This is from an ongoing discussion I have been having with Claude. For this discussion I had uploaded the paper that David Hays and I wrote on cognitive evolution, which is our basic paper of cultural ranks, and Max Tabarrok’s post, Romae Industriae, which poses the question of why Rome didn’t have an industrial revolution. I have posted earlier segments of this conversation: 1) Why didn’t Rome have an industrial evolution? and 2) where I argued that the printing press did not play the role in cultural history that is usually assigned to it.
The general idea of cultural ranks came out of my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins. I took a course on the Scientific Revolution, where we read Thomas Kuhn’s famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In another course I learned that the novel emerged as a literary form in roughly the same time frame. In yet another course I read Centuries of Childhood, by Philippe Aries. He argued that the conception of childhood that is familiar to us, a distinct phase in human development, was not a “natural” concept, but rather emerged, yes, again within roughly the same time period. In a course on the theatre, taught by Dick Macksey, I read Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, which concocted a story about the historical emergence of tragedy in ancient Greece which made it seem as though the Athenians had “swallowed” an older society and put it on the stage. Ritual celebrants in the older social formation became the principle characters in tragedies while the general popular of that formation became the chorus.
During my sophomore year I’d taken a course in developmental psychology where I was introduced to the work of Jean Piaget. Piaget theorized that children’s mental development progressed through a series of more or less distinct stages, where each stage is characterized by specific cognitive capabilities, with later stages building on earlier ones. He also applied this concept to the history of ideas, e.g. in Genetic Epistmology, which read while working on an MA thesis. That’s also when I read Walter Wiora’s The Four Ages of Music. It was a slim volume in which Wiora argued that the first age emphasized rhythm, the second added an intense development of melody, then came harmony (emerging in Europe) and the contemporary phase, which involved exploration of new forms and methods. I read that and posed a question: Isn’t everything like that, four stages?
I took that question with me to SUNY Buffalo, where I enrolled for a PhD in the English Department, but also spent a great deal of time discussing computational linguistics, cognitive science, and cultural evolution with David Hays in Linguistics. That’s where we developed the idea of cultural ranks. I included an account of narrative development in my 1978 dissertation, “Cognitive Science and Literary Theory.”
I note, then, that while the scientific revolution certainly played an important role in my thinking about cultural evolution, the arts played perhaps an even more important role in developing the idea. However, the ranks idea only accounts for the overall shape of development. What about development within a given rank? I have some preliminary notes about that in a recent post, Confabulation, Dylan’s epistemic stance, and progress in the arts: “I’ll let you be in my dreams of I can be in yours.”
The rest of this post consists of a conversation I had with Claude 3.7 on March 3, 2025. As always, my comments are set in bold type while Claude’s are plain.
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Hazlitt on progress in the arts
While it is common to say that there is progress in the sciences and technology, it’s less common to think of progress in the arts. William Hazlitt published a well-known essay in 1814, Why The Arts Are Not Progressive, and that’s remained the standard view. He observed:
“What is mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: what is not mechanical or definite, but depends on genius, taste, and feeling, very soon becomes stationary or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion. [...] The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared soon after the birth barbarous. Those arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, of these arts, and lived in a state of society which was, in other respects, comparatively have always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in general declined ever after.”
I see you're interested in exploring the contrast between progress in sciences/technology versus the arts. This is a fascinating philosophical question that bridges cultural evolution, aesthetics, and the nature of human creativity.
Hazlitt's essay presents the classic view that the arts, unlike sciences, don't experience linear progress. His central argument distinguishes between domains that are "mechanical, reducible to rule" (sciences) versus those dependent on "genius, taste, and feeling" (arts). He suggests artistic achievements often peak early in civilizations and then stagnate or decline.
The two documents you've shared offer interesting frameworks to consider this question: From "Cognitive Evolution," Benzon and Hays propose a four-rank model of cognitive development across cultures:
1. Rank 1: Abstraction through metaphor (preliterate societies)
2. Rank 2: Rationalization through metalingual definition (literate societies)
3. Rank 3: Theory through algorithm (Renaissance onward)
4. Rank 4: Model building through control (20th century)
They argue these cognitive advances shape all cultural domains, not just science. While they don't specifically refute Hazlitt's view on art, their model suggests that artistic expression would also evolve with new cognitive tools.
