#2 The Journey of a FIRST Graduate: Discoveries

[Ken Leung]

In the last 7 messages on the Chief Delphi Forum, I’ve been trying to incorporate ideas into the messages with their themes. The results varied from message to message, as I was (and am) still learning to write. Very often the points was distracted by other things I wanted to write about, resulting confusing messages that lack coherent structures. So this time I thought I will dive right to the points and let you decide what to get out of them.

-Ken Leung


The Journey of a FIRST Graduate: Discoveries

When you ask questions you inevitably come to answers, even though they may or may not be right. Since the beginning of my adventure across many books and writings, I’ve discovered a series of “answers”. Some of them are results of direct questioning; some of them appeared even when no questions were asked. I’ve realized that direct investigation and questioning doesn’t always give you the answer you want. But when you are not look, it’s funny how things can just jump at you when you least expected. Maybe the best thing you can do is train yourself to detect and comprehend answers even when you are not looking for them.

Some of these ideas came from actual readings, while others are observations I have when I looked at the world. But regardless of where they come from, they each mean a lot to me in my search of answers. I don’t presume everyone will agree with each of the points, but I am hoping that more people will find similarity of mind among them than not. Well, I will let you be the judge of that.

Anyway, I don’t want to compromise the idea of each point, so I will present them as is in a form of a list. You are free to skip some of the points, but I believe that if you read them in order you may understand some of the later points better that way.


1. Yin & Yang

One of the most fundamental ways human uses to understand this world is opposite ideas, such as Yin & Yang. You cannot understand good without evil, cold without hot, up without down, light without dark, white without black, strong without weak, and so on. Everything has its opposite, one cannot exist without the other. You can’t have a universe where everything is good, hot, or heavy. Nor can you define what’s “right” without “wrong”, “up” without “down”, or “strong” without “weak”. When you look at something, you inevitably compare it to others. But at the same time, we are very limited with this two-ness of opposite ideas, and we are often trapped in dividing things into what they are and what they are not, instead of really looking at the true nature of the object we are observing.

2. River and Ocean

Chinese philosophers talked about the difference between a river and the ocean. The river, said the philosophers, can create lots of force every time it gets flooded by rain. But when the supply of water is gone, no matter how powerful it once was, how fast it raced across the continent; it reverts back into a stream. The ocean, on the other hand, has a tremendous volume and holds all the water of the world. It might not be as fast and concentrated as a flooding river, however, its has a power that far out weight any river in the entire world, a power that lies in its volume and its capacity. The ocean’s supply will never run out, and a tiny shake of its volume do far more damages than any river can ever do. Therefore, Chinese philosophers said that people should be more like the ocean, with its endless volume and immense potential, and less like the river, with its powerful yet very ephemeral outburst.

3. Volume and water

In the analogy of ocean and the river, the power of the ocean comes from two things: Volume and water. Without the volume, it can never hold all the water of the world. Without the water to fill it up, all the empty volume is wasted. You can imagine the same thing with your mind. Without increasing the volume, your mind can never contain any more knowledge than you already have. At the same time, if you never absorb any more knowledge than you already have, your mind will have all the space with no substances in it. Therefore, it is important to expand your volume as well as increase your supply of water. Otherwise, you won’t have any room to learn new things, or have too many concepts but nothing solid.

4. Education and Inspiration

FIRST is heavily geared toward inspiration of the students toward science and technology. Many in this program would argue that all you have to do is to inspire the students, and there’s no need for actual education. Others would argue the other way. However, if you think about this in terms of volume and the water, you can see that Inspiration is the act of expanding the capacity of the mind, while education is the act of filling that capacity with actual knowledge. Without one, the other will have very little effects. In many ways, it is the teams that achieve the proper balance that do the most impact on the students, though, there is no “perfect” balance that works for all. Each has to find their own proportion of education and inspiration in order to be successful.

5. Blind man and the lantern

Once upon a time there was a blind man visiting a friend far far away. They chatted and chatted until late at night when the blind man finally had to go home. The friend gave the blind man a lantern, and the blind man asked, “Why do I need a lantern? Light and darkness makes no difference to me.” His friend said, “I know, but if you don’t have it, other people might bump into you.” So the blind man proceed to walk home with it. Half way through the journey, the blind man bump into a stranger and they both felt down. The blind man said angrily, “How can you not see my lantern?!?” The stranger replied angrily, “What! Your lantern’s been dead a long time already!”

