I have a strong desire to comprehend stuff

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
Does anyone have this song running thru their head:
[QUOTE=TMBG]
Call me Dr. Worm. I’m interested in things.
[/QUOTE]

[/QUOTE]
Well, now I do; thanks a lot! :rolleyes: :smiley:

Actually, the They Might Be Giants lyrics that most often run through my head when reading threads like this are:

I should be allowed to think
And I should be allowed to blurt the merest idea
If by random whim one occurs to me
But sadly this can never be
I am not allowed to think
To the OP’s point about fiction vs. non-fiction:
[QUOTE=coberst]
We went into the fields with our bushel baskets and filled them with corn-on-the-cob. Dad showed me how to choose the corn to pick and how to snatch the cob from the stalk.
[/QUOTE]
Did you learn more, in any sense, from this experience than you would have from reading a non-fictional book or article about corn?

There are some things that are difficult, if not impossible, to understand just by reading facts about them, if you haven’t experienced them for yourself. And reading fiction (or imaginative narrative) can be a better substitute for direct personal experience than non-fiction (just the facts, ma’am) can.

42

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
Well, now

To the OP’s point about fiction vs. non-fiction:Did you learn more, in any sense, from this experience than you would have from reading a non-fictional book or article about corn?

There are some things that are difficult, if not impossible, to understand just by reading facts about them, if you haven’t experienced them for yourself. And reading fiction (or imaginative narrative) can be a better substitute for direct personal experience than non-fiction (just the facts, ma’am) can.
[/QUOTE]

I experience with the corn caused me to become conscious of what corn-on-the-cob is. Before that experience it was just something that I loved to eat.

Most people do not consider reading to be an experience, but I do. However, I agree that many things must be experienced to be understood.

In fact I would say that the ratio of knowledge to understanding has increased as civilization as developed. The farmer on the frontier had to understand many things whereas the average worker today need not understand anything.

43

[QUOTE=coberst]
I never assume that people will agree with me. However it is fairly easy to determine when they do not comprehend what I have written.
[/QUOTE]

The measure of understanding comes not from within, but from without. It is easy to convince yourself that you understand something when you don’t - as any student surprised by a test grade can attest. In fact. I don’t think you comprehend what you’ve written. Sam, for instance, understands it much better than you.

For your corn story, let me direct you to a bit by that immaculately hip aristocrat Lord Buckley called “Subconscious Mind,” done about 50 years ago, which says it all, and much better. You saw corn when you thought about corn. Are you equally as shocked when you get a new station when tuning your radio?

What fiction provides which non-fiction does not is a study of people and their interaction. You can study the statistics of love affairs, or the history of love affairs, cut can any non-fiction provide the understanding that *Madame Bovary * and *Anna Karennina *do? One doesn’t read Huckleberry Finn to understand 19th century river commerce. I read tons of non-fiction, but I understand what both fiction and non-fiction do for us. Do you? If you don’t think or don’t care about human interaction, I can understand your disdain for fiction, but that is sad.

44

[QUOTE=coberst]
I suspect it might be possible that some primates might have the ability for abstract thinking in some small way. Just like our hands have evolved from the finsof a fish it is possible that at the cusp between ape and human there might be some small degree of abstract thinking.
[/QUOTE]

I suspect that this has already been demonstrated, but so what? Hominids have certainly displayed this ability for hundreds of thousands of years (H. Erectus, IIRC was something on the order of 1-2 million years ago…and I’d say pretty clearly had the ability to think in abstracts). You seem to be dodging this aspect of the discussion. You said ‘We are creatures who have evolved without abstract thinking.’..which is, to put it mildly, bullshit…unless you want to go back to H. Habilis or before. Even then there is no way to be sure that they DIDN’T have the ability to think in abstract thought on the order of several primates today.

You said ‘We are animals who have evolved by comprehending images and abstract thinking is new and to comprehend our anstractions we must create images’…well, define ‘new’ then. 1-2 million years? 500,000 years? 10,000 years? 2,000 years? Last year?

