Tracing how Wolsey’s learning against learning principle reappeared in the Enlightenment, when encyclopedias, pamphlets, and revolutionary texts flooded Europe and again created order through chaos.

Table of Contents

Learning Against Learning, Part II: The Enlightenment and Controlled Knowledge

Introduction

If Cardinal Wolsey saw learning against learning emerge from the printing press in the 16th century, the 18th century Enlightenment was its next great proving ground. Books, pamphlets, and encyclopedias multiplied at unprecedented scale. Knowledge was no longer the domain of clergy or kings but a growing “public sphere” of readers, clubs, and coffeehouses.

Yet the same pattern repeated. The explosion of knowledge created contradictions, rival truths, and chaos. Revolutions erupted, and with them the same principle Wolsey feared: learning turned against learning. Out of the disorder, new structures of power emerged.

The Flood of Enlightenment Knowledge

The Enlightenment is often celebrated as the “Age of Reason,” but it was also an age of overload.

Pamphlet Wars: Cheap printing made pamphlets the weapon of choice. During the French Revolution, hundreds of thousands circulated, contradicting and undermining each other daily.
Encyclopédie Project: Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie (1751–1772) sought to collect all human knowledge. While monumental, it multiplied arguments by presenting multiple interpretations under one roof, feeding disputes as much as resolving them.
Salons & Coffeehouses: Ideas spread quickly through public gatherings. Rumors and counter-rumors became part of the intellectual bloodstream.
International Letters: The so-called “Republic of Letters” connected philosophers across Europe, but their correspondence often produced intellectual factionalism rather than unity.

The sheer volume of voices destabilized old authorities—Church, monarchy, and aristocracy—just as Wolsey had foreseen two centuries earlier.

Contradiction as Weapon

The effect of this overproduction of knowledge was paradoxical:

Destabilization: Old certainties collapsed under a thousand competing tracts and debates.
Confusion: Revolutionary ideals mixed with superstition, radical philosophy, and utopian schemes.
Exhaustion: Ordinary people could not parse the flood of contradictory arguments, leading many to retreat into slogans and extremes.

From a conspiratorial perspective, this was not simply accidental. Contradiction itself became a weapon. Those who controlled the means of producing and distributing ideas could amplify some, suppress others, and overwhelm rivals by sheer volume.

Information Overload and Revolution

The Enlightenment flood of knowledge had tangible political effects.

American Revolution: Pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense galvanized colonial dissent—but also generated rival visions of liberty and governance, each demanding dominance.
French Revolution: Thousands of pamphlets, petitions, and newspapers whipped the public into a state of permanent upheaval. Learning no longer clarified; it inflamed.
Post-Revolutionary Order: Out of this chaos, new powers emerged—centralized nation-states, revolutionary tribunals, and, eventually, Napoleonic empire.

Here we see again the ordo ab chao dynamic: learning floods the field, contradiction destroys consensus, and new authorities seize control in the aftermath.

Managing the Chaos: Controlled Knowledge

Elites recognized the power of information glut. Their responses included:

Censorship & Licensing: States like France and Austria tried to license presses, ban subversive texts, and police underground pamphlet networks.
Secret Policing of Ideas: Surveillance of printers, salons, and letter-writers became common.
Controlled Publication: Some rulers patronized “approved” Enlightenment authors, harnessing the aura of reason while suppressing dissenting uses of the same ideas.

Thus, even while knowledge appeared to overflow uncontrollably, authorities sought to channel the chaos. They could not stop the deluge, but they could ride it.

Conspiratorial Angle: Learning as Chaos-Engineering

From the conspiratorial perspective, the Enlightenment demonstrates that “learning against learning” was not merely a danger but a tool.

Flood the Field: With pamphlets and books multiplying, every position could be undermined.
Exploit Confusion: As certainty collapsed, the public became dependent on those claiming to provide order—whether revolutionary tribunals or later state institutions.
Harness the Aftermath: Once chaos was total, elites consolidated under new banners: “reason,” “liberty,” or “empire.”

In this sense, Wolsey’s observation from the 16th century played out again: knowledge is most powerful not when unified, but when weaponized against itself.

Conclusion

The Enlightenment was both a triumph of learning and an early example of information overload as a destabilizing force. Encyclopedias, pamphlets, and tracts flooded the public sphere, breaking down old certainties. Out of this flood came revolution, and out of revolution came new orders of power.

The cycle repeats:

Multiply knowledge.
Let contradictions overwhelm.
Watch consensus collapse.
Impose a new ordo ab chao.

What Wolsey saw at the dawn of printing was magnified in the Enlightenment: learning itself becomes chaos, and chaos becomes the raw material of control.

Sources

ORDO AI CHAO – Essence of AI – Learning Against Learning, Info War

ORDO AI CHAO 2 – Essence of AI – Controlled Enlightenment