I gravitated toward those with exceptional academic backgrounds, which seemed like the right priority. They had stellar resumes, early career success (often in consulting, investment banking, or corporate America), and were driven to succeed. Yet such patently qualified people often proved hopeless in the world of innovation, and I couldn’t quite figure out why....So, there's your answer: education is to prepare you to excel at standardized tests. Unfortunately, or fortunately, life stops throwing standardized tests at you the minute you leave the schoolhouse.
When my son was in third grade, his science class was studying simple machines. With twenty bucks and a quick trip to Home Depot, we got everything needed to set up shop in the basement, and started playing around with boards, screws, and pulleys. One evening, we set out to design something that would let him lift a cinder block with his little finger. We came up with an approach that, I remarked in passing, he could use to lift his 250 lb. basketball coach. We laughed.
The next week, he came home from school discouraged: “I guess I’m not good at science.” He showed me his simple-machine test, which had blobs of red ink over the question “What simple machine would you use to lift a grown man?” His response was “a six-pulley system,” and included a sketch with pulleys, rope, and stick figures of a man and a child. While the design looked sound, there was a big red X across his answer with the terse note: “ -17. LEVER ! ! ”
After putting my Tiger Dad response behind me, I approached the teacher with a constructive suggestion: “Instead of asking which simple machine to use, why not ask students to come up with as many designs as possible?” The answer floored me. “Throughout school, these kids will need to take standardized tests. We need to prepare them properly. Open-ended questions can confuse them.”
If you want to learn to innovate, two excellent fields are history and philosophy, especially the history of philosophy. That's probably counter-intuitive: innovation is about the future, not what people did or thought in the past. However, while studying Medieval waterworks won't help you to innovate in the field of plumbing, it might be that you'll find there a concept they brought to bear that will prove to have an analogous application in the field in which you are innovating.
Likewise in the history of ideas generally, problems harmonize even when they are not strictly the same problem. As we were just discussing in the comments to this post about physics, one of the exciting new theories is really just an application of an ancient Greek concept -- atomism -- that was applied first to classical physics, and then to early Medieval theories about time.
They cite Aristotle as the origin point for his opponent's view, but Hogan’s instinct here is actually quite as old. He's arguing the atomist position, which comes up when you try to get a handle on the problems of how motion is possible in a continuum. This is Zeno stuff: if space is really infinitely divisible, then how can you traverse any distance given that you must first traverse an infinite series of divisions of that distance? It is impossible to get through an infinite sequence, so...This new atomism is really new, but it harmonizes with concepts that were deployed by both the Medievals and Ancients. It's an innovation, but a natural way to find it would be to read some very old thought. The problems aren't quite the same, but they're similar enough that the possible solutions align.
The atomist's position falls out of that naturally enough: well, what if there's not a continuum, but a structure made up of smallest-possible units? Then we just do them one at a time, and it's not an infinite number.
Aristotle's answer to Zeno wasn't that different, actually: he ends up arguing that there are no actual infinities, just potential ones. So, yes, theoretically (or even just conceptually) one could make all those divisions -- but they aren't actually made, so you don't have to traverse an infinite series.
The same thing came up years later when the Neoplatonists were trying to get a handle on the nature of time. It seems that time is also infinitely divisible, and it's most obvious unit -- now -- seems to be infinitely small. So one of the Neoplatonists -- Proclus, I think -- came up with the idea of 'time atoms' just as the earlier ancient Greek physicists had come up with the idea of atoms for space. It's a natural enough thing to think of, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Is education for that? So you can innovate better?
Well, no. Education finally isn't for anything. It's not instrumental: it's a realization of your basic nature as a human being. All men, Aristotle says at the opening of the Metaphysics, desire to know. We don't educate ourselves to pursue some goal. Education is the goal. We want to understand. We want it by nature.
I may pursue instrumental goals on the way toward that ultimate goal, but to learn and to understand is itself the goal. That's what education is, not what it's for. There are a few things in life that are the true ends: love, friendship, honor, and wisdom. Everything else is for them.
