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Originally Posted by Wayne C.
I look for these connections and have been doing so for much of my life. I too know that there is still a LOT to learn and no person can ever know everything. But the pursuit of the clues is fascinating and ultimately leads me to a lot of satisfaction. I try to show a few of these connections to my students and have them look for themselves. But very few people today bother to even look- much to my dismay. It would be nice if more folks even thought about some of the questions you post . I fear our society has become superficial and self centered and ultimately prone to its own demise because of it.
In closing- the most brilliant people are the people who can cross the gaps between the specialties (branches of math, science, culture) and synthesize new ideas from combinations of the old.
$@#$@#$@#$@#- it must be summer because I have had sleep time and get philosophical.... sorry guys!
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WC,
The more I learn about everything, such as science, philosophy, language, culture, music, art, laws, political science, and so on, the more connections I see there are. Even though the substances are quite distinct between each branch of knowledge, I found that there are major similarities between all of them, even though these similarities might not be apparent right away. It was really just a faint instinct in the beginning, but the more I thought about it, the more it point toward that direction.
I agree that the more we learn, the more we begin to grasp just how the vast the amount of knowledge there is out there. It is just so mind-boggling huge that very soon we see that it is impossible to learn everything, not within our life time anyway. (Makes me question how people can think they know everything.) But I think it is still possible to look at the bigger picture of things, understand how things are connected. I believe that with that bigger picture comes a greater understand that will help you dramatically when focusing into specific branches depending what your choices you make.
One of my biggest frustrations is that I have to realize all of these by myself. During my education up until high school, no one has really mentioned anything about anything remotely related to these ideas, though I am willing to accept the possibilities that I didn't know what to look for during the younger years and missed out on them completely. Looking at the world around me, I think that there are many problems with education in this world, and the lack of education/awareness of these bigger-picture ideas is one of them. Although I will also admit that this perspective only came from my own experience, and that I need to look at a lot more places before I can form a more educated picture of this issue. But that will all happen in due course.
At the moment though, it seems to be rare that people can cross the gaps between branches of knowledge and really learn to use all the knowledge they have as a tool for everything. (I know there are a lot of people who do, but when compared to the rest of Earth’s population it becomes very small.)
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Originally Posted by Chris Hibner
Anyway, have you ever thought about getting a PhD in education and doing educational research? There have been a number of theories on learning, memory, forgetting, thought processes, etc., but as a whole, learning processes is still a fairly young science.
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Chris,
Although I haven't reached the point of having to make that decision, I did consider similar path of career. The truth is, I am no where near ready to decide where I want to focus my attention specifically. Before finishing school and finishing a few projects I will be trying to start, I won't think about it because I am just plain lazy ;-).
Actually, you might be surprised how many education research that's been done out there, though not exactly the form of science you are talking about. You might be surprised that within the teaching of Buddhism, there are a great deal of knowledge about philosophy AS WELL AS knowledge about how people come to understand those knowledge. Many Buddhism stories deals with how we understand the world, our lives, and ideas that cannot be expressed completely by our language but nevertheless is possible for people to grasp. It has to deal with understanding of the bigger picture of life and knowledge and everything, but even thousands of years of Buddhism teaching says that words alone cannot describe these ideas completely, so I am not going to try here ;-).
Anyway...
I have many many questions about these and that, but the more I learn, the more I found out I am not alone with these questions, which is a very comforting thing for me. That's why I decided to share these thoughts to the FIRST community, I expected to see some of you guys saying you have similar thoughts.
There is a lot more I want to share, but as I said, this is only a beginning of a journey, so I will leave it at that at the moment. Stay turned for the next thread I am going to do after this weekend: The Journey of a FIRST Graduate: Discoveries. I am eager to share some of the random (though not so random) ideas I’ve learned in the past year and see what you think about them.
P.S. You can tell that I am more eager to hang around the forum this weekend because I am missing one of the greatest shows in FIRST: IRI and the talent show tonight, the biggest thing I missed since leaving FIRST.