Scholarly progress is driven by inherited tools, not individual genius

Evidence

Edward Pococke was probably the best Arabist of his day and, much later, Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy was the most distinguished scholar of classical Arabic in the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, I can produce better translations from Arabic than either of those impressive figures. This is not because I am cleverer or more industrious than they were, but I have been instructed by careful teachers, whereas Pococke and Silvestre de Sacy had effectively to teach themselves. Moreover, I have access to much better dictionaries and grammars and other reference tools, such as the excellent Encyclopaedia of Islam. A recurring theme of this book is the way in which each generation of Arabists found the previous generation’s work unsatisfactory. It was more or less inevitable that this should be so. By today’s standards, nobody’s Arabic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that good. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 25

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the standing-library theme about Erasmus valuing access to texts over owning libraries, and cumulative reference culture. — connects to: Scholarly impact depends on timing and resonance more than on scholarly merit. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 2640; Scientific discoveries emerge from communal slow accumulation, not lone genius — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 166; Great administrators are made by tools, not born with instinct — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 257