30 comments:
The teacher in Ted Dintersmith's first example seems to, like many teachers and school administrators, majored in bullying. Ted should have been willing to let his inner Tiger Dad out for just a sentence, or two, maybe using a smile as a vehicle.
I agree that an education is good because we want to know. When we ask "know what?" the answer is "anything and everything." because all fields are open to human inquiry, including our inmost selves all the way to the edge of the universe,and back to the tiniest bits of atoms. In that sense, great philosophers, researchers, doctors, lawyers, farmers, carpenters and plumbers continue their educations for all of their adult lives.
Elementary-to-high school children, however, have a slightly different task: their purpose is to learn how to learn, and I submit that this can be accomplished through the acquisition of a set of basic skills we know they will need in this society. After high school, a person can and should be able to learn on their own, and in my opinion, many of them have everything they need in this basic sense by about eighth grade.
In this country, we have an outstanding education system for young adults, which is not currently being sufficiently consulted. It is the US military. I've seen what the ROTC programs can do for kids, and we all have seen what our soldiers can do. It isn't just the organization and the ability to act under fire: Michael Yon observed that, In Iraq, every captain seemed capable of functioning as the mayor of a small town.
As for teaching innovation, when the Department of State could not handle the problem in Iraq, the US military grew its own anthropologists, and learned how to get through to people in another language and culture.
.....And, I had the pleasure of watching a Marine teach my kids in elementary school. He was like the pied piper. I know where he got some of his techniques, which suggests to me that many, many of the teaching methods for young adults can be translated to children.
In this country, our school systems have a resource that they are not yet tapping.
Valerie
I can't remember where I heard it, but this rang true:
History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
There is a difference between the questions, "What is education for?" and "What is our public educational system for?" and "What is this particular course for?"
In the broadest sense, education is, as Grim says, its own purpose; curiosity is as human a trait as any, and we need to know the universe in the same way we need love. This is an internal purpose.
However, a public school system has a different purpose: to educate the next generation of citizens so that they know and can fulfill their roles in society. This is an external purpose which is imposed by the political system on the educational system, and the educational system imposes it on the students.
The ideal classical liberal education fulfills both, I think: It satisfies the hunger to know by using that hunger to educate new citizens, and it pays special attention to feeding the fire of curiosity so that students will want to keep learning their entire lives.
However, one of the casualties of our long cultural war is that we no longer trust teachers, and so our political system has taken responsibility and authority away from teachers and reduced them, essentially, to robots. We give them a program and expect them to run it in the classroom.
We are all responsible for our individual behavior, and the "LEVER!!" teacher is no exception. However, he has to implement his program or get fired. We do not allow our teachers to teach anymore, and our students are no longer allowed to satisfy curiosity at school. The sooner a child realizes that and gives up on curiosity, the easier his or her life will be.
In many ways, we should look on our "educational system" the same way we view the fictional "Ministry of Truth."
Or, maybe I'm just cold and jaded.
So, if you want to separate the questions in that way, public education is properly characterized exactly as you gave it: "to educate the next generation of citizens so that they know and can fulfill their roles in society." That's why we pay for it, and also why we mandate that children attend to it.
Aristotle talks about this in Politics five:
"But of all the things which I have mentioned that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution, if the laws are democratical, democratically or oligarchically, if the laws are oligarchical. For there may be a want of self-discipline in states as well as in individuals. Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible. Whereas among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both more inclined and better able to make a revolution. And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation."
There's a lot there to unpack, so I won't add to it.
"... that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government. ... Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible."
This is part of the problem. The Left views the current constitution as an obstacle to be overcome, and so they want to educate students for a revolution, to create a new system, not to be good citizens in the current system. This is part of why we cannot trust our teachers.
