Isegoria

The most important question we can ask of historians, David Banks suggests, is Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest?

It is intellectually embarrassing that this is almost never posed squarely — I can think of only two articles (Gray, 1958 and 1961) and two books (Kroeber, 1944 and McClelland, 1961) that tackle this directly. But Gray is a lunatic, Kroeber waffles vaguely, and McClelland veers off into a fascinating but incomplete assessment. The question has never been the focus of professional attention in social history, although its answer would have thrilling implications for education, politics, science and art.

[…]

When I beard social historians at cocktail parties, they usually dismiss the problem of explaining excess genius as complex and ill-posed. But when coaxed into conversation, several ideas for facilitating factors come forward: Prosperity. They submit that a florescent culture needs the economic wherewithal to support the arts. Peace. They suggest that a climate of peace is also conducive to philosophical, artistic and (perhaps) scientific progress. (But recall Welles’ comment on Switzerland.)

Freedom. They believe that artistic freedom from state or religious control enables new growth.

Social Mobility. They think that when class distinctions are relatively permeable, then there is greater inducement for artists to excel.

The Paradigm Thing. They suppose that when a new medium or perspective arises, then art flourishes until the vein of originality is worked out.

All of these are good ideas, and superficially plausible. But most contradict the historical record.

To be specific, the prosperity suggestion fails for Athens, Florence and London. Athens spent its boom period in combat with Sparta; the income from the Delian League went to the fleet. Athenian farmers could not tend their crops (cf. The Acharnians), and such staples as grain had to be imported. Similarly, quatrocento Florence was poor compared to pre-plague Florence. The Medici bank had about half the capital of the Peruzzi bank in 1340, and Lopez (1970) documents other indications of reduced standards of living. A symptom of this desperation was the revolt of the populo minuto, which pushed the Medici into prominence. And Elizabethan London suffered “dearness without scarcity” (inflation); this fell most heavily on the aristocracy and the very poor. Then the wool trade collapsed, England entered “the worst economic depression in history” (Wilson, 1965), and Parliament anxiously debated means of averting a Bellum Rusticum.

Regarding the peace hypothesis, it clearly fails for Athens. Florence was torn by internal factions (e.g., il popolo grosso vs. il popolo minuto, the assassination of Giuliano de Medici, Savonarola). London had to contend with the Armada, the war with Spain in Holland, and internal religious dissent.

Regarding artistic freedom, the Athenian plays were written for religious festivals, and the prize was awarded according to the taste of respectable, pious and civic-minded judges (this caused Aristophanes and Euripides no end of trouble). In Florence, art was commissioned largely by the Church, sometimes by a patron, and had to voice themes prescribed in the contract. In London, note that Shakespeare’s plays avoid all mention of religion and contemporary politics; Marlowe and Jonson were similarly cautious (in literature, not in their personal lives).

Regarding social mobility, this hypothesis seems borne out by our three primary examples. Athens and Florence were both devaluing the aristocracy and promoting mercantilism. In London, the early part of the period clearly shows the rise of the middle class.

Regarding the emergence of a new paradigm, this is difficult to judge concisely. Much of the problem involves distinguishing a perturbation from an innovation. Did the introduction of a second on-stage character in Athenian plays represent a new paradigm? Was Plato’s decision to record philosophical discussion a minor influence on the content of the debate? Similarly, in Florence, painting and sculpture were well-established before the peak occurred, but the invention of perspective and the rediscovery of the classical period may have constituted a paradigm shift. Finally, in London, the key change seems to have been that small groups of strolling players discovered they could pack a hall in a city, and people would stroll to them. This enabled more elaborate props and larger companies, while pressing the need for a larger repertoire. But this kind of change is not especially Kuhnian in spirit, and the problem merits more lengthy consideration.

One could propose other factors. It seems to me that each of the three societies under consideration enjoyed a substantial military victory in the generation preceding their florescence. Athenians whose names shine today are reported to have prided themselves on being the sons of the men who fought at Marathon. Florence was not a military force (the Italian city-states relied upon mercenary condottieri in time of war) but in 1254 they conquered Pisa and Lucca. This secured an outlet to the sea, which was essential to their economic expansion. And in 1588, England conquered the Spanish Armada. This made the seas safe for colonial empire, and was a watershed for British morale.

Also, the great minds in each of these societies tended to hang out together. Socrates spoke with everyone. The playwrights talked shop, and the orators honed themselves upon each other. In Florence, artists trained under an apprentice system that pulled talents together, and Vasari describes frequent visits by the greats to each other’s studios. Leonardo and Michelangelo held a public contest over The Battle of Anghiari; meanwhile, the poets and philosophers clubbed together at Lorenzo’s mansion. In London, much of the theater circle met for drinks at the Mermaid Tavern, and one expects that their common profession ensured their lives crossed even more regularly.

Aubrey reports that Bacon visited the Mermaid Tavern too, and doubtless Bacon knew Raleigh, who was sufficiently friendly with Marlowe to rise to the Shepherd/Nymph bait. Does the social intercourse of good minds produce great minds?

A third possible factor is education. In each of the three societies, education tended to be as personal as a punch in the nose. In Athens, the upper class had tutors and the lower classes shopped for their educations among various freelance teachers. In Florence, the upper class had tutors and the masses learned as apprentices. In England, the upper class had tutors and the commoners learnt to write plays and poetry from each other, insofar as I can tell. All three of these systems emphasize individual instruction over the currently popular cattle drive approach. And there is ancillary evidence (cf. the lives of Wiener, Maxwell, Dirac, Russell, Mill, Malthus, Arnold, Feynman) that tutoring is enormously effective.

One can postulate many other factors. For example, it is suggestive that all three of Athens, Florence, and London had populations near 300,000. Also, all three had relatively democratic styles of government, and all three’s florescences were ended by right-wing revolutions (the Rule of the 400, Savonarola, and Cromwell). Finally, each of the three were in the process of reinventing their language — Periclean Athens defined the conventions of Attic Greek, Dante made Tuscan the foundation of modern Italian, and the linguistic gap from Chaucer to Shakespeare is enormously larger than the gap from Shakespeare to us (but this could be due to selection bias, since language might gel around great writings, rather than great writings arise from volatile language).

There is never any shortage of hypotheses. The useful trick is to know how to test them. In this case, one could rank a sample of cities in terms of their cultural IQ, and then decide whether the hypothesized factor obtains for each of the cities. If the factor is more common for the florescent cities than for the average or below average cities, then the hypothesis is supported (this can be made formally statistical). To an extent, this style of reasoning is what is used in this section, except that I haven’t elaborated the comparison by listing cities which have made meager cultural contributions.

(Hat tip to Byrne Hobart.)

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