Epistemocracy

{{Neologism|date=May 2011}}

The term epistemocracy has many conflicting uses, generally designating someone of rank having some epistemic property or other. Nassim Nicholas Taleb used it in 2007 to designate a utopian type of society where the leadership possesses epistemic humility. He claims the French writer Michel de Montaigne was a modern epistemocrat. He points out, however, that it is difficult to assert authority on the basis of one's uncertainty; leaders who are assertive, even if they are incorrect, still gather people together.{{Cite book |last= Taleb |first= Nassim Nicholas |authorlink= Nassim Nicholas Taleb |title= The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable |chapter= Epistemocracy, a Dream |publisher= Random House |isbn= 978-1-4000-6351-2 |pages= 190–192 |year= 2007 }}

However the term had already been used long before this, and {{as of|2010|lc=y}} Taleb's usage has not caught on. Most uses of the word are unrelated or even opposite to this. For instance in reference to communism: "Maoism, like the Marxist- Leninist system upon which it modeled itself, was an `epistemocracy,' rule by those possessed of that infallible wisdom embodied in the `universal truth of Marxism'"Marxism, China, and Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality by A. Gregor, 1999 Or theocracy: "The model for this concentration of knowledge in the hands of a single group is the epistemocracy of the Old Testament priests..."J. R. Simpson. Animal body, literary corpus: the old French "Roman de Renart". Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam

Another use seems to be in relation to modern science or western technocracy: "...the social promotion and political em-powerment of a new class of experimental scientists ... what sociologists of science like Blumenberg call an epistemocracy."José María Rodrígez García. "Scientia Potestas Est – Knowledge is Power: Francis Bacon to Michel Foucault"[https://archive.today/20120723034130/http://www.akademiai.com/content/u495611628627323/] Neohelicon Volume 28, Number 1 / January, 2001. Akadémiai Kiadó. Again this is more or less opposite to Taleb's use. However it would be unfair to say that any of these have exactly caught on either. It remains a word used in an ad hoc manner.