In addition, I would also suggest that one facet of the Marxist totalitarian constitution is that everything comes from/through the state. Knowledge of the universe is no exception, so students must not learn independently. They must only satisfy their curiosity through the state: State schools, state-approved texts, state-educated and licensed teachers. In themselves, these three things are not bad; what is harmful is the "only."
Because of that "only," curiosity itself must be managed by the system. Students are allowed to be curious about state-approved things, but curiosity about other things is verboten. There are questions you must not ask.
Just to clarify, going back to Mr. LEVER!!, I am not at all suggesting that he is doing that as part of a Marxist conspiracy to kill genuine curiosity in our children. There is a war going on over our education system and he and the students are caught up in it. It does rather have the same effect, though, I guess.
In this situation, the true education you and I seek is impossible. Education only exists for the state.
When people are indoctrinated to Obey Authority in the modern system, thinking outside the box and producing independent research that leads to breakthroughs, isn't something you will find.
People who go against the grain of the status quo, also tend not to follow the same life or system, as they drop out of college or use their time for some other, seemingly random, endeavour. Many of these random endeavours do indeed fail, which is why the majority refuse to take the risk. The ones that succeed, however, succeed beyond the wildest imaginations of the conservative status quo.
A school, kindergarten or higher education wise, is a micro spec on the macro scale of strategy in the war.
http://neoneocon.com/2015/01/09/cocos-choice/
That's the macro consequences, where populations are taught to Obey Evil, no matter what. It's not something that can be "logically" derived or "intuited" from the micro scale of the school. You'd have to think way outside the Box for that. Consequences have a cause, and some of us have traced the cause to the "original cause", or close enough.
What they're being taught is little enough, as far as I can tell, except to value their own 'specialness' defined as deviancy, and demand that all established forms and rules be set aside in order to create a 'safe space' for them. Which is where Aristotle ends:
"And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation."
Does he explain that any further? And, what was the form of the ancient Greek constitutions? Was it a written one that formed the foundation of their system, like ours, or maybe less formal, like the British? Or something else? I guess I'm asking what he means by the word.
Also, to go back to what he said about education, he advocates training children to maintain the right environment for a democracy or an oligarchy. I'm curious whether he is being prescriptive or descriptive. Did he say some forms of government are immoral and others are moral, that we should educate children to make the good forms possible? Or, was he just saying that, whatever the form of government, the education of children should make that form possible?
Did he say some forms of government are immoral and others are moral, that we should educate children to make the good forms possible?
Aristotle was said to be the tutor of Alexander the Great. That should give you a solid example of how Aristotle taught individuals, rather than the English translation of Greek.
Each Greek city state had their own customs and rules, such as Sparta's helot system combined with their dual monarchy system. Aristotle, being a disciple of Plato, who was a disciple of Socrates, would have had a longer period of time considering the flaws of a democracy than Plato. If the lack of virtues is what corrupts governments, then the installation of virtue in the young would be one way of addressing the issue. And to do that, spreading the culture would be one sure fight bet. Alexander did spread Greek culture far and wide, with a combination of military genius and also an out of the box way of thinking. Cleopatra was said to be descended from the Greek ruling dynasty of Egypt, a fragment of Alexander's conquests.
To me, even if the rulers are virtuous, the people and the staff cannot be, given the statistical curve of humanity. The Greek culture advanced the concept of warrior virtues with philosophical virtues, quite well, but they lacked the technology and the infrastructure to create more Alexanders. Or to be more precise, they lacked the structure to create more Socrates and more Aristotles.
They and the Roman civilization never got much of a chance to deal with this issue, because Islam came soon afterwards and destroyed much of the work of the ancients, whether structural or written in text. Humanity had a kind of "reset" moment when Islam conquered much of the Western world.
You should read the Politics, Tom. Aristotle goes into great detail about the various constitutions employed; about what he considers to be the ideal state; and then about why ideal states aren't possible, so what kinds of states are best practically.
