Fear of Knowledge
Humans have always been an inquisitive species, constantly seeking knowledge to improve our lives and those of future generations.
Knowledge, after all, is power. It allows us to understand ourselves and the world around us, and with that understanding has come great advances. Knowledge has built communities, towns, cities, and civilizations.
But throughout human history, there have also been both individuals and groups who fear and oppose knowledge. They may see it as an affront to their religious beliefs, or in opposition to their preferred political or societal doctrine, and strive to destroy it at the source.
One of the most famous victims of a fear of knowledge was Galileo Galilei, who challenged Catholic doctrine with his theory that Earth revolved around the Sun, a concept known as heliocentrism. This was heresy in the eyes of the church, which believed that Earth was the center of the universe, and in 1616 Galileo was strongly encouraged by the Roman Inquisition to stop promoting heliocentrism.
What was the Catholic church afraid of? Not science per se, but anything that questioned established Scripture. The Bible was considered absolute, and the church didn’t hesitate to use its tremendous power to quash anyone who questioned its teachings.
The Vatican went after Galileo again in 1633 following the publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which, despite Galileo’s earlier rebuke, subtly suggested that heliocentrism was more than hypothetical. Galileo ultimately confessed to overstating his case and was convicted of vehement suspicion of heresy and condemned to life under house arrest. In the end, Galileo had the final word: Pope John Paul II formally agreed that Galileo was correct about heliocentrism in 1992—359 years after Galileo’s trial.
Books have also fallen victim to a fear of knowledge, again most commonly when the ideas they contain run counter to established doctrine. Books were ordered burned during China’s authoritarian Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) to quell subversive thought. In the 1430s Aztec leader Itzcoatl ordered the destruction of pictographic codices depicting the early history of the Aztecs, allowing for the development of a state-sanctioned history and mythos that venerated the deity Huitzilopochtli. And treasured Mayan codices were burned on the order of Spanish bishop Diego de Landa in 1562 because they contained “nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil.” In almost all cases, no copies of the destroyed works were salvaged, a devastating cultural and historical loss.
One of the most infamous instances of book burning occurred early in the history of Nazi Germany. On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 towns across Germany gathered to burn books deemed “un-German” while Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave an incendiary speech in Berlin. An estimated 25,000 books by authors as diverse as Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, and Helen Keller were put to the match, with an emphasis on works by Jewish authors. With the burning pages went the ideas and ideals contained within.
Today fear of knowledge has moved into the digital sphere, a relatively unregulated forum in which individuals and organizations work to create false narratives to distract from actual facts. They do this through a variety of means, including fake Twitter accounts, cleverly created deepfakes that make it appear as if politicians and others have said something they did not, and the spread of bizarre conspiracy theories that seemingly disprove the truth. Through it all, experts and others struggle to promote the truth, as opponents with various agendas aggressively push back.
In 2020, for example, false information proliferated on Twitter and other social media in advance of the U.S. presidential election to put forth the fabricated narrative that the election’s results were rigged against the incumbent. For weeks, unproven claims of voter fraud were touted by individuals in the highest offices of government and by their supporters, leading to violent action under false pretenses. Even after such claims were refuted in courts of law, the unrest remained, and millions of people were still unsure which information sources to trust. Fear of knowledge can work in insidious ways, and its effects can be long-lasting.
Despite all of this, it’s important to recognize that people across the world continue to use the Internet to share valuable knowledge rather than try to suppress it. Advances in medicine and science, important political developments worldwide, opinion informed by fact—all of this can be found on serious knowledge platforms such as Britannica Beyond, where truth will always be a bedrock foundation.
The preservation and dissemination of knowledge in all forms is vital. After all, knowledge elevates us and pushes us toward a bold future. Loss of knowledge restrains us and may even cause us to regress. As a society, we must always be alert to individuals and institutions who fear knowledge and want to subvert it, no matter the reasoning. History shows that the threat is constant.