Conjecture

A community without a hierarchy can keep a coherent canon by certifying who may add to it and requiring each addition to fit every prior one, and that bundle of test, credential and canon is portable across borders where a hierarchy is not. Ansary's ch. 14: "Islam had no formal structure of authority, no bishops, no pope, no one to certify that any particular person had the authority to issue a ruling," so the university certified scholars, and "Any new fatwa had to fit in with all previous fatwas, and once it was issued and accepted by scholarly consensus, all future opinions had to fit in with it." In Europe "Communities of reading and learning and intellectual discussion formed around monasteries with good collections of books," and "the university was a constellation of ideas that could hold together as it moved across borders," down to "a certificate called a baccalaureate, which is Latin for beginner." Clay's step: this is the pattern for contribution with credit in a collective with no pope: a beginner credential that opens the door, and a coherence test on every addition.

How groups think together