When standing is awarded for mastery of the known, a system gains cohesion and loses invention: its members graduate with one worldview and stop producing the new. Ansary's Ming exams rewarded command of the classics and not innovative interpretation, made the bureaucracy uniform, and the era produced no important scientific or technical breakthroughs. The application, that a collective must score being right about new questions and not fidelity to what it already holds, is Leo's.

Evidence 5 passages

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  Scholars derived their authority from their mastery of the known, not their explorations of the unknown.

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  The exams did not reward innovative interpretations.

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  Those who went through the school system graduated with the same skill set and the same worldview.

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  the Ming centuries saw no important new scientific or technological breakthroughs to speak of.

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  In this milieu, innovation did not enjoy prestige. The unheard of was best not heard of again.

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