Wednesday 18 October 2000

Pic of the day: Those who focus their mind tightly like a laser beam risk leaving most of themselves in the dark. And the dark is not the safest place to be.

A little knowledge

Ooh, this one is a toughie. This is my third attempt to write this. It is really too simple for me to write. I digress too much. See, I'm digressing already, and I haven't even started ...

Some people are simply born with a faster, more efficient brain. Others have some special talent that they can use to excel. And others just slog through on hard work. But the brain can be used better. Like a computer, hardware is not all. The software counts too. And we can program our own brain over time.

***

For the sake of this topic, we have 4 types of memory: Short, medium, long term active, long term passive. (Actually there are several types of long term memory.)

The short memory is versatile, exact, very limited, and very temporary. This is what we use to hold a phone number from we read it till we dial it. Obviously, it is a scarce resource.

After we decide to (or just happen to) remember something, it floats around for 20 minutes or more, up to a couple hours. In this time it can be erased by strong distractions, or by physical trauma like concussion or electroshock. Repetition, or connection to related knowledge, will reinforce it.

After this time, the memory is encoded in the brain. Again, it may fade through lack of use, but you can count on at least recognizing it for a long while. A recent article from the Norwegian popular science magazine Illustrert Vitenskap claimed that only ca 50 000 facts can be actively remembered at any one time, including our active vocabulary. (I do not agree with this - my active vocabulary is probably quite a bit bigger, at least if you count all the three languages I feel comfortable in.) Anyway, the good news is that the passive memory is quite a bit larger. This is the stuff that we cannot list, but which we recognize when we meet it again.

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Now that we know our active memory is limited, it makes sense to organize the use of it. As children, we randomly learn anything in no special order. As adults, many people stop learning for fun and start to concentrate on learning for a purpose. Sadly, the purpose is often money, which means that they gradually specialize in some niche of knowledge. If they do not retain a childlike curiosity in other parts of life, they will eventually become very narrow in their knowledge. It shocks me to see intelligent people believe absolute drivel, just because they don't know much about the world outside their narrow field.

I therefore propose that we should set aside some of our brain for superficial knowledge about things we'll never need to know. More exactly, I propose that we should create a kind of overview of everything. That we should know a little bit about most sciences, and perhaps some of the arts too.

Of course, this is easy for me to say: I already have this kind of overview. For me, the sciences are not separate, much less conflicting. All things are connected in some way. Not through mental short circuits such as astrology, where the stars influence our lives mystically. Rather, the stars that burned billions of years ago forged the oxygen and carbon and nitrogen and other stuff that makes up our bodies. The structure of the atoms determine the laws of chemistry, and the chemistry of carbon and its partners is the basis of all living things. The ear that hears and the tree that falls in the forest are basically part of the same universe, have a common origin and a shared future. Mysticism is optional.

***

But back to our superficial knowledge. I claim that it is not a great loss that we know only a little about each thing. What counts is that we know how to learn more. And this is a question of selecting the right "links" to knowledge. This is a skill. If we need to learn something more, we must know where to go. Once we have a choice of sources, we must choose which we can trust, and which we can understand. We should not struggle through a university level textbook if all we need is a little more knowledge.

To exemplify this right now, I got a (highly welcome) e-mail from E-pal, who mentioned a possible connection between C.G. Jung and postmodernism. Now I know quite a bit of Jung, but nothing about postmodernism. I fired up my Encarta (reliable and entry level information) and looked for postmodernism. There was no entry on that. I read about modernism, but that was about a trend in theology (basically the opposite of fundamentalism, which I also happen to know a bit about). OK, out goes Encarta 95.

But as the good book says, "Don't panic!" (OK, not a very good book.) Time to go online. Merriam-Websters states the obvious, that postmodernism is a reaction against modern movements and revival of traditional elements. Still, progress. I can pause, and say to myself: "I thought so!" And then, whip out the big gun. Encyclopaedia Britannica online. After half an hour, I have a feel of in what areas of life postmodernism is most recognized, some of its main inspirations and some of its critics.

Now if I were majoring in architecture (if that is at all possible, what do I know) I would need to know a lot more about postmodernism. Big textbooks (some of which were mentioned by Britannica). But for the sake of comparing Jung's symbolic psychology with postmodernism, a short introduction is all I need. Similarly, if you hear about elm blight, it can be nice to know that elm is a tree, not a humanoid with pointed ears and some inherent magic. (Though it could be more fun if you know less.)