THis isn’t exactly a hijack here…it’s sort of central to your whole asssertion that humans learn ‘more efficiently’ from non-fiction than fiction. I’d say pretty much all of human history is against your assertion. Every pre-literate society I know of passes on history and other important facts about its environment via story telling, usually using mythological (i.e. fictional) methods to make it more interesting and easier to absorb the important data they are trying to convey.

-XT

45

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The measure of understanding comes not from within, but from without. It is easy to convince yourself that you understand something when you don’t - as any student surprised by a test grade can attest. In fact. I don’t think you comprehend what you’ve written. Sam, for instance, understands it much better than you.

For your corn story, let me direct you to a bit by that immaculately hip aristocrat Lord Buckley called “Subconscious Mind,” done about 50 years ago, which says it all, and much better. You saw corn when you thought about corn. Are you equally as shocked when you get a new station when tuning your radio?

What fiction provides which non-fiction does not is a study of people and their interaction. You can study the statistics of love affairs, or the history of love affairs, cut can any non-fiction provide the understanding that *Madame Bovary * and *Anna Karennina *do? One doesn’t read Huckleberry Finn to understand 19th century river commerce. I read tons of non-fiction, but I understand what both fiction and non-fiction do for us. Do you? If you don’t think or don’t care about human interaction, I can understand your disdain for fiction, but that is sad.
[/QUOTE]

I think that an interesting test of this idea might be to take two high school seniors of equal learning ability and experience and tell them that one will read Othello and the other can use Google to look up information. Both are told that after one hour there will be an exam about the human charcter as relating to tragedy and jealousy. It would be interesting how their performance would compare.

Regarding your example an equal kind of exam might be given to two individuals after one had studied psychology and the other had read selected literature and both were given the same exam after several hours of study.

I would guess that anyone who studied psycholgy for a semester versus one who had studied good literature for a semester might show us the difference. I guess that the one studying literature might have a deeper comprehension of a few things whereas the other would have a more shallow comprehension but over a wider domain of knowledge.

Such a contest would be very instructive I think.

46

[QUOTE=coberst]
How can you know who it is that’s merely aware and who comprehends?"

I did not answer that question in the hope that you would go back and read the OP and thus would comprehend the problem with your question. Awareness is the first step of many that make up comprehension.
[/QUOTE]
I went back and read the OP, and have said that a couple of times now, so I can only assume you’re calling me a liar.

I understand that you are saying awareness is just a mere tiptoe on the road to comprehension. You’re saying that to just be made aware of something is to give it the smallest amount of recognition; the eyes see, but the conscious brain doesn’t register anything. It takes processes in the brain, consciously, for something to turn from merely the result of awareness to the result of comprehension.

So, i’ll try again; how is it you determine whether someone is merely aware of your posts, as opposed to comprehending and reaching understanding of them? What is your method of telling whether someone has a legitimate disagreement with your ideas and who doesn’t?

47

[QUOTE=xtisme]
I suspect that this has already been demonstrated, but so what? Hominids have certainly displayed this ability for hundreds of thousands of years (H. Erectus, IIRC was something on the order of 1-2 million years ago…and I’d say pretty clearly had the ability to think in abstracts). You seem to be dodging this aspect of the discussion. You said ‘We are creatures who have evolved without abstract thinking.’..which is, to put it mildly, bullshit…unless you want to go back to H. Habilis or before. Even then there is no way to be sure that they DIDN’T have the ability to think in abstract thought on the order of several primates today.

You said ‘We are animals who have evolved by comprehending images and abstract thinking is new and to comprehend our anstractions we must create images’…well, define ‘new’ then. 1-2 million years? 500,000 years? 10,000 years? 2,000 years? Last year?