He has a typology of good and bad states, according to the principle that a good state is one in which the rulers rule for the good of all instead of for their own private goods or the good of their class. Thus, he considers democracies bad states if they (for example) vote to liberate the rich of their wealth and redistribute it to the many, whereas a democratic sort of government could be good if it imposed the right kind of constitutional controls on the power of the government so that the people weren't allowed to vote to violate basic rights.
Overall he seems to have thought that the best government was a kind of aristocracy led by people who were elevated to the positions not by blood but by proven virtue. The least dangerous sort of government, however, he says is government where power is vested in the middle class. That class won't go after private wealth because they have enough of their own to want it protected; they also won't pursue politics as a means to personal power because they really just want to do the least governing necessary so that they can get back to managing their private interests. Jefferson was doubtless paying close attention to this part.
There is a difference between the questions, "What is education for?" and "What is our public educational system for?" and "What is this particular course for?"
I observe that, in many instances, the valuable lesson imparted is NOT the formal lesson intended. Unintended consequences, that is, can be virtuous as well as pernicious, and occur in education as often as in other activities.
As an example, the traditional algorithm for pencil and paper long division was taught for a long time, including to people who never had much direct use for that process. BUT, in the course of grinding thru the exercise, a student repeatedly had to estimate, check, correct, re-check, assess, and reiterate. (Plan, Do, Check, Act; Observe, Orient, Decide, Act; whatever)
The exercise also taught that some relationships will never completely resolve. At some point, everyone learned, the determined value is "good enough" and one moves on to the next challenge. The notion of such estimation carried into later operations with a slide rule. One estimated the value (to the power of ten) and then slipped stick to refine the data to what was necessarily an approximation. In more current classrooms the process of "mental estimation" is explicitly taught and (if a student is fortunate) drilled, but it's considered a separate skill from other parts of math, and rather to be sneered at compared to the precision available from an electronic calculator that gives an answer to 9 significant figures (irrespective of the accuracy of such precision.)
Often cited here, the "Gods of the Copybook Headings" refers to aphorisms and proverbs intended to improve PENMANSHIP. Ditto many exercises in translating the Latin tweets of Seneca into comparably pithy English. The system "was for" practice in legible handwriting and the ability to read Latin -- the actual exercises had the (if not unintended, at least bonus) benefit of encouraging culturally expected morality.
To consider what education "is for" can be like considering Chesterton's Fence. "It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious." Or, if not mysterious, obsolete.
Not that reforms should never be attempted. But, perhaps, it might at least give us pause before advocating nation-wide initiatives and "standards" that clear away all the accumulated clutter of generations past, everywhere and all at once.
Good points, all.
Should any of you have the opportunity to help children in this phase of education, a useful thing to do is to make them explain to you just why the technique they have been taught works. Consider a simple proof that a repeating decimal (e.g., 0.45454545...) is a rational number. One way to prove this is to multiply the repeating element until it is on the whole number side of the decimal, in this case by 100. Thus, you have 100x=45.454545..., while x=.454545....
That means you have captured the repeating decimal as 1x. So now we can subtract the repeating element by taking away 1x. Thus, 99x=45. And thus x=45/99.
Run that through your calculator, and you will in fact get .45454545...
The strategy, as you say, turns out to be useful in analogous problems as well. If you teach them the mechanism, you haven't taught them much. If they understand the mechanism and just why it works, you've taught them a lot more -- including a kind of problem solving they can try on other problems to see if it works.
You should read the Politics, Tom ...
Yes, I should. Aristotle and I don't get along well, though. I spent an hour once trying to understand a single, rather short paragraph of his, and there was a great deal of frustration involved on my part. (I suspect he didn't notice at all, though I was quite loud in my complaints to him.)
I did get a copy of "Aristotle for Everybody," which you once mentioned. I plan to read it over the winter break. I suspect I just need to get used to him, and I hope the book helps me do that.
I also want to go back to Valerie's comment and say I agree with her, and J as well.
