Conventional wisdom

For other uses, see Conventional wisdom (disambiguation).

Conventional wisdom (CW) is a term used to describe ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. Such ideas or explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. Unqualified societal discourse preserves the status quo. It codifies existing social norms, which promote some objective social good. It can also eschew an empirical outlook which is needed in many pursuits. The potential damage of radical change can be minimized. Rigor can be brought back and conflation avoided in any worthwhile subject.

Origin of the term

The term is often credited to the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who used it in his 1958 book The Affluent Society:^[1]

It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.^[2]

The term in actuality is much older and dates at least to 1838.^[3]

Conventional wisdom was used in a number of other works prior to Galbraith, occasionally in a positive^[4] or neutral^[5] sense, but more often pejoratively.^[6]

Accuracy

Conventional wisdom is not necessarily true. Conventional wisdom is additionally often seen as an obstacle to the acceptance of newly acquired information, to introducing new theories and explanations, and therefore operates as an obstacle that must be overcome by legitimate revisionism. This is to say, that despite new information to the contrary, conventional wisdom has a property analogous to inertia that opposes the introduction of contrary belief, sometimes to the point of absurd denial of the new information set by persons strongly holding an outdated (conventional) view. This inertia is due to conventional wisdom being made of ideas that are convenient, appealing and deeply assumed by the public, who hangs on to them even as they grow outdated. The unavoidable outcome is these ideas will eventually not match reality at all, so conventional wisdom will be violently shaken until it doesn't conflict reality so blatantly.

The concept of conventional wisdom also is applied or implied in political senses, often related closely with the phenomenon of talking points. It is used pejoratively to refer to the idea that statements which are repeated over and over become conventional wisdom regardless of whether or not they are true.

In a more general sense, it is used to refer to the accepted truth about something which nearly no one would argue about, and so is used as a gauge (or well-spring) of normative behavior or belief, even within a professional context. One such example was conventional wisdom in 1950, even among most doctors, was that smoking was not particularly harmful to one's health. Conventional wisdom in 2011: it is. Another: It might be used in this manner discussing a technical matter such as the conventional wisdom was that a man would suffer fatal injuries if he experienced more than eighteen g-forces in an aerospace vehicle. (John Stapp shattered that myth by repeatedly withstanding far more in his research—peaking above 46 Gs).

Conventional wisdom may itself be the subject of legends. For example, it is widely believed that conventional wisdom prior to Christopher Columbus held that the world was flat, when in actuality scholars had long accepted that the earth is a sphere.

However, if enough people read and believe this fact, the above sentence will eventually become "conventional wisdom" - and false.

Rejection in some fields

Evidence-based medicine is a deliberate effort to replace conventional wisdom with scientific data.

Treadmill

When conventional wisdom is overthrown, outranked, or outflanked by new ideas, and the new conventional wisdom becomes established in place of the previous one, there may yet be considerable remaining affiliation to the previous regime.

See also

• Paradigm shift
• Argumentum ad populum
• Boiling frog
• Common sense
• Consensus reality
• Dominant ideology
• Social constructionism
• Truthiness
• Contrarian

References

1. ^ E.g., Mark Leibovich, "A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom", N.Y. Times (March 9, 2008).
2. ^ John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958), chapter 2.
3. ^ Warner, Henry Whiting (presumed author is Theodore Frelinghuysen) (1838). An inquiry into the moral and religious character of the American government. New York: Wiley and Putnam. p. 35. http://books.google.com/books?id=VWsUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA35. "it will be seen that we appeal in such a case, neither to the records of legislation, nor yet to the conventional wisdom of our forefathers" 
4. ^ E.g., 1 Nahum Capen, The History of Democracy (1874), page 477 ("millions of all classes alike are equally interested and protected by the practical judgment and conventional wisdom of ages").
5. ^ E.g., "Shallow Theorists", American Educational Monthly 383 (Oct. 1866) ("What is the result? Just what conventional wisdom assumes it would be.").
6. ^ E.g., Joseph Warren Beach, The Technique of Thomas Hardy (1922), page 152 ("He has not the colorless monotony of the business man who follows sure ways to success, who has conformed to every rule of conventional wisdom, and made himself as featureless as a potato field, as tame as an extinct volcano."); "Meditations", The Life (May 1905), page 224 ("in the end he fulfilled the promise of the Lord, and proved that conventional wisdom is short-sighted, narrow, and untrustworthy").