. (See also this NY Times article on the same topic.) No disagreement here! In fact, or instead, I am reminded of Samuel Johnson making the same point, in 1751, as I detailed in my 2008 book, The Constitution of Literature: Literacy, Democracy, and Early English Literary Criticism. As I put it then, Samuel Johnson contended that “Truth always moves ahead in a straight line and is therefore easily outmaneuvered ‘by the oblique and desultory movements, the quick retreats and active doubles which Falsehood always practised'” (184). It is surprising, although perhaps it should not be, that earlier generations’ confrontations with the differentiated diffusion of truth is unknown to so many informed readers today. But it is also yet another reason for the continued importance of the humanities–historical awareness, literary history, and thoughtful reflection on representation are as important today as they have ever been, maybe even more so in that they seem to be accessible, unfortunately, to fewer. Three centuries ago, I argue in The Constitution of Literature, print was the new, politically destabilizing technology of representation. Rather than seeing that era as finished, closed, and over, we ought, it seems to me, see it as a precedent for how to develop now criteria for seeking and establishing truth. Unfortunately, that protocol process took decades and decades for print, from the mid seventeenth until the second half of the eighteenth century, I think. Maybe with today’s accelerated publication timetables, and our historical awareness and experience, we might be able to get there more quickly. One can hope.
