That post title may be a little misleading because I simply don't know how to answer that question. But that fact in itself is the thing I find most interesting! Let me explain...
On the way into work this morning I heard Nicola Benedetti playing the first movement of Vivaldi's Summer from the Four Seasons. She played it very nicely, with a suitably restrained vibrato and a clean, brisk sound. As she played it, I wondered if she played the quicker parts any more dexterously than the violinists who first played it. Clearly, tastes and styles change but the challenge of playing this piece cleanly (or a Bach solo sonata or a Paganini Caprice) is as great for a modern player as a Baroque one. I would be surprised if Nicola Benedetti finds it easier to play Paganini than Paganini did.
When David Blunkett was asked to comment on the proposed new exam for English schools, the confusingly named EBacc (makes me think it must be a virtual exam), he said that it was natural to recognise that pupils just keep getting better at exams in the way that runners keep running faster. He regarded it as self-evident that we simply make progress as time goes by. While I recognise that this is so in many areas of human endeavour, I wonder if it is true for all areas. I've already mentioned music, but what about something like general intelligence? Knowledge may increase, but does intelligence? I wonder, for example, if the ability to master a number of languages, to analyse complex information, to make connections between diverse phenomena, to appreciate complex poetry, to undertake ground-breaking experiments or to formulate new philosophical concepts comes any more easily to a 21st century person than a 17th century one. And when you see all of these skills embodied in a polymath like Thomas Browne or Christopher Wren, you cannot help but wonder where their modern counterparts are to be found. I suspect that the modern approach to learning favours specialisation over diversification so I wonder if knowing many things can sometimes take precedence over knowing how to do many things.
And I also wonder if we favour certain kinds of knowing over others - binary over analogical, empirical over intuitive, factual over moral, procedural over aesthetic. I have no doubt that, as a culture, we have progressed in many of the areas we value most highly, but there may be other areas where progress is not even a useful category. The mastery of a traditional skill like playing music or the demanding mental exercise of philosophical enquiry may not be areas where progress matters all that much on a larger scale. We still play Bach to test our musical skill, we still read Aquinas to stretch our minds. The growth of a person is no more demanding a work now than it was then and there is wisdom to be found to help that work from many times and places. The difficult thing is to make this wisdom available to the many rather than the few...
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