A timeless and democratic essay, or not: who is the cleverest? Author's name (parents' draft). Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor) Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really." Author's name (my first draft). 0161__Rajivan Abstract. It must be interesting to some people to read the simply-worded reflections of a reasonably intelligent person of his/her time on a topic of enduring discussion, or chatter. For example, which field or profession or specialism has the cleverest people? I present an answer that occurred to me after years of observation but it might be arrived at much sooner by rational actor model: owing to the invisible hand, the cleverest people are where their cleverness is most needed or most benefits society, which may be different from one period to the next. Then I consider challenges to this answer. (I would be careful writing an essay like this, though. "Because it is timeless?" Um, er, um. "Because it is precisely what others would cut in a decision-making process: your essay versus a Hume specialist's essay say?" Perhaps, but the people who have troubled themselves to converse a lot with me: this is the sort of thing worth reading for them, given how they come across. This is a democratic essay!) Draft version: version 4 (31 May 2026, revisions mainly to section 6; version 3 15th September 2025, f.d assumption added and appendices) Software used (freeware): Google docs PDF at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395474781_A_timeless_and_democratic_essay_or_not_who_is_the_cleverest "You think I am but a ram, But the cleverest: I certainly am" 1. Introduction In the society in which I live there is specialization. This person contributes to a society by doing one thing (such as farming), this other person contributes to a society by doing another thing (such as making tools), a third person contributes to a society by doing a third thing (such as composing poems), and more. A reaction I imagine from future people: "Farming, tools, poems: what are you talking about"? Nevertheless, I shall continue. Various people focus on providing us with goods for the mind or soul, such as by writing poems (poets), by understanding the physical world (physicists), by telling jokes (comedians/jesters), and by curing mental disorders (psychiatrists). These must be clever people, but which field, which area, which arena, which profession, which specialism has the cleverest? It is a question that is discussed, is it not? (e.g. Forrester and Leyfield 2015; my brother-in-law presented me with the claim "The Newton of today is in financial services!") And I would like to discuss it too, though it is perhaps embarrassing to do so. "What about people who make their living from their bodies? Do they not have cleverness?" They are generally not considered as clever and I am going to riskily assume that this is true; forgive me, if this be proved false in the future. (Probably there are some sportsmen smarter than me, etc.) In the next part of this paper, I shall disambiguate the question in two ways. In the third part, I shall consider an answer I learnt from Adam Smith, though whether or not he invented it is unclear to me, and also a sensible answer. I reject both. In the fourth part, I introduce an answer that occurred to me within the last few months. I have presented it before but only briefly. In the fifth part, I draw attention to another route to that answer, by means of a rational actor model (also rooted in Adam Smith). In the sixth part, I present some doubt about the answer, from a romantic perspective that some people are beyond economic incentives and also from another perspective. 2. Disambiguations Examining the different fields, the different professions, the different areas, the different arenas even (word from Edwards 2000: p.8), the different specialisms, one asks: who has the cleverest? Or else one asks who are the cleverest: the poets, the comedians, the psychiatrists, the physicists, the philosophers? "Has the cleverest" or "are the cleverest": I am not distinguishing between these two ways of stating the question or these different terms for "field." But I do make some distinctions. Average versus great. One might wonder about which field has the cleverest on average? Alternatively, one might notice that this is the great man (or woman) of this field, this is the great man (or woman) of this other field, this is the great man (or woman) of this third field, and wonder: who is the cleverest amongst these great men? In our own day, the image of Einstein is still the most famous image of a clever great man. In the past, the image of Newton must have been. But average or great: these two versions of the question are quite different. Indeed, I often wonder whether the greater the great man, the lower the level of the average. I even once wrote a two sentence story: S1: "The greater the master, the weaker the apprentice" said a master. S2: And he ended up going into partnership! Anyway, I shall focus on the average level. ("Mean, mode, median?" "Measurements?" You will have to forgive here.) Forgotten. I planned to have another disambiguation here. But I have forgotten it. It seemed quite important for this topic. I sometimes wonder whether, writing for all the ages, has troubling effects on your mind. Oh, I have remembered it now, but it does not seem so worth doing now. Clever for whom? This social class think you are clever if you put me out of business; that higher social class think you are clever if you put that other person out of business! 