Grim, your method for teaching math is also a good way to teach reading. Ask the student what something means, then ask them to explain why they think it means that. Have them go back to the text to justify their answers. They learn both to get the meaning from others and to express their own meanings, and to do it with reason.
Aristotle and I don't get along well, though. I spent an hour once trying to understand a single, rather short paragraph of his, and there was a great deal of frustration involved on my part. (I suspect he didn't notice at all, though I was quite loud in my complaints to him.)
Well, there's your problem -- you didn't give it enough time. :) Seriously, some passages in Aristotle may take a lifetime's reflection; others weeks. But you can always bring anything you're reading and having trouble with here, and we'll work through it as a community. It's good for all of us.
The strategy, as you say, turns out to be useful in analogous problems as well. If you teach them the mechanism, you haven't taught them much. If they understand the mechanism and just why it works, you've taught them a lot more -- including a kind of problem solving they can try on other problems to see if it works.
The same applies in martial arts or any kind of non regulated hierarchy for the distribution of physical skills.
A person can copy cat a technique and become good at it, the natural genius athletes at least, but understanding why it works and what principle powers it, is a different challenge level. One that isn't all that necessary for a mass produced factory, such as karate in early Japan. Wasn't capable of it even. (Karate in that version was imported from Okinawa, but 1-5 Okinawan masters cannot pass down the quality to 50,000 Japanese students, there's dilution and also human incompetence graphs)
I did get a copy of "Aristotle for Everybody," which you once mentioned. I plan to read it over the winter break. I suspect I just need to get used to him, and I hope the book helps me do that.
The most benefit from the ancients is learning how they thought, thus how they used their own language, rather than try to translate the terms and systems to modern English and modern 21st century. Since, after all, Aristotle's model of the universe is not that particularly useful these days considering our current tools and methodologies. But the ability to use science and thought to ascertain reality, is always useful, because humans will always fail at it with their "credentials" trailing behind them like wounded puppies.
One phrase in martial arts lineages is that you should not try to copy the techniques of the masters, you should walk the same path that the masters themselves walked, experience the same things, overcome the same challenges, etc.
Overall he seems to have thought that the best government was a kind of aristocracy led by people who were elevated to the positions not by blood but by proven virtue.
Which is merely a more refined and realistic version of Plato's Republic. In addressing the same issue, Aristotle came it from underneath, similar to Socrates, in promoting individual virtue. But few people will obtain virtue without a system making them get it. Therein lies the paradox.
... after all, Aristotle's model of the universe is not that particularly useful these days considering our current tools and methodologies ...
While that's true, he wrote about a great deal more that I'm not really sure we've refined very much. Politics is still politics, and people are still people. There, I'm not sure he's obsolete, and I think much that's been written since draws on or argues against him, so even if / where it is obsolete, it's necessary.
Although, I think you're right that learning to think like the ancients is very worthwhile.
Up top, Valerie said that the task for Elementary-to-high school children "is to learn how to learn, and I submit that this can be accomplished through the acquisition of a set of basic skills we know they will need in this society," which I think is absolutely right. I also agree with her thoughts on the military and ROTC, though I think Scouting and some other organizations can also be excellent.
There, I'm not sure he's obsolete, and I think much that's been written since draws on or argues against him, so even if / where it is obsolete, it's necessary.
Aristotle's essences and the Chinese 5 elements are not necessary to understand modern, quantum, or relativistic physics/math.
People may find it useful, but only because of their culture and or language. It becomes an additional processing core.
Things like horsemanship in Xenophon, hasn't changed all that much to make it obsolete, just difficult to translate. Modern physics and chemistry have advanced for longer and greater leaps than the domestication of horses from back then, however.
To place it into a different context, if a person learns how to ride a horse in the modern era, like Grim here, then reading Xenophon would allow him to cross transfer experience and adapt ancient methods or thoughts. But if people who had never rode a horse at all tried to translate and make sense of Xenophon... it would not make sense, to anyone. That's not solely due to the language, although there is that, it is because the actual concepts are abstract, too abstract, when it requires the concrete knowledge of horse riding.
