In Pursuit of Knowledge
In A Beautiful Mind, John Nash and others do some of their most brilliant work when they are working at places whose sole purposes are to make it easy for them to do and learn and talk--no monthly reports, no project management, no weekly staff meetings, no prioritizing or what-did-you-do-for-me-lately.
In his book, Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, David Weinberger says:
The computer-based view of knowledge [that we think like computers compute] that leads us to think of decision-making this way is just the latest--and most extreme--version of our culture's knowledge anorexia; it seems that every time we look at knowledge and see something that isn't purely fact-based and objective, we feel bloated and go on a stricter diet.
Charles Dickens has a novel, Hard Times that deals in part with the idea that education should be all about the facts and never about the fantastic:
"You are to be in all things regulated and governed," said the gentleman, "by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. you are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact...You must use," said the gentleman, "for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste."
Facts are not knowledge. Knowledge doesn't exist without people and people are not just mind but heart and body and soul and feelings.
Here's another quote from Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, because he says what I'd say, if I were better at saying it:
Realism is strong medicine that must be used cautiously because it suspends ways of thinking that are essential components of human existence such as dreaming, imagining, supposing, wishing and hoping. Worse, it presents a view of our relationship to the world that misses the heart of that relationship...To say that we are social creatures is to say that our relationships make us who we are. Knowledge, language, events, even the very perception of real things like rocks, all depend on living in a world that is a deeply interrelated context of meanings.
Comments
The Weinberger looks fascinating. Thanks for linking to it!
So much of knowledge and decision making is a relational weave. Daniel Dennett talks about perception and thought as being a product of a kind of agglomeration of modules in DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA and CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED. In THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS, Leonard Shlain talks about field awareness versus linear thinking (and he postulates that horizontal literacy, lettering systems that read right-to-left or vice versa, condition us to a linear mode and reduce our field awareness, actually affecting the way our brains work, and making literate cultures less tolerant and more violent).
The project management and prioritizing and staff meetings and updates you mention are very linear. It seems to me that they would constrain the kind of mysteriously relational thought processes that lead to great ideas. Not to mention that they're tedious and sap energy from people who would do better if left to work as they will.
One of the best things about being a fiction writer is that you have a license to research in wildly different areas, which can lead to those wonderfully mysterious connections. I wonder if scientists do better when they're given that kind of license, too. The brain is so good at cross-fertilizing if you let it roam!
I really love those Weinberger quotes--just read them again. Must read the whole book.
Posted by: TM(tm) | October 4, 2002 09:32 AM
Have you read, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind? It's written by, I think, Claxton (okay, this is so pathetic I can't believe it--too lazy to get up and move six feet to where the book actually is, I look his name up on the web--it is Claxton). Anyway, his premise is we currently reward quick thinking and rapid decision making at the expense of quiet reflection and subconscious intuitive leaps. It's really interesting.
Dennett is in my huge want-to-read list, but I haven't read him.
Interestingly, the guy who wrote Hyperspace (this book is almost _ten_ feet from where I'm sitting so I _again_ resort to the web--Michio Kaku) says that English is a better language for discussing physics concepts than Japanese. I'm fascinated by the possibilities of language for shaping how we think.
You would like the Weinberger book, I think. It's mostly about other things than knowledge, though the Knowledge chapter is excellent. I keep trying to explain to people at work that the web is about people and not about how much data we can cram onto it and I'm hoping Small Pieces... can help me make some headway that way.
Posted by: debco | October 4, 2002 09:31 PM
I haven't read the Claxton. I'll add that to the list.
"we currently reward quick thinking and rapid decision making at the expense of quiet reflection and subconscious intuitive leaps"--that sounds a lot like the new New Yorker Magazine versus the old New Yorker Magazine. {g}
I enjoyed Hyperspace. Must revisit.
Posted by: TM(tm) | October 10, 2002 01:11 PM
I liked Visions too--another book by Kaku and would like to re-read that one again.
So many books, so little time....
Posted by: debco | October 13, 2002 08:45 PM