Coauthors and Closed Minds (Forum: The Return of the Author‪)‬

ONE OF THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS of human knowledge is its capacity for growth. As Ben Jonson put it, in a poem of self-examination and self-criticism, In early modern English "securitie" meant "complacency," here the conviction that the knowledge one possesses is adequate, when it may be moth-eaten. History confirms that in the mainstream of human inquiry knowledge has never remained static. New sources come to light, old ones are reinterpreted; new paradigms are proposed, some are disputed but accepted, others are accepted but displaced or superseded, and so on. Historical scholarship uncovers neglected areas of inquiry, revalues issues formerly regarded as settled, and produces new knowledge, the product being the result of a process of inquiry and discovery that is both critical and self-critical. Francis Bacon was the first modern thinker to fully recognize growth as an innate quality of knowledge, outlining his vision in The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and advancement of Learning, divine and human (1605)--where "proficience" has the older sense of an "Improvement in skill or knowledge; progress." Bacon's dynamic concept of knowledge as something that can be continually extended included every human being's power to improve his or her ability. In his words, the rationem totius or "essence of the whole" is that learning