But when cognition really became emancipated from its social bondage, it also ceased to be linked to a distinct social category.
I’ve just finished Ernest Gellner’s Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History (1988). It’s a thought-provoking exploration of three human activities across time: production, coercion, and cognition.
The quote up top refers to an outcome of the Reformation, when a clerisy that had hoarded knowledge and lorded commandments over society was discarded for the new notion that there were no privileged “messengers of Truth.”
It prompted me to reflect once more upon the state of U.S. universities, and ponder whether we are witnessing a Reformation of the “high church” of modernity.
As Gellner states:
In a society based on a generalized, school-transmitted “high” (literate) culture, a man’s capacity to identify with communities defined by such high cultures becomes the most important factor in his life.
With the transition to the knowledge economy, elite universities progressively entrenched their position as gatekeepers to well-remunerated, high-prestige jobs.
In no small measure, whether a person attended a university — and which university s/he attended — has dictated life outcomes. (See, for example the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances or Anne Case and Angus Deaton on widening gaps in life expectancy).
As purveyors of status and position, universities had significant power in shaping politics and culture.
I think that power is diminishing.
Not because idiocy and illiteracy are ascendant (though they assuredly are). But because the knowledge economy is becoming more egalitarian (which is not to say more remunerative).
In recent years, Silicon Valley’s billionaires have been assailing universities (and the press, but that’s a different discussion), questioning their utility and chipping away at their authority.
The cacophony was easy to ignore until (1) campus conduct following the attacks of October 7th eroded the moral authority of academia; (2) the tech bros’ embrace of Trump lifted them to political power; and (3) the rapid advancement of large language model capabilities democratized access to personalized tutoring and on-demand expertise.
I have grown to find the Silicon Valley billionaires — as well as their hangers-on across social media and podcastistan — to be smug, noxious, and small-minded.
With their Soviet evangelism for technological progress at all costs, I suspect they are guiding us toward perdition. They certainly are not messengers of Truth.
But are they contributing to a cognition Reformation?
Appears so.
