Incapable of elevation

Conscientious and intelligent professionals tend to mislay the habit of independent judgment, the ability to think apart from conventions, to wander outside of the box. Trained to concentrate on the means, they are ignorant of ends, driven by a self-imposed blindness to drop context and belittle any exception.

They [are] vivid examples of what Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson had warned might happen in an overspecialized modern society, where "the minds of men are contracted and rendered incapable of elevation" --but now at the top of society rather than the bottom. [How The Scots Invented The Modern World, Arthur Herman, 2001; p. 353]

Minds contracted and rendered incapable of elevation.