How does knowledge grow?

The Name of the Rose is a staggeringly marvelous book that has just about everything imaginable in it; insofar as this is true, it is a veritable bestiary of literary and theological ideas about pre-Renaissance Europe. Like the Sanskrit mahākāvyas, it has everything; but it is nevertheless novel in that it questions the pre-existing order in ways that older, more conservative works don’t.
For now, I wish to point out a fascinating passage from the book, addressed to the reader by the narrator Adso:

Learning is not like a coin, which remains physically whole even through the most infamous transactions; it is, rather, like a very handsome dress, which is worn out through use and ostentation. Is not a book like that, in fact? Its pages crumble, its ink and gold turn dull, if too many hands touch it.

This passage would have caught my eye on most days, given that it strikes me as (understandable but) entirely wrongheaded, but it struck me all the more forcefully since I had earlier been translating some Sanskrit subhāṣitas. Specifically, this one:


apūrvaḥ ko ’pi kośo ’yaṃ vidyate tava bhāratī |
vyayato vṛddhim āyāti kṣayam āyāti saṃcayāt ||

What an astonishing treasure you possess, o Goddess of learning!
Spend it, and it grows; hoard it, and it rots.

Now, of course, the particular technologies of information storage and retrieval used by these three cultures—medieval Europe, the Indic sphere, and today’s networked age—are very different, and this might account for at least some of the differences in attitude towards learning. (And, of course, the fact that Adso is not actually a medieval monk, but a modern author’s depiction of one!) There’s a lot being written today about changing conceptions of knowledge in a networked world, but this point-counterpoint between David Weinberger and Evgeny Morozov, as highlighted on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, presents some particularly interesting points.