It comes as no surprise to find that there has recently been much talk among Brexit supporters about ‘the wisdom of crowds’. The question fascinated Aristotle, who discussed it at some length in his Politics.
Aristotle (4th century BC) firmly believed that only the ‘best’ should rule. Nevertheless, he had lived in a direct people’s democracy in Athens, and agreed that ‘perhaps, for all its difficulties, it has something to be said for it’. He proceeded to make the case by a series of analogies. The many, he suggested, might be collectively better than the few ‘in the same way that a feast to which all contribute is better than one supplied at one man’s expense’. Collective judgment on music and poetry was clearly better than one man’s, too, because ‘some judge some parts, some others, but their collective judgment is a verdict on all the parts’.
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