Thus to trace back Aristotle's thought process on his essences, you would have to Eliminate Every Single Modern scientific box and concept you have ever had to learn, if you wanted to trace back his experience and truly understand his pov. In modern life, you Can Ride a horse without modern tech or livestock techniques. You can do so without reigns or saddles. Can you remove the knowledge of the modern world from your mind, however?
If you learned Greek and learned how to think in Greek, it is possible, because you would normally never have learned to think in science using Greek. And if you read Aristotle in Greek, but never read a modern language text, you would develop a Greek thought core that would process only Aristotle's circumstance. But outside of that, it's almost impossible. You'd have to get amnesia or something.
That's why I note that Aristotle's essences are not particularly useful in the modern era. It was useful to them because they didn't have a better way of explaining natural phenomenon and the system itself made sense out of the chaotic disorder of the world, enough for logic to pin down.
There, I'm not sure he's obsolete
I see that controversy a lot in martial arts circles as well, where people like to debate certain topics. Meaning, are old techniques "obsolete"?
That approach isn't particularly useful to me. I prefer to simulate the context and the model. To understand Socrates, I noticed his trait and behavior. To understand Plato, I noticed his emotional reaction to the trial of Socrates. I then synthesize a modern simulation that may be able to procure these elements, and if feasible, I obtain them for myself.
Reading things in the abstract doesn't produce very high rates of learning. Reading Miyamoto Musashi after learning to sheathe and unsheathe a sharp sword (using only touch not sight), produces higher levels of absorption. Sun Tzu makes more sense if you have seen armies fight or indirectly witnessed a nation fall. If one's experience is too modern, too selective, too isolated, then the writings of a warrior general may not be so effective. After all, Sun Tzu had the power of life and death over his trainees and soldiers, including that time when a king demanded that he teach a bunch of his harem girls how to fight as soldiers. Some American soldier puts a gun to a terrorist's head to get intel to save his troops, and he gets "retired". Or pushes down a child rapist and he gets "retired". Too much modern stuff and pov spoils the absorption rate of ancient works.
How "useful" or "obsolete" something is is a conscious decision, a box people fall into. I prefer to understand and absorb a thought and an environment first, before consciously slotting myself one way or another. Most people, however, they do the opposite. Abstract judgments first, then later on they "learn" what actually happens. It's like when people fall for cons or propaganda. They get this idea, this judgment, in their head and it sets them up for the fall later in the tiger pit. Don't fall in the pit to begin with.
A lot of the weird things in Chinese martial arts consists of ancient concepts, which may be barely understandable in Chinese, but loses even more meaning to a Western audience. For example, what is a "horse stance" and why is it useful? To stand as if you are riding a horse... what does that even mean to people who have never ridden or even seen a horse?
Or to place it in a different context, why do people hurt their leg muscles when first riding a horse, even if they are swimmers or sprinters? Is it because they use different muscles in their legs? What muscles would those be exactly? Is that explained in a "horse stance"? If not, why not.
For a horse warrior, they don't need this logic trap. They know how to do it, even if they don't know how to explain it. Maybe they don't explain it in words because the part of the brain that uses words isn't what is being utilized when riding a horse. So when people did try to explain it, it would be difficult to communicate even to their own native speakers, let alone 20 generations down in some foreign land.
These questions become almost endless logical traps or mirrors. They go in to themselves like infinite fractals. I prefer to just cut the Gordian Knot, solving it using conscious awareness and processing takes too long. It's easier to replicate the environment and lifestyle. The human brain has various different processing cores, and processing subconsciously is often more effective than conscious thought and awareness. Especially if one uses more than 2 languages at once to process the same event. It can become effective in the same fashion hex cores and octet cores work.
I wasn't talking about any of that. You left out the key point:
Politics is still politics, and people are still people. There, I'm not sure he's obsolete.