THis isn’t exactly a hijack here…it’s sort of central to your whole asssertion that humans learn ‘more efficiently’ from non-fiction than fiction. I’d say pretty much all of human history is against your assertion. Every pre-literate society I know of passes on history and other important facts about its environment via story telling, usually using mythological (i.e. fictional) methods to make it more interesting and easier to absorb the important data they are trying to convey.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

To my knowledge we have no way of proving one way or the other. I suspect that the ratio between knowledge and understanding has changed dramatically as we have become more civilized.

McLuhan was, I guess, the first to express the insight that technology is an extension of the human body.

These hand-held gadgets for communication might very well represent the end of ‘understanding’ for almost all citizens by 2050. I can see it already on the Internet discussion forums where communication is becoming a stream of consciousness without coherent grammatical or thoughtful content or construction.

I am going to deal with numbers and ratios not that I think my numbers are accurate but I think they may be useful for comprehending certain things.

Suppose we establish a knowledge-to-understanding ratio K/U, i.e. the amount we know divided by the amount we understand (i.e. need to create).

I would say that a frontier family might have K/U ratio of 20/1. As time passes and there is less need for understanding (creativity) and more need for knowing because the demands of the frontier diminish and ‘civilization’ encroaches I would say the K/U ratio might go to 50/1.

After one hundred years I suspect the ratio might easily move to 100/1; after leaving the farm and moving to town and going to work in the factory the ratio might very well go to 1000/1.

Today’s modern man or woman may very well have a ratio of 10,000/1. The person with a PhD might very well have a ratio 100,000/1.

I have heard college professors say that you never really understand a subject until you try to teach it. I suspect a PhD who is also a long time teacher might have developed an understanding of many things and thus dropped the ratio back to 10,000/1.

I think that within the next 50 years ‘understanding’ will be only seen in a museum. Do you agree?

48

[QUOTE=coberst]
I think that within the next 50 years ‘understanding’ will be only seen in a museum. Do you agree?
[/QUOTE]

No, I totally disagree with you. I think you are focused on the minor details (i.e. such as your assertion that ‘communication is becoming a stream of consciousness without coherent grammatical or thoughtful content or construction’) and missing the big picture here. Our technology has given us access to a medium of communications unparalleled in human history. Grammatically correct? Coherent? Who gives a shit? The point is we can communicate (communication being the key…not grammer or spelling or correct syntax or the ‘correct’ way according to the grammer-Nazi types) to each other on a massive scale never before available…and that we ARE communicating to each other on that scale as never before. We can share our thoughts…both the crack pot nutball ones along with the profound ones.

[QUOTE=coberst]
McLuhan was, I guess, the first to express the insight that technology is an extension of the human body.
[/QUOTE]

I seriously doubt that. I’d say this ‘insight’ was pretty much appearent to the first hominids that banged two rocks together to make a tool.

[QUOTE=coberst]
These hand-held gadgets for communication might very well represent the end of ‘understanding’ for almost all citizens by 2050.
[/QUOTE]

I’m getting a very neo-Luddited vibe here. Again, this isn’t exactly a radical new theme you are espousing here. I’m guessing you could go back to some fortified Phoenician town and you’d hear some old geezer say ‘These clay tablets for communication might represent the end of ‘understanding’ for all citizens by the next year of the goat! Why in MY day we didn’t have all that fancy writing stuff…we learned our stuff at the feet of the bards by memorizing it by the gods! Kids these days…’

I would say that modern communications have enabled the highest percentage in ‘understanding’ of various subjects in the general population than has ever happened in human history. Now, what those folks might be ‘understanding’ is subject to debate as far as its worth…but compare, say, the general ‘understanding’ in the world population for something like the moon to the very specialized ‘understanding’ to a very small percentage of the population in times past. Your average peasant in China or Europe probably never even thought about the moon at all except perhaps as a marker of time…and certainly didn’t have even access to the thoughts or data from the elite who were actually studying it at the time. And you could branch that into ANY subject. Cosmology? Physics? Philosophy? While the general public (world wide) is no expert (or even very knowlege-able), they have a better idea of the subject matter and what the experts in those vertical fields are saying than at any other time in history.