There are many people who borrowed knowledge and principle from others, trying to enlighten the world without fully understanding the depth of the knowledge and principles themselves. Just like the blind man with the lantern, they will never know if the lantern has already been dead for hours, because they cannot see the fire themselves. How can they try to teach, or even proclaim to be the masters of knowledge if they don’t even know the in’s and out’s of it? Be aware of the blind men and their lanterns in the world.

6. Structured ideas

Many ideas in this world only exist because of the structure that forms its foundation. You cannot have an advance scientific theory without the basic principles that leads up to it, nor can you have a highly complex mathematical model without the development of the most fundamental sets of mathematical concepts. This idea of structured ideas is common through out all branches of knowledge. You cannot comprehend subject such as history, philosophy, and law without a clear understanding of language. Likewise, you cannot master economics, bio-engineering, and computer science without crossing multiple branches of knowledge and understanding their origins before approaching them.

But they didn’t really tell us about that when we were small. Or rather, they told us how important Math and English is, and we didn’t understand it back then. If only there is a way to show up important these basic subjects are in the bigger scheme of things.

7. Structured ideas II

A lot of people don’t know that structured ideas appear not just in the academic world, but in our every day lives as well. All of our ideas, such as “how we look at the world”, “what’s right and wrong”, and our values, exist only because of the things we’ve experienced when we were growing up. Only when we’ve been through all the steps can we reach to where we are today. I’ve come to believe that a lot of misunderstanding are happening because people cannot grapes the structure behind other people’s ideas. And it is this lack of understanding of where people are coming from that’s causing a lot of the needless argument and flaming in the realm of public debate.

8. People are different

People are so different that the word different isn’t nearly enough to begin to describe it. Everyone have different background, different experience when they were growing up, and different values. But just because they are different doesn’t mean they are bad or they are wrong; they are just different. I’ve come to believe that without a clear understanding and appreciation of this difference, you cannot understand what’s right for each person.

9. Everyone is who he is because of the steps he took

Everyone is who he/she is because of the steps he/she took. There is no magic in there. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the formation of a great mind, but they are all things such as determination and hard working, the courage to think the impossible, and the discipline of using the mind and nurturing it. In other words, things that everyone is capable of. A lot of people are awestruck, if not intimidated by people greater than they are. Little do they realize that there is no need to feel little in front of these people, and that they are capable of doing great things as well.

10. Learn to learn from anyone and everyone

Often in an argument other people say things that really makes you want to slam your fist on the table hard and say swear words at them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t merits in their arguments, no matter how stupid the person sound. There are many bias and believes that could cloud a person’s judgment, but that doesn’t mean we have to be blinded by them. Learning to see merits are not only useful, but important in training our mind to learn from anyone and everything. Learn to learn from anyone and everyone, and you will see a lot more teachers out there.

11. The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph, what we obtain too cheaply, esteem too lightly, tis dearness only that gives everything its value.” -Thomas Paine

I’ve always believed that only with hard work will you receive truly satisfying rewards. Without putting real efforts into something, even if it turns out all right, you still won’t feel as fulfilled as you would’ve if you worked really hard at it.

But the amazing thing about discovering this quote isn’t that the quote is so well written and so true, it is, but what’s more amazing is the realization that others, especially a great mind like Thomas Paine, share the same thought as I do. Though the words may not be the same, the idea behind them is as close as I’ve seen all my life. It is a very overwhelming experience knowing that you are not alone in this world with these thoughts in your mind.

12. Words are very limiting tools

The language we use represent all the ideas we have. Without the language, we cannot truly express an idea in front of others, or even to ourselves. However, words are very limiting tools for expressing ideas. If you look at different languages, you can see there are many words unique to each culture that other languages don’t have a word for. In other words, there are many ideas unique to each culture that others don’t have.