Aristotle wrote about a lot more than science.
Even the scientific stuff remains worth reading, as it's quite plausible -- just wrong. But the reasons it is plausible are worth studying just because they led to wrong conclusions. I guarantee you that many of our basic beliefs about science are just as wrong today, and we're blind to it because of the plausibility of the arguments.
All of what Aristotle said followed from empirical study coupled with reason, after all. And the empirical results lined up: the theories were predictive, for a long time, until we had better tools.
Also, apart from that, there are some significant unsolved problems that you will learn about. Just what is the nature of a number, for example?
I wasn't talking about any of that. You left out the key point:
No, I actually quoted part of that and replied to it. The reason why I left out the point, is because it's not a point I made nor agreed with. The concept that is "obsolete" was introduced by another commenter:
"To consider what education "is for" can be like considering Chesterton's Fence. "It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious." Or, if not mysterious, obsolete. "
Of course you weren't talking about those things I outlined, Tom, I was introducing them. You were talking about things being obsolete, Tom, but I believe I made it clear above that it's not something I engage in, whether to agree, disagree, or argue about it.
I prefer to focus on experience and context. Usefulness can also be experienced, if a tool is actually useful. I'll get to the subject of why usefulness isn't the same as being obsolete later.
Even the scientific stuff remains worth reading, as it's quite plausible -- just wrong.
Everything in science is wrong, including the early atomic models, the middle atomic models, the theory of relativity, the Law of Gravity, and the later atomic models, including the quantum atomic models.
That's because science has to progress to more useful things, and by doing so, science invalidates the work of a whole load of ancestors. The process is necessary, but it does make a lot of things "wrong" so to speak.
In this sense, science produces obsolete theories, but they are still useful. Even before the next theory or law, supersedes the previous. For example, Newton's Laws of Gravity do not actually describe certain functions in the universe, such as what Einstein describes with his gravity wells. But for every day life and calculations, that doesn't really matter. Thus the Laws are still used, because while the Laws may be slightly obsolete by now, they are still useful.
The issue with Aristotle's essences is not that it is wrong or non useful, it is that it uses an entirely different paradigm than the last few centuries of science. That's difficult to adapt to, even without the language barrier. The body of knowledge 300-500 years ago from now, can still be grasped by the Western mind. The mind of the ancients 2000+ years ago, is more difficult to grasp, especially as those thought processes were not formed from English or any Anglo Saxon or Germanic language. Weren't Celtic either.
I guarantee you that many of our basic beliefs about science are just as wrong today, and we're blind to it because of the plausibility of the arguments.
It seems like I am in agreement with Grim on this point. Although probably for different reasons.
Just what is the nature of a number, for example?
Are you referring to the Indian numerals starting with Zero or are you speaking of the various number counting systems like binary, trinary, hex, etc?
Even the scientific stuff remains worth reading ...
It's certainly worth reading for me because I'm very interested in the history of science. I have read selections from Aristotle's Physics for that reason. Also, the Hippocratic texts and Galen. I think you're right that some of what scientists believe now will prove to be wrong, which is one reason I'm a big fan of Kuhn.
Of course you weren't talking about those things I outlined, Tom, I was introducing them.
Aha! So, that's what happened.
You were talking about things being obsolete, Tom, but I believe I made it clear above that it's not something I engage in, whether to agree, disagree, or argue about it.
Actually, I was responding to the idea of Aristotle being obsolete, which someone else (not me) proposed, and I was casting doubt on the idea.
In any case, in the future I'll keep in mind that you may well intend your replies to have only a tangential connection to what I'm saying. That may explain why I often feel like we seem to fail to communicate.
Are you referring to the Indian numerals starting with Zero or are you speaking of the various number counting systems like binary, trinary, hex, etc?
Numbers, not numerals. It's not so much how you represent them as what you're representing: in what manner do numbers (or mathematical objects in general) exist?