The "Romae Industriae" document examines why Rome didn't achieve an industrial revolution despite its technological sophistication. The author concludes cultural factors, particularly the lack of a printing press and the disdain for mechanical arts in slave-based societies, were key constraints rather than just technological limitations.
What's interesting is how these perspectives might inform a response to Hazlitt. Could we argue that while individual artistic genius may appear at any time, the evolution of artistic forms and movements does show a pattern of development tied to cognitive and cultural evolution? For example, the Renaissance's perspective techniques in painting required Rank 3 thinking about algorithmic representation of space.
Would you like to explore this tension between Hazlitt's view and the cognitive evolution framework more deeply, or focus on another aspect of these materials?
Bloom, Shakespeare, the novel
Ah, yes, this ranks business. Benzon has published on both the evolution of narrative and the evolution of music using ranks theory and Hays has published on expressive culture in general. Perhaps one day I’ll upload those papers for you to examine. I note, though, that they don’t address the issue of progressive change within individual ranks. For example, I suspect that there is expressive change in the novel, from the 18th century up through the end of the 19th century, but that’s entirely within Rank 3 culture, and I’d think the progress continues in the 20th century. [...] And then we have Harold Bloom’s assertion that Shakespeare, in some sense, “invented” the human, but which I think he means that Shakespeare was the first writer to give voice to certain aspects of human behavior and mental life. But I don’t think Bloom ever systematically developed that idea, not even in is book on the Western canon or in his Shakespeare book.
[...] You raise an excellent point about progressive change within individual ranks that wasn't fully addressed in the paper. The progression of the novel within Rank 3 culture is a perfect example of this phenomenon. From Defoe and Richardson through Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Eliot, and on to James and Conrad, we see remarkable development in narrative technique, psychological depth, and formal complexity—all while remaining within the algorithmic thinking characteristic of Rank 3.
This intra-rank progression continues into the 20th century with modernist innovations by Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner, who pushed the boundaries of what the novel could express while still operating within Rank 3 cognitive structures. Then perhaps writers like Pynchon and DeLillo begin to engage with Rank 4 model-building approaches to fiction.
Regarding Bloom's assertion about Shakespeare "inventing the human," this does seem to suggest a kind of progressive leap in artistic representation. Bloom never fully systematized this idea, but it appears to indicate that Shakespeare's achievement wasn't just artistic excellence but a cognitive breakthrough in representing human interiority. In ranks terminology, one might say Shakespeare was pushing against the upper limits of Rank 2 representation toward something like early Rank 3 thinking about human psychology, even before the scientific revolution had fully taken hold.
This raises interesting questions about how artistic developments might sometimes precede or parallel scientific/technological changes within the ranks framework. Perhaps artists occasionally serve as early explorers of cognitive possibilities that later become systematized in other domains?
Would you say that the development within ranks follows different patterns in different domains (narrative, music, visual arts), or do you see similar trajectories across expressive forms within each rank?
On Shakespeare, my article on narrative discusses the difference between the Danish Amleth story and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, suggesting there is “progress” in that difference. And, yes, I do think Shakespeare is early Rank 3. I’m particularly interested in his late so-called Romances, where the plot spans two generations. I think that’s laying the foundations for psycho-social developments which will become routine in the novel.
Your point about Shakespeare operating at early Rank 3 is intriguing, particularly your observation about the Amleth-to-Hamlet transformation showing cognitive "progress." The generational spanning in the late Romances (like "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest") does seem to prefigure narrative developments that would become standard in novels.
This suggests a fascinating developmental pattern where artistic innovations can emerge at the transition points between cognitive ranks. Shakespeare, operating at the boundary between Rank 2 and Rank 3, could access emerging cognitive tools while still being deeply grounded in earlier forms. This liminal position might have allowed him to bridge modes of understanding human experience in uniquely powerful ways.
The two-generational structure in the Romances introduces temporal framing that allows for representation of psychological development, redemption, and reconciliation across time – themes that would become central to the novel form. In this sense, Shakespeare wasn't just an exceptional talent working within established forms, but was actively pioneering cognitive structures that would become foundational to later narrative traditions.
