The Civilization of Knowledge: Who Has the Authority to Interpret the World

Standard accounts of knowledge history often describe human civilization as agradual ascent from myth to reason, from religion to science, and from science toartificial intelligence. This article argues that such narratives remain incomplete.What changes across civilizations is not only the accumulation of truths, but thesuccession of agencies authorized to interpret the world’s signals and stabilize thoseinterpretations as social reality.The article develops a comparative framework organized around five linkedterms: signal, translation, stabilization, agency, and conflict. Human beings donot encounter reality as a complete and transparent whole; they encounter partialtraces, anomalies, records, measurements, and mediated signs. These do not becomeknowledge by themselves. They must be translated into meaningful accounts,stabilized through repeatable and durable forms, and socially authorized throughinstitutions, procedures, or recognized interpreters. The history of knowledge cantherefore be read as the history of changing interpretive authority.Across the longue duree, this article traces major shifts from embodied and oralinterpreters to priestly and archival regimes, from philosophical and translationalformations to scientific, professional, and media institutions, and finally to platforms,algorithms, and AI-mediated systems. Its central claim is that knowledge crises areoften authority crises: moments in which the legitimacy of interpreters is contested,displaced, or reorganized. The defining question of the present is therefore notsimply whether machines can generate knowledge, but whether the authority topre-select, rank, and narrate the visible world is shifting beyond recognizably humaninstitutions.