It's a real problem -- I recently saw it on a list of problems the author thought philosophy would never solve. (I disagree that some of the problems are impossible to solve, but we'll leave that.)
For the Greeks, the problem starts with the fact that when you go to apply numbers to things, it's not clear where the numbers "are." If I count five sheep, each of the sheep is one, not five. So where is the five? It's not in the things, which are each one. It's not in the set, because what is the set? That's just another way of naming the mathematical object -- and giving it another name doesn't address the mystery of where it is. It's not in the mind, because the sheep are in the world. If it were in the mind simply, too, then the 'one' sheeps wouldn't behave as if they were five, and yet the math you can do in your mind will work out practically: you could feed as many people as five sheep would feed, or get as much wool as five sheep would produce, etc.
Plotinus -- probably following the Academy -- also points out that if you go to count something, you have to know what it would mean to count. The numbers don't come into being when I count something. In order to count things, there has to be a system of more or less embedded in reality. So where is it?
The numbers don't come into being when I count something. In order to count things, there has to be a system of more or less embedded in reality.
This sounds like people who haven't figured out the concept of the zero. Which matches the history of the Greeks and Romans before AD. Meaning, counting to 10 is arbitrary. One can as easily count to only 2 or 5 and shift the digit place.
The concept of zero and the concept of why there are arbitrary numbers is related. 1-9 exists due to the emphasis placed on a decimal system, counting to 10 (or 9+1), probably because it's even due to the number of our fingers.
That's arbitrary, but also objective because 1=1
But 2 doesn't = 2 after that. That number and the rest, are arbitrary constructions. Based on what people want to count up to. If people wanted a number system based on the hexadecimal, meaning 6+10=16 different numbers counting up, they would need to use letters or some other symbol to represent the numbers between 10 and 16.
Or to put it another way, 2=2 only in number systems higher or equal to trinary. In binary, 2=10
That works because of the concept of the Zero. Every time you shift decimal places, the zero is a placeholder, designed to represent in abstract the concept that you have counted up to x here.
1 10 11 100 101 110 that's how binary goes up in numbers
1 2 3 4 5 6
You only need the 1. You don't need the rest, but you probably do need the Zero or something equivalent to tell you how many times you've counted beyond 1.
It is a system, and it is in reality, but it is also abstract and doesn't exist. Perhaps they are right that philosophy isn't suited to solving this problem. That's because humans already solved it, by using science or what I like to call "useful systems" that may be a black box. You may not know how it works... but the results are fairly accurate. Few people know how the numerical counting system works. Even fewer than the ones that know how to fix your refrigerator or how a microwave works in concept.
In any case, in the future I'll keep in mind that you may well intend your replies to have only a tangential connection to what I'm saying. That may explain why I often feel like we seem to fail to communicate.
Some of the bold quotes I use are to reply directly to the idea embedded in the words, but others are used by me to infer which audience I am addressing.
Compared to dialogues Grim has with Cassandra, our misunderstandings are minor difficulties to bypass or resolve.
I also have the habit of leaping, without the use of logic, from one topic to another: which are normally separated by paragraph breaks. So usually the first sentence or paragraph will relate to the bold quote above, and the last sentence or paragraph, the executive summary, will apply to the same bolded portion, but the stuff in the middle can be variable.
Usually what people do when they need to know something specific is that they ask me a question. That narrows it down.
Grim called me "Spock" before, but I think "Mad scientist" would fit the phenomenon better (especially as the term is used in Japan). If a subject is related to another subject by 3-5 orders of relation, then free thinking encapsulates it, potentially, in text. If the emotional cpu core is doing the primary load, the output is different. If the logic core is doing the primary work load, then output is different. Questions often require the attention of the logic core to puzzle out. I'm "rotating" and "compressing" the concept down, because the function is not conscious nor is it particularly illustrated by a logical train. Computers are a convenient conceptual system to use in text communication. Orders of relation. Quote online might be "everything is related to everything".
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