VII. A Web of Interconnections ↑
53. Experts form peer groups.
As groups became larger and more technologically advanced, they practiced more specialization of roles.
Peers within each role would typically compare notes with one another in order to discover what works, and to share that knowledge with others.
They would also develop specialized vocabularies to aid them in comparing notes and describing what works, and what doesn’t.
Written communication then allowed them to:
- Share information asynchronously, over expanses of time and space;
- Precisely describe theories and experiments in order to have them validated (or proven invalid) by peers.
These peer groups of experts thus enabled expansion of our pool of collective scientific knowledge, as well as of practical inventions.
And then this written knowledge could be accurately passed down from generation to generation.
This organizational paradigm encourages loyalty to shared truth, and to precise measurements and formulas, and to the processes of experimentation and review.
This social structure is characteristic of the Modern Level of Development.
Words from Others on this Topic
From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and of wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people.
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835, from the book Democracy in America
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
Lord Kelvin, 03 May 1883, from the lecture “Electrical Units of Measurement”
Relevant Reference Models
- An element of Developmental Levels