I was reading Sydney Smith’s essay: Fallacies of Anti-Reformers. He names “Our Wise Ancestors” as a “mischievous and absurd fallacy springing from the grossest perversion of words.”
The basic idea is: it’s a fallacy to resist reforms because the reforms would overturn past wisdom. His point is that while age does produce wisdom over youth, the question is- who are the young and who are the old? Speaking of individuals living at the same period, the oldest of course has the greatest experience. But among generations, the reverse is true. Those who came first (our ancestors) are the young, and therefore have the least experience. Successive generations added to that experience so that our ancestors are, viewed along a timeline, younger than we are.
Of course there is an element of truth to this argument, but I believe it a clever disguise of fallacies itself.
1) Categorical differences between individuals and generations
Individuals have single minds. Knowledge and wisdom accrues to that single mind through time.
Generations are made up of individuals. A string of generations is a series of independent minds. The wisdom of the past is not automatically passed to successors. It must be studied and learned by individuals in each successive generation. If wisdom were automatically accrued, children would be born with all the knowledge of the past. They aren’t, so they must be taught.
Compounding the problem are two facts.
The first is that as each successive generation is added, the amount of knowledge is magnified, so it becomes practically impossible for individuals of the latest generation to learn all that went before.
The second is that the youth of each generation tend to see the wisdom of the past as irrelevant and no longer applicable, therefore not worthy of study.
2) Some types of knowledge change, others don’t
Provided we study to learn, hard sciences will accrue knowledge through generations.
Neither is it necessary to start at the absolute beginning. Those born into this generation will start with a working infrastructure that those 1000 years ago would not have been able to comprehend. In the same way, we, were we to be transported a thousand years to the future, would not understand the infrastructure of the future. Things we take for granted would need to be explained to those even 2-3 generations ago. My generation saw personal computers, and then handheld devices, come into being. We had to learn to use them, and many had to learn from scratch. The current generation knows little of the inner workings, but exploring through an interface to get what they want is second nature to them.
Other types of knowledge, such as knowledge about human nature, is less changing. We can read ancient authors and still see the same humanity then as now.
3) Complex systems evolve without conscious understanding
Generational wisdom evolves and accrues without the individuals fully understanding the wisdom.
Institutions have arisen through much trial and error and slowly evolved into what they are today. They are in a constant state of flux, so we don’t assume they are perfect, but we also need to be mindful of tearing institutions down since it is highly unlikely we really understand what brought them to this state.
Think Chesterton’s fence: If we intervene in a system we didn’t create, we need to understand that previous generations may have known things we didn’t. Why is the fence there? Even if it doesn’t make immediate sense to you, there may be a reason below what you can see. Understand why something is there in the first place. Only when you understand the thing, can you presume to have enough knowledge to tear it down.
But even then, there are likely many things that evolved through generations of trial and error to meet a need. Complex systems always have features that we can’t fully understand. With particular regard to the fallacy, some attempts at reform can actually be a reversal of wisdom.