When we rely too much on using words to express our ideas, we could be limiting ourselves from thinking beyond the words. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most fundamental ways we understand this world is through opposite concepts, which really are the words we use in our language that separate things like “hot” and “cold”. So, if we are not careful, we could fall into the trap of our language and have a difficult time understand ideas themselves. However, if used properly, language can be a very powerful tool to convey ideas with other people. So, it is important to understand the strength as well as weaknesses of the only tool our mind has.

13. The scientific method

The scientific method consist of observing phenomenon’s, formulating an hypothesis to explain it, using the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, performing experiments to test these predictions, and finally adjusting the hypothesis depending on the results of the experiments. But if you think about it, the scientific method is the way human being understand the world. We often observe something, we come up with a theory of why it happened, test it, and form new theories. So, to say that the scientific method is only for science is very short sighted. In fact, it can be applied to anything and everything as long as you know how to utilize the concept behind it. Same goes to many of the theories and principles through out all branches of knowledge. The hard part is to learn to see through the mist and learn to use knowledge well instead of being a prisoner of the knowledge itself.

14. Math the Universal language

I’ve only recently learned to appreciate just how universal mathematics is as a language. It started out with the question, “Why is Mathematics the universal language of all living things?” And it strike me how precisely math can describe just about everything in the physical world. Exactly how big an apple is? Exactly how red that car across the street is? Exactly how fast are we traveling across space at this moment? Exactly how much force is that elevator exerting to lift that many people up to the top of the building?

The human language might have many words to describe things in this world, especially in the form of poetry, but words have their limits and can never precisely describe some phenomenon in the physical world. Mathematics is the language mathematicians and scientists use to understand this world, a language with an immensely deep foundation, and a set of principles which has been through endless trails and tests and remained to be one of the most powerful tools in this world. Without Math, we won’t be able to do very simple things such as counting how many birds are in the sky, or more complicated habits as buying and selling in the market, to as far as one of the most difficult task human beings have ever achieved: Landing on the moon.

But we don’t appreciate that when we were small. We didn’t know how to appreciate how this is a world of ideas, and language such as English and Mathematics are the only tools we have to express those ideas and formulating them into bigger and greater ideas.
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I think that’s enough for one sitting ;-). There are many points in this message, each worthy of its own essay. But imagine how much long it would’ve taken to write 14 different essays, and how much fun that would be for me to write and you to read ;-).

Jokes aside, I think that as a whole, these 14 points represent a set of philosophy that I am beginning to grapes every where, whether in Eastern or Western philosophy, or in the fields of mathematics and science. They all point toward the same direction, and that is, how human being understand things, and how our idea help shape this world. It is toward this direction where I want to continue to pursue, because it is the only one that make sense to me, beside my goal toward higher degree of Mechanical Engineering.

I don’t yet know where this journey is taking me, but just like most things in this world, you can only predict so much before they sweep you away to a place you never could’ve imagined.

So, until then…


P.S. By the way, I am very eager to find out what kind of discoveries you are making yourself, so please feel free to share any of them with us!

[Chris Hibner]

Ken,

This latest message of yours is a little overwhelming. How do you respond to something like that? I guess I will have to try to repond to a few things.

I'm sure most people in the U.S. are aware of yin and yang, but some of the other ones are new to me (such as the river and the ocean, volume and water, etc.). I've heard similar tales in western philosopy (for instance, Tortoise vs. the Hare is somewhat similar to the river vs. the ocean - not exact, but similar), but these exact representations are new. They are very interesting to read.

There are a few things that I want to comment on:

Your comment on Education vs. Inspiration is right on the money. Without inspiration, there is very little education. One of the key principles of learning (from Thorndike) is the "principle of readiness". The principle of readiness states that "if a student is ready to learn, and has a strong purpose, clear objective, and well-fixed reason for learning, (s)he will make more progress than if (s)he lacks motivation." This is what inspiration is all about. You have to make the students WANT to learn. If they don't want to learn, then you'll have very little luck teacing them. It's the old fable of leading the horse to water...

