Kovailputhalvan has sent me this link to Gian-Carlo Rota's 10 lessons of an MIT Education. Thanks Kovaiputhalvan.
Few snippets from those 10 lessons:
--- Students join forces on the problem sets, and some students benefit more than others from these weekly collective efforts. The most brilliant students will invariably work out all the problems and let other students copy, and I pretend to be annoyed when I learn that this has happened. But I know that by making the effort to understand the solution of a truly difficult problem discovered by one of their peers, students learn more than they would by working out some less demanding exercise.
--- Half a century ago, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle discussed the difference between "knowing how" courses are those in mathematics, the exact sciences, engineering, playing a musical instrument, even sports. "Knowing what" courses are those in the social sciences, the creative arts, the humanities, and those aspects of a discipline that are described as having social value.
--- It is my theory that "knowing how" is revered because it can be tested.
(This knowing-how-and-knowing-what reminds me of Snow's Two Cultures!! Imprinting such "divisive" ideas on human psyche may not be good for education.)
--- The idea of genius elaborated during the Romantic Age (late 18th and 19th centuries) has done harm to education. It is demoralizing to give a young person role models of Beethoven, Einstein, and Feynman, presented as saintly figures who moved from insight to insight without a misstep. Scientific biographies often fail to give a realistic description of personality, and thereby create a false idea of scientific work.
--- Young people will correct any fantasies they have about genius. As they start doing research with their professors they learn another healthy lesson, namely, a professor may well behave like a fumbling idiot.
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5 comments:
I can't say I completely agree or disagree about the "knowing what/knowing how" theory. I think the theory applies more to a state of mind, or a person's outlook than it does to a certain discipline.
However, I would make the claim that mathematics (and its cousins, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters) lay(s) more emphasis on logical thinking and analysis than do the humanities.
It is my thesis that in the humanities, there is much room for personal bias to make itself present in someone's work; the chances of this happening in the sciences are low, though non-negligible. The reason? The humanities deal (among other things) with humans. When humans deal with humans, there is always personal bias.
Case in point - apart from gems like Toynbee, and Basham, how many *objective* historians have we seen? I can't think of even a single Indian historian who's been objective, most of them are tainted with red and pink. How much of history has been rewritten, in contrast with how much of mathematics has been rewritten in the last few centuries?
Thanks Kovai for your comments.
In their efforts to understand things – concrete and abstract, external and internal, societal and individual, natural and (wo)man-made – humans have explored in depth and breadth. They have created huge structures – science, arts, society, mathematics, politics, history, ethics, biology, philosophy, technology, linguistic etc. – as landmarks to explore further. Each structure has its own characteristic template, natural or created, around which it is built. The interactions among these structures cause a great paradigm shift in our exploration; sometimes may lead to new structures or just new tools. Fighting over which structure is the best one is a futile exercise, and is an unnecessary digression in our exploration. Arguing which structure is the best one to understand a given observation may lead to new perspective if it is carried out appropriately.
Yes, history has been rewritten again and again. But do we have any other approach other than to learn as we move on. History is being written by historians with personal biases. They write, and interpret according to their favorite ideologies and leanings. We have to argue, fight, and sometimes even die to establish thing we want the world to know; thing which we think it is right. Hence the concept of feedback and continuous modification based on feedback are part of certain structures. They will continue to follow that unless some other possibility comes up. But does it make the structure any less significant? No.
In fact it is one of the greatest achievements of human mind that they have created various structures during their intellectual cruise. Imagine what would have happened if we had waited for a mathematical structure to understand historical events. Human mind did not wait. It created certain structures instead of waiting. Now it has to be improved upon. If the improvement needs mathematics, we have to use. If it needs biology, we have to use. But if something is not appropriate, we should not hesitate to throw it away however it is useful in other domains.
It is important, while we educate ourselves and others, to stress the fact that the structures are different yet they are part of our exploration; their differences are due to complexities or nature of areas they try to understand.
Hi Shencottah :)
I'm not disputing the importance of history, or any of the humanities. All I'm saying is that these disciplines do not encourage logical thinking as much as mathematical disciplines do. At least, in the present time. This might (and I hope does) change in the future.
An excellent observation that you made was that " If the improvement needs mathematics, we have to use it. If it needs biology, we have to use it. But if something is not appropriate, we should not hesitate to throw it away however it is useful in other domains.".
IMHO, this wisdom is yet to dawn upon most historians and researchers in other branches of the humanities. In all probability, this will happen soon, I'm just commenting upon what I perceive is the state of affairs in the present.
Many Japanese do not even know the truth about World War II - then again, who does? Who knows the truth about 1857? Was it really a gallant fight for freedom as we've always learned at school, or was it something slightly different, as William Dalrymple claims? (By far, I think Dalrymple's account of 1857 is the most unbiased one that I've come across).
The trouble with history is that it is difficult to decide what is true and what is not. Of course, with such (historical) evidence as is available, it is possible to make conjectures about what *could* have happened many years ago.. but these conjectures cannot be proved. This doesn't mean that all history is bunk, as Henry Ford famously exclaimed - it merely means that when someone makes a claim about a historical event, they have to be doubly careful. (Remember the not-so-veiled comment about veils that our President recently made? ;)
As I see it, history is a set of claims and deductions. In my experience, few of these claims have much logic or historical evidence to back them up. A book like A. L. Basham's "The Wonder that was India" feels like a breath of fresh air merely because it is written in a coherent, logical way without much bias in it.
I think the reason why the humanities haven't seen much change is more political than anything else. Write a book about Shivaji, and all Maharashtra will be up in arms to kill the author. Write a book about Basava, and Karnataka goes up in flames. Unlike mathematics and its relatives, the humanities are in much closer contact with us humans - and this, I feel, is the real problem.
Coming back to History and Historical writing; I have seen two books written two travellers who visited India (more precisely, the Vijayanagara Empire) sometime during 16th century (but withing a few years of each other) giving completely different accounts of certain things on life@hampi. I guess they didnt understand the language spoken in Hampi but understood things through possibly biased/un-informed/ill-informed people. Thus the writings of Paes & Razzak, the visitors I mentioned above, cannot be taken for granted as history or part of it.
Thanks Kovai and CCG for comments. CCG's example is very good one in showing that even people who write "first-hand-observations' are not immune to biases, intentional or unintentional. As he pointed out, it might also be due to the associations with people with different opinions and interpretations. It is also quite difficult to write about someone or something if other dimensions like politics, social stigma, etc are involved as Kovai has pointed out.
I thought of looking at the etymon of the word history. It is quite interesting.
1. (from dictionary.com) Origin: 1350–1400; ME historie < L historia < Gk historía learning or knowing by inquiry, history; deriv. of hístōr one who knows or sees
2. (From MSN encarta)15th century. Via Latin < Greek historia "history, knowledge, narrative" < histōr "learned man"
3. (from dictionary.com) Middle English histoire, from Old French, from Latin historia, from Greek historiā, from historein, to inquire, from histōr, learned man
4. (from etymonline.com) 1390, "relation of incidents" (true or false), from O.Fr. historie, from L. historia "narrative, account, tale, story," from Gk. historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE *wid-tor-, from base *weid- "to know," lit. "to see" (see vision). Related to Gk. idein "to see," and to eidenai "to know." In M.E., not differentiated from story; sense of "record of past events" probably first attested 1485. Sense of "systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural phenomena" (1567) is now obs. except in natural history. What is historic (1669) is noted or celebrated in history; what is historical (1561) deals with history. Historian "writer of history in the higher sense," distinguished from a mere annalist or chronicler, is from 1531. The O.E. word was þeod-wita.
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