[Vision2020] Death of Facts

[Ron Force]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,809470.story
chicagotribune.com
Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012
In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.
By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter
April 19, 2012
A quick review of the long and illustrious career of Facts reveals some 
of the world's most cherished absolutes: Gravity makes things fall down; 2 + 2 = 4; the sky is blue.

But for many, Facts' most 
memorable moments came in simple day-to-day realities, from a child's 
certainty of its mother's love to the comforting knowledge that a 
favorite television show would start promptly at 8 p.m.

Over 
the centuries, Facts became such a prevalent part of most people's lives
 that Irish philosopher Edmund Burke once said: "Facts are to the mind 
what food is to the body."

To the shock of most sentient 
beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for 
relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though 
few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the 
official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when 
Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 
81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are 
communists.

Facts held on for several days after that assault —
 brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring 
peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

"It's very depressing," said Mary Poovey, a professor of English at New
 York University and author of "A History of the Modern Fact." "I think 
the thing Americans ought to miss most about facts is the lack of 
agreement that there are facts. This means we will never reach consensus
 about anything. Tax policies, presidential candidates. We'll never 
agree on anything."

Facts was born in ancient Greece, the 
brainchild of famed philosopher Aristotle. Poovey said that in its 
youth, Facts was viewed as "universal principles that everybody agrees 
on" or "shared assumptions."

But in the late 16th century, 
English philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon took Facts under his
 wing and began to develop a new way of thinking.

"There was a shift of the word 'fact' to refer to empirical observations," Poovey said.

Facts became concrete observations based on evidence. It was growing up.

Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the 
world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the 
principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for 
scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak 
of its power.

But those halcyon days would not last.

People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts. 
And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a 
growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate 
information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.

"There was 
an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what's true or how you 
would go about verifying any truth claims," Poovey said. "Opinion has 
become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in 
the 'news' an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that 
confirms their opinion as fact."

Though weakened, Facts managed
 to persevere through the last two decades, despite historic setbacks 
that included President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the 
justification forPresidentGeorge W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and 
the debate over President Barack Obama's American citizenship.

Facts was wounded repeatedly throughout the recent GOP primary campaign,
 near fatally when Michele Bachmann claimed a vaccine for a sexually 
transmitted disease causes mental retardation. In December, Facts was 
briefly hospitalized after MSNBC's erroneous report that GOP 
presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign was using an expression 
once used by the Ku Klux Klan.

But friends and relatives of 
Facts said Rep. West's claim that dozens of Democratic politicians are 
communists was simply too much for the aging concept to overcome.

As the world mourned Wednesday, some were unwilling to believe Facts was actually gone.

Gary Alan Fine, the John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern 
University, said: "Facts aren't dead. If anything, there are too many of
 them out there. There has been a population explosion."

Fine pointed to one of Facts' greatest battles, the debate over global warming.

"There are all kinds of studies out there," he said. "There is more 
than enough information to make any case you want to make. There may be a
 preponderance of evidence and there are communities that decide 
something is a fact, but there are enough facts that people who are 
opposed to that claim have their own facts to rely on."

To 
some, Fine's insistence on Facts' survival may seem reminiscent of the 
belief that rock stars like Jim Morrison are still alive.

"How do I know if Jim Morrison is dead?" Fine asked. "How do I know he's dead except that somebody told me that?"

Poovey, however, who knew Facts as well as anyone, said Facts' demise is undoubtedly factual.

"American society has lost confidence that there's a single 
alternative," she said. "Anybody can express an opinion on a blog or any
 other outlet and there's no system of verification or double-checking, 
you just say whatever you want to and it gets magnified. It's just kind 
of a bizarre world in which one person's opinion counts as much as 
anybody else's."

Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.

Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family 
requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC.

rhuppke at tribune.com 
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
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