3. Adam Smith, the perverse, and sensible people 3.1 Adam Smith. This is a response to the question that I picked up from Adam Smith, although I wonder whether it preceded his own work. (Certainly the emphasis on specialization we find in the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations did. Heard of Francis Hutchenson?) When we find that one person is better at this (e.g. composing poems) and another person is better at that (e.g. designing science experiments), we imagine that these people have different natural talents. Furthermore, we imagine that these different natural talents are evident from an early age. Each person specializes in what they are good at. But actually Adam Smith thinks that the difference we notice is the result of specialization rather than the cause. The poet and the physicist and the toolmaker as children have much the same talents, but one specializes in poetry and their poetic abilities improve with specialization, like a muscle strengthened with exercise, while another specializes in physics and their physics-related abilities improve with specialization, and a third turns to toolmaking. Call this the specialization-as-cause thesis, or SAC for short. SAC goes strongly against the common sense perception that some people are more suited to some work and some other people are more suited to other work. I personally find the SAC thesis unbelievable. Anyway, how does it bear upon our question of who is the cleverest? It seems to either require rejecting the question as asking about natural ability, on the false assumption of different levels of natural ability, or else leads to a peculiar inquiry into which field most improves the identically-talented novices. (The common sense alternative to SAC assumes that people go into fields based on their natural talents. SAC says that people prior to specialization have the same natural talents. But there is also a PERVERSE competitor: various fields seek out youths who are unsuited to them, by natural talent, so that they may then boast about how they turned them into functioning members. "I turned this low-diagnostic-talent boy into a medic," "I turned this no-ear-for-it-girl into a rhyming poet," and so on.) 3.2 DIfferent intelligence. Some sensible people will say, "There are simply different kinds of intelligence. This person understands the emotions, this person is good at mathematics, etc. One cannot speak of a cleverest across fields." And there is a whole discourse about kinds of intelligence in psychology. But does not one sometimes look at a fellow doing well in another field and think, "He could have been very good in my field"? I am going to SIMPLIFY and assume that anyone clever, as a teenager, could succeed in a number of fields given a choice BUT most people could not (contrary to Adam Smith). Where then do we expect the cleverest people to be? 4. My idea! Mine, mine, mine… Social anthropology is a discipline which since the 1920s has been known for a kind of fieldwork: the anthropologist immerses themselves in the way of life of a small human society, often a remote society and one regarded as primitive, and reports what they found. I studied it for my undergraduate degree from 1998 to 2001, almost 25 years ago. Earlier this year I was reading renowned anthropologist E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande and I thought, "This man is very clever." I would even rank him above the legendary Enlightenment essayist Francis Bacon. Then I thought the following: this was just before various tribes within the British empire were likely to undergo significant Westernization and the British probably sent the cleverest people they could to find out about these tribes, before the information was forever lost. Bronislaw Malinoski, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, and Evans-Pritchard. Then I came to my general idea: the cleverest people in a given society are where the society's needs are at that time (or where their cleverness is of most use). Towards the demise of the British empire, that might well have been pursuing fieldwork study of peoples. Today in Britain, with a pandemic in the recent past and probably in the future, the cleverest are presumably in medicine. My idea challenges an assumption that some people might make when addressed my essay question. (Fixed discipline assumption) There is one discipline which always attracts the more clever. Others might reject this assumption, but nevertheless assume there is considerable fixity in which discipline attracts the more clever, e.g. ever since the impact of science on Western life, physics has the cleverest people on average. My idea allows for significant changes within a space of 100 years. (Also the example interestingly suggests that an elite university like University of Oxford or Cambridge have people above the level of Francis Bacon available to direct. Can this really be true? Nevermind!) 5. A faster route From 2005 to 2019, I worked in the school of social sciences, in the University of Manchester. I worked in three different departments (or discipline areas, as they are now called) and I also had a desk in economics for a long time: almost 7 years. I sometimes wondered: who are the cleverest? The social anthropologists (where I started), the philosophers (where I did my PhD), the political scientists (whom I taught for), or the economists? I also attended a philosophy and computer science reading group in the school of computer science. One day two postgraduates came in and one asked the other, "DId you give the lecturers a chance?" after a coding competition. It was so long before I arrived at my idea above. But was there a quick route to it? How does a society make people go where its needs are (or the places which are most beneficial for it)? One answer is that it does, or should, gather information about the talents of people and instruct those with suitable talents to work in meeting need 1, those with other suitable talents to meet need 2, and so on. And ensure there is no sensible option but to do as the state instructs. Implementing this approach leads to a large powerful state, in our populated societies. But in Western liberal societies (and I live in one, though I am of Eastern origins), an invisible hand approach is preferred. One leaves individuals to each pursue their self-interest and societal needs somehow get met by this means. "How?" An individual thinks, "I want to make a living and so I need to find something people want done which I can do. Here is a job meeting this need and I can do it, so I will." Thus needs get met without government commands regarding where this or that individual should work. It is as if there were a firm hand guiding people for the collective good, metaphorically speaking, but there is not, merely free individual self-interest, hence Adam Smith introduced the metaphor of an invisible hand. An invisible hand model may well tell you to expect the cleverest people where they are needed in the society at that time, or of most benefit. A youth thinks, "I am a clever fellow. What field requires that?" and proceeds in a certain career direction, or is advised to proceed that way and takes the advice. (Students of economics sometimes wonder, "What is the value of these elegant models that economists like, such as the invisible hand?" In this case, the model provides a quick route to a conclusion I arrived at through long study and after much experience. My idea was surely known earlier in some circles. Maybe the average university student does not know it, however, or the average newspaper reader, including readers of the more sophisticated newspapers. "Finally a commoner has realized this," someone somewhere probably thinks.) 