-XT

49

[QUOTE=coberst]
I think that an interesting test of this idea might be to take two high school seniors of equal learning ability and experience and tell them that one will read Othello and the other can use Google to look up information. Both are told that after one hour there will be an exam about the human charcter as relating to tragedy and jealousy. It would be interesting how their performance would compare.

[/quote]

I have no doubt the Googler would do better in general, because of access to those who have thought a lot about these issues. In this example, both sources come from the play.

I think you might be right. My point is not to criticize psychology (both my kids are psych majors, and I just published a paper on psychology as applied to my field with the oldest) but that fiction is very instructive in its way. I’m glad you agree.

50

[QUOTE=coberst]
To my knowledge we have no way of proving one way or the other. I suspect that the ratio between knowledge and understanding has changed dramatically as we have become more civilized.

[/quote]

We have looked at the stars for thousands of years. I suspect the average Greek might have had more knowledge of them than we do, since they could see the stars better and because more of them might navigate using the stars. But did they understand them better than we do? I think not. The Greeks did their best to understand nature, but we actually do.

Nonsense. It has been said that PhDs know a great deal about very little. Having one, I have to agree. To do a PhD you take a small area, and learn everything about it. But that’s just the literature survey, chapter two of your dissertation. No one gets a PhD for that. After you do that you think deeply about the knowledge you’ve obtained, and your research comes out of an understanding of the knowledge, understanding that gets tested both as you work through the dissertation and by your advisor and committee.
You need understanding of your field also. I was lucky enough to pass orals at two different universities, and in both cases the questions required an understanding of the field, not just knowledge. (The knowledge part gets covered by quals.)
Now, it is perfectly possible to collect lots of information with very little understanding, and that seems to be encouraged by school texts written to help students pass various tests. But saying a PhD is like this is very incorrect.

51

[QUOTE=coberst]

In fact I would say that the ratio of knowledge to understanding has increased as civilization as developed. The farmer on the frontier had to understand many things whereas the average worker today need not understand anything.
[/QUOTE]

I think they both still have to under stand the same thing. Survival. Time has not changed that.

52

XT
I have been studying the concepts ‘reification’ (to regard something abstract as a material thing) and ‘commodification’ (to turn an intrinsic value into an object of commerce), which are concepts studied by the soft sciences in an attempt to understand the nature of capitalism. In that process I came across this Marx quote:

“Through the subordination of man to the machine the situation arises in which men are effaced [to cause to vanish] by their labor. In which the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most an incarnation of time. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything: hour for hour, day for day…”

I think that the general idea contained in this Marx quote might be said for education it self. Understanding no longer matters. Knowing alone decides everything. Education is commodified and the product of education is a commodity (credentials and a data base).

It seems to me that we have become a culture enchanted by information or knowledge with little understanding of understanding. We have become a culture of specialists and our schools and colleges have become dispensers of commodities. Education is just another commodity; it is an object of commerce. Knowledge and understanding as intrinsic values have been cast aside.

Ours is a culture of quantity over quality. I do not remember much about the book but I read “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” and it was, as I remember, about quality; about a dad trying to help his son understand the difference between quantity and quality. In my lexicon quantity is knowledge and quality is understanding. Understanding has little value in our culture and knowledge is king. We graduate from school with large data banks so that we fit easily into the corporate machine.

53

Voyager

I am a retired engineer. And I can say with confidence that engineers generally have a great deal of knowledge but very little understanding. I would say that applies to almost all graduates of our colleges. Understanding is not required in order for us to maximize production and consumption and thus it is of little vale to the culture.

54

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
I think they both still have to under stand the same thing. Survival. Time has not changed that.
[/QUOTE]

And therein lay the rub. If we do not make a serious effort as a society to develop understanding quickly our civilization will not survive another 200 years.

