#there's not a ton of info on attitudes towards lore and learning in pre-1st age and 1st age sindarin culture

[undercat-overdog]

Then [Feanor] began a long and secret labour, and he summoned all his lore, and his power, and his subtle skill; and at the end of all he made the Silmarils.

Secrecy is a huge fault of the (Age of the Trees) Noldor. Collaboration is so necessary in science – the Noldor were holding themselves back. And I bet the Second Age Elves, reconstructing their civilization after an apocalypse, were just tearing their hair out over it all. (And they weren't helped by how Elven culture seems to have been at least partly oral* – not to mention how the majority of the population either died or sailed.)

And it all seems so sad to me. Think of what else the Elves could have made with silima. Think of what Feanor could have made had some bright young student come to him and said, “well, what if we do this?”

And ok, yeah, he might not have made something better than the Silmarils. But someone else could have done great things with silima. Or consider the palantirs. The knowledge of their making was lost. Perhaps Galadriel's Mirror was an attempt to reengineer them. Had whoever made her Mirror known how the palantirs were made, they could have created something greater still.

And Feanor's hardly alone in his practice of secrecy. Aule taught Mahtan things he didn't teach to other Elves, and Mahtan doesn't have seen to taught that many other people either. And then of course there's the weapons that various Noldor were making in secret**.

*I bet Pengolodh was the Elf who invented libraries. A culture of secrecy and canonically perfect memories? I bet writing was used mostly for letters, notes, and other ephemera before the Elves realized that lol, we can die.

**interestingly, though beside the point, the Silm says “the Noldor began the smithying of swords and axes and spears. Shields also they made displaying the tokens of many houses and kindreds that vied with one another.” Who were those houses/kindreds? Many implies more than just Feanor's/Fingolfin's/Finarfin's – was Finwe's rule shakier that it seemed?