6. Final challenges 6.1 Romanticism. So the cleverest people in a society are where its needs are at a given time (or where they would most benefit the society) and the invisible hand model predicts that? But we romantically like to think that some people cannot be bought off with money. You cannot get them to do some things by giving them more money. (We certainly like to think that most people cannot be bought off so that they will betray their family or commit heinous crimes.) But what about if a society needs clever people in a certain field? Are there clever people who prefer to do something else and will not do this, even for more money? "Well, maybe it is not money they are after, rather something else, such as intellectual prestige: citations or a place in encyclopedias." "But can they not be bought off with that?" One might like to think that the true philosopher or the true poet or the true physicist cannot be bought off, even with long-term intellectual prestige. The true philosopher will not become a medical researcher, say. I am not sure. One can usually offer them something of what they love in the field where they are more needed (Edward 2024). When I was in high school, a girl said that philosophy is for really clever people. Assume they love it there. But various fields offer some philosophy and there is even a puzzle of how a philosophy department survives given the prospect of attracting its prospective students to fields which are less of a career-risk. (I doubt most of the great Western philosophers are so wedded to it.) 6.2. Social network. "Isn't getting a job often a matter of 'who you know, not what you know' to use a saying?" It is compatible with the thinking presented in sections 4 and 5 that social connections - social network - plays an important role in getting jobs. More clever people from certain impressive social networks get jobs in a certain field, where there is societal need for or benefit from cleverness, and would get jobs elsewhere if the conditions were different, thereby raising the average level. They are advised to go there perhaps. 6.3 Irreversibility. People in various fields are of the opinion that once you try their field, you will not be able to give up. If so, that can prevent the distribution predicted by the invisible hand model. An economics student told me that I would only be able to talk to economists soon; comedians seem to think that once you put on the cap-and-bells (even metaphorically) then you cannot give up. I am not convinced by this claim of irreversibility though, from my own experience! Appendix: more mine mine mine… I arrived at my idea above and the invisible hand route to it "independently." Of course, I am dependent on knowing Adam Smith and E. Evans-Pritchard and perhaps exposure to so many departments at the University of Manchester. Also it was I who arrived at the idea of a "perverse project" of taking seemingly unsuitable students into a field, by natural talent, then boasting that one got them functioning. It was a reaction of mine to the problem of "What are people who cannot do X, Y, and Z doing in this field?" But maybe it will be regarded as the product of a distempered mind (Addison 1711). LALALA! Also the problem of how a philosophy department can survive given that various other fields can offer some philosophy and seem less of a career-risk occurred independently to me. I perhaps owe the general way of writing above to the influence of Helen Beebee, but, you know, I used to write like this in 2000. And identifying the fixed discipline assumption I probably owe to the general practice of identifying assumptions in the writings of Marilyn Strathern (which she in turn owes to someone, I assume). And… References Addison, Joseph. 1711. Tuesday 10th April 1711 contribution to The Spectator. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12030/pg12030.txt Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2024 (version 1, 2022). The death of A.J. Ayer, rational actor models, and the curriculum. Available from PhilPapers at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWTDO-8 Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. An aristocratic game and The Guardian's evaluation of training systems. Available from PhilPapers at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWAAG Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2025. Are philosophers the cleverest, or literary figures, or physicists? Available from PhilPapers at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWAPT-4 Edwards, Jeanette. 2000. Born and Bred: idioms of kinship and new reproductive technologies in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forrester, Katy and Leyfield, James. 2015. Russell Brand brags he could 'KNOCK Stephen Hawking out of his wheelchair' as he claims he is more intelligent. Mirror 10th April 2015. Available at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/russell-brand-brags-could-knock-5491348 Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press. George, W.L. 1923. Death of the jester. In Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, The Best British Short Stories of 1923. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company. Smith, Adam. 1904 (originally 1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Methuen. Strathern, Marilyn. 1992. After Nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.