Inspiration and motivation lead naturally into the mathematics - the universal language. People in the United States really do not understand how important math is (we understand, but we're engineers). The general populace doesn't know and, worse yet, doesn't want to know. Our educational system must find a better way of inspiring young school children about math. I can't tell you how many times I heard "we're never going to use this crap" (referring to math) when I was growing up. If we want to children to learn math, then we need to START with how they will be able to use it. First give them the motivation, then teach them the math. As it is now, you learn while being kept in the dark about it's usefulness, and then when you get to phyisics your senior year in high school you find out that it is useful. That is way too late! We need better motivation, better story problems (I don't care what anyone says, but who cares when two trains (one heading east and one heading west) collide? Show the students how they can change gears to get a new top speed of their go-kart, or how much hard drive space a file will take up. Here's one: if a file is 3.8 megs and you must download the file in under 2 minutes, what connection speed must you have? GIVE THEM SOMETHING THEY CAN RELATE TO!) This is where FIRST is doing a great job.

People are different / everyone is who he is because of the steps he took: I touched on this in my response Ken's last message. You cannot understand a person's actions without understanding their history. It is IMPOSSIBLE. What is perfectly normal to us is really weird to people from a different culture and vice versa. The only way to understand people from around the world is to first understand their culture and history. It's amazing what you learn. I'm no where near an expert in this area, but I have enough experience to know that what you will learn is a real eye opener.

Words are very limiting tools: this is very insightful. In my experience, "a picture is worth a thousand words" is also true. Drawing new concepts, and using pictures to communicate is often much more effective than words (especially if you're comminating with people from around the world). If you are ever having trouble with a concept, draw a simple picture - you will be amazed at how helpful it is. I remember in my first algebra class, my teacher would always say: draw a picture for every problem - it will make it easier. I always thought it was childish and for the weak minded. That was until I got to college and realized how stupid I was. I rarely do anything anymore without first drawing it out.

Lastly (for me), the scientific method: I generally don't believe in anything unless it has passed the trials of the scientific method. I like conclusive proof. Stories and anecdotes are great, but the placebo effect has more influence on people than they realize. If you want to claim something, have proof to back it up.

Whew. I would actually like to say a lot more, but I'm afraid of carpel tunnel syndrome. I really don't need to say anything - Ken did a great job. I suppose I just felt like putting my own spin on what he had to say, and maybe backing it up a little with my own experiences.

Keep up the good work, Ken. I hope people are reading your messages and it makes them think.

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by Ken Leung

1. Yin & Yang

One of the most fundamental ways human uses to understand this world is opposite ideas, such as Yin & Yang. You cannot understand good without evil, cold without hot, up without down, light without dark, white without black, strong without weak, and so on. Everything has its opposite, one cannot exist without the other. You can’t have a universe where everything is good, hot, or heavy. Nor can you define what’s “right” without “wrong”, “up” without “down”, or “strong” without “weak”. When you look at something, you inevitably compare it to others. But at the same time, we are very limited with this two-ness of opposite ideas, and we are often trapped in dividing things into what they are and what they are not, instead of really looking at the true nature of the object we are observing.

I just read this last night, and thought it to be the best the concept has ever been put into words.

Originally Posted by Herman Melville

We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

Whew. I would actually like to say a lot more, but I'm afraid of carpel tunnel syndrome. I really don't need to say anything - Ken did a great job. I suppose I just felt like putting my own spin on what he had to say, and maybe backing it up a little with my own experiences.

Chis, thank you for your reply, and i apologize for waiting this long to respond to it.

First of all, i wish i can point you to a certain book about Buddhism or Chinese philosophy, but I can't. Not yet anyway. Most of the things I learned so far came from bits and pieces of stories and teachings I discovered between different sources. I will be taking a class in eastern philosophy pretty soon, so hopefully that class will provide me a few titles to share with everyone.

I think my mistake here was putting too much information in one thread. That made it too overwhelming for everyone, including me and you, to read. I was just so excited about all these I had to share it all at once. These points may seem different, maybe random at times, but to me, they all came from the same source: My observation of life. At this stage, I don't want to restrict myself too much by forming one big theory out of all these observations. I just want to be able to think freely about all kinds of things, make random observations, and organize them when I am ready. So, I apologize if they make no sense.

I will be a little better, and shorter, next time ;-).

It is my wish that someday I will find people to talk to and debate about this all the time, but that remains a wish and not reality at the moment. Maybe I am just too odd for an engineering student... Oh well. That would explain why I am taking ballroom dancing lessons too ;-).