The Lost Art of Learning
I was reading in Business 2.0 about Jeff Hawkins, the gent who created the Palm Pilot and the Treo. His driving passion is apparently neuroscience, and his team is currently at work on an application called Numenta, which is basically a computer that's programmed to learn like a human.
Then, somewhere down the article, the author mentions that humans don't yet know exactly how the brain works, but if they did...
And then I realized: when did we, as a society, become so quick to proclaim that we DO know everything?
I think back to my gradeschool and high school textbooks, especially in science and social studies, which I now realize, only a decade or two later, were mostly hogwash or propaganda. Not only is the Civil War (and every other aspect of history) much more complex than most schools ever let on, but now we know basic fundamentals of science -- like Pluto being a planet -- are wrong.
And yet, to watch most TV commercials, read most books, see most films, you'd think we were living in the age of complete knowledge. I'm sure this has always been the case for humanity -- to act as though it knows absolutely everything about its world -- which explains the initial treatment of "heretics" like Galileo and the idealogical wars between Socrates and the sophists.
But to admit that we don't know how something works -- that's kind of a sobering statement, in the midst of all this knowledge, no?
It got me thinking... what else do we not know? And why not?
Somewhere along the way, the art of learning became passe and was replaced by the artlessness of knowing. Knowledge is useless in a vacuum, which means we, as a society, should be forever pushing forward to better understand ourselves and our surroundings, so that we may always be improving as both individuals AND a society. And yet, how many people are scorned or ridiculed for attempting to learn more about that which we, as a society, admit we know very little?
It's almost like a generalized conservative mentality, which mandates that we NOT ask questions or seek to know things beyond our immediate reach, has pervaded the status quo and caused us to see curiosity or individuality as a weakness and an idiosyncracy to be expunged, rather than a possible avenue to enlightenment which should be supported and celebrated.
Heady thoughts, I know, and not at all what you or I might expect to consider when reading a copy of Business 2.0... And it has nothing specifically to do with our web series... I'm just wondering...
Labels: education, humanity, sociology, thought process
posted by STBD @ 8:55 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
These are very heady thoughts, indeed. I too was pondering such questions a few years ago, but found myself in an endless circle of answerless frustration. To travel the length and breadth of epistemology would consume a lifetime and serve only to structure thought on knowledge in hand. It is good to see that there are a few people left that still are thinking about these things though.
I pose more questions: Why have we as a species become so satisfied by the illusion of having all knowledge? Further, what fear is there in the possibility of our tenaciously held beliefs being proven wrong or that there may, or is rather, more to know?
I was reading a rather dull section in a textbook when I stumbled on an interesting statement. It said that fifty percent of the jobs that will be available in the U.S. in ten years haven’t even been thought of yet. The authors seemed to be delivering this as some kind of ominous warning. There are those who, given this prediction, would I’m sure be consumed by fear. However, I was energized and excited by this prospect. To think that at this moment, humanity has it all figured out- and this is as good as its going to get- is far more sobering than an admission of ignorance.
Our human tendency toward ideology (as opposed to reason) hasn’t changed since Socrates or Galileo. The problem now is that we have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. All of our advances seem to further lull people to sleep intellectually. There is no incentive to be a questioner these days and without questions, where are we to find new knowledge.
Attempt to push back the barricades of ignorance and you unsettle people’s sense of security. You sited examples from antiquity, but there are still those in present time who are encountering similar resistance. I’m really sure folks like Richard Dawkins are glad we’ve done away with burnings at the stake. I wonder how many people are just keeping their heads down while the pies are being thrown?
Very interesting thoughts, Justin.
Smee
One of the concepts I recall from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is that the world as we know it is determined to be "normal" based upon popular majority.
If anyone has a thought process that deviates too far from the norm, they're considered to be insane. Worse yet, they may actually BE insane -- even if they're still completely facile -- because their mind is now capable of grasping a world beyond the norm, which may render them unable to live within our constraints over time.
That's an extreme case, but it does illustrate the danger in thinking too far outside the box: you may realize the box no longer exists. And if all you've known up until that point WAS the box, what then?
I think that's why people consciously choose to limit the accceptable amount of "learning" a society or a person is encouraged to do. If one person were to stumble across information that could disrupt the way the rest of the world tends to process itself, that individual would be ostracized because of the fear of the unknown that comes with shepherding all of humanity into the next age of enlightenment.
Instead, we settle for small morsels of information that pass for "insight." Perhaps that's all the average person's mind can handle. More likely, that's all the average person's mind has been trained to handle, and exposing them to more would disrupt the traditional mechanism that humanity runs on.
Here's a question: If we could make that quantum leap in thought by dismissing all barricaded and limiting thought that stands between us and our true potential, even in the most mundane, open-mindedly factual way, what COULD we do or be?
I agree... to be satisfied with your present amount of accrued learning is to put a cap on potential.
I always wonder why people get so pissed when doctors don't know what is wrong with them. Assuming that some of the 'brightest' among us would have all the answers isn't fair to either side. There's a hell of a learning curve -- especially in subjects that don't even exist yet.
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