55

[QUOTE=coberst]
Voyager

I am a retired engineer. And I can say with confidence that engineers generally have a great deal of knowledge but very little understanding. I would say that applies to almost all graduates of our colleges. Understanding is not required in order for us to maximize production and consumption and thus it is of little vale to the culture.
[/QUOTE]

I’m an engineer also. Engineers I know with PhDs, and who are acknowledged as experts in their fields, have lots of understanding. Even better, they pick up on someone else’s understanding really quickly. I know there are plenty who don’t have understanding, but they’re the ones who never make it to the next level. I suspect this is true of every field.

56

[QUOTE=coberst]
If we do not make a serious effort as a society to develop understanding quickly our civilization will not survive another 200 years.
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: I seem to recall quotations like this throughout history. Some of them were written on stone tablets.

[QUOTE=coberst]
I have been studying the concepts ‘reification’ (to regard something abstract as a material thing) and ‘commodification’ (to turn an intrinsic value into an object of commerce), which are concepts studied by the soft sciences in an attempt to understand the nature of capitalism. In that process I came across this Marx quote:
[/QUOTE]

That’s very nice (though Marx? Marx?? Come on), but what has it to do with anything I’ve written in this thread? Did you have this little gem on a mental tape recorder and decide to spring it on the thread because you felt it was time? It has nothing that I can see to do with any of the points I was making.

BTW, I read both Marx and Engels in college.

[QUOTE=coberst]
I think that the general idea contained in this Marx quote might be said for education it self. Understanding no longer matters. Knowing alone decides everything. Education is commodified and the product of education is a commodity (credentials and a data base).
[/QUOTE]

I think you should work on your own understanding because this isn’t what Marx was getting at…not even in the ball park.

As for the rest…again, it has little to do with anything I’ve said in this thread. I’m not even seeing how it relates to your own OP, but hey…its your thread.

-XT

57

[QUOTE=coberst]
I am a retired engineer.
[/QUOTE]
Ah. This makes a certain amount of sense, in terms of the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy brought up in the very first reply to the OP. The stereotypical engineer is notoriously left-brained, and (vast oversimplification coming up!) non-fiction appeals to the left brain and fiction to the right brain.

58

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
Ah. This makes a certain amount of sense, in terms of the left-brain/right-brain dichotomy brought up in the very first reply to the OP. The stereotypical engineer is notoriously left-brained, and (vast oversimplification coming up!) non-fiction appeals to the left brain and fiction to the right brain.
[/QUOTE]

I think you may be correct.

59

[QUOTE=coberst]
And therein lay the rub. If we do not make a serious effort as a society to develop understanding quickly our civilization will not survive another 200 years.
[/QUOTE]

My job is to supply parts to repair automobiles. Both crashed and general repairs. I also posses the knowledge to repair said automobiles in both fields. This is only one small job in one field. If everyone who has a job such as me and such as yourself, an engineer, even if you don’t build the things you design you don’t think we as a society can survive? I don’t claim to be learned nor even very smart, but the people who post on this board are. People like Revenant Threshold and Diogenes the Cynic. The thinking is their job. I think the point is throughout history example has shown us everyone has a job to do. Some do the thinking , some do the work. This is the way it is and always has been. I can see where it would be nice if things were different, but my friend, somebody has to take out the garbage, if you know what I mean.

60

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
My job is to supply parts to repair automobiles. Both crashed and general repairs. I also posses the knowledge to repair said automobiles in both fields. This is only one small job in one field. If everyone who has a job such as me and such as yourself, an engineer, even if you don’t build the things you design you don’t think we as a society can survive? I don’t claim to be learned nor even very smart, but the people who post on this board are. People like Revenant Threshold and Diogenes the Cynic. The thinking is their job.
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t sell myself short. Can you do repairs because you have memorized a book (have knowledge) or do you understand how cars work? I bet the latter. I don’t get cars, but I do get computers, and I can debug most of my wife’s problems without even looking at a book.

My brother has a lot less book larnin’ than me, but he understands cars a whole lot better. I’m betting you do also.