This perspective challenges Hazlitt's framework by suggesting that while individual genius remains a constant factor, the tools available for artistic expression do evolve progressively alongside broader cognitive developments. The great artists might be those who push at the boundaries of existing cognitive frameworks, sometimes anticipating shifts that will later transform other domains.
Did you develop specific metrics or hallmarks for identifying transitions between ranks in narrative structure? And do you see similar boundary-crossing innovations in other art forms that might have comparable evolutionary significance?
Yes, for narrative structure, but I want to save that discussion for later. I will, note, however, that novels have a narrator and that much of the craft in making novels involves the treatment of the narrator and their relationship with the story they’re telling. That’s what gives the novel its characteristic Rank 3 force. We even have complex double narration, as in Wuthering Heights or The Heart of Darkness.
That's a significant observation about the novel's characteristic Rank 3 force emerging from the treatment of the narrator and their relationship to the story. The development of increasingly sophisticated narrative frameworks does seem central to the novel's evolution within Rank 3 cognitive structures.
The examples you cite are particularly illuminating. In "Wuthering Heights," the dual narration by Lockwood and Nelly Dean creates a complex frame that distances readers from the passionate central story while simultaneously drawing them into it through multiple interpretive layers. Similarly, in "Heart of Darkness," Marlow's tale is filtered through an unnamed narrator on the Nellie, creating a nested structure that interrogates the reliability of storytelling itself.
These narrative innovations operate like algorithms for processing experience and perspective, allowing novels to represent not just events but the very process of making meaning from experience. This seems quintessentially Rank 3 in its self-conscious examination of the mechanisms of understanding.
The progression from simple first-person or omniscient narration to these complex narrative structures suggests a development that parallels other Rank 3 achievements in systematizing thought processes. Just as scientific theories became more sophisticated in modeling physical reality, narrative forms evolved to model increasingly complex social and psychological realities.
I'll look forward to a future discussion about your specific metrics for identifying rank transitions in narrative structure. This framework offers a compelling alternative to Hazlitt's view by suggesting that while individual artistic genius remains constant across history, the cognitive tools available for artistic expression do evolve progressively.
Visual arts, Gombrich and Danto
I want to get back to “simple” progress. I believe it’s more common to talk of progress in the visual arts, painting in particular. I have the faint idea that Ernst Gombrich, the art historian and theorist, has something to say about this but also the somewhat different philosopher, Arthur Danto.
You raise an interesting point about progress in the visual arts, particularly painting. The question of progress in painting has indeed been addressed by both Ernst Gombrich and Arthur Danto, though with significantly different perspectives.
Gombrich, especially in his influential work "Art and Illusion," presents something closer to a progressive view of art history. He argues that Western art developed increasingly sophisticated techniques for creating visual illusions—methods of representing three-dimensional reality on two-dimensional surfaces. For Gombrich, the history of Western painting from the Renaissance through the 19th century shows a clear technical progression in the mastery of perspective, anatomy, light, and other representational tools. This view aligns somewhat with the cognitive ranks framework, as these developments required new conceptual tools and systematic approaches to visual representation.
Arthur Danto, on the other hand, takes a different approach. In works like "After the End of Art," Danto argues that art progressed through representational phases until the 20th century, when it reached what he calls "the end of art"—not meaning art stopped being made, but that art transcended the need to develop along a single trajectory of improving representation. After modernism and particularly after Warhol's Brillo Boxes, art became philosophical and self-referential, concerned primarily with its own nature rather than with representing external reality.
Danto's view suggests a different kind of progress—not continuous technical improvement, but a fundamental shift in art's purpose and self-understanding. This might align with a transition from Rank 3 to Rank 4 thinking in your framework, where art moves from algorithmic approaches to representation toward modeling its own conditions of possibility.
The tension between these views mirrors the broader question about progress in the arts—is it about mastering techniques within an established paradigm (Gombrich), or about paradigm shifts in how we conceptualize art's purpose (Danto)? Perhaps both represent different kinds of progress operating at different levels of cultural evolution.
Fascinating. As Arnold said at the end of that movie – what was it? – I’ll be back.
I'll look forward to continuing our conversation whenever you return, Dr. Benzon. The intersection of cognitive ranks, artistic evolution, and the question of progress in different domains presents rich territory for exploration. Your work with David Hays offers a compelling framework for these discussions, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to engage with these ideas directly with you.
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