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?
understanding will be found where it is now… in the expected behaviours and reactions of people to certain stimuli…
I told him look both ways…
he didn’t understand…
-Imp
afterthought:
the understanding is dependant on the technology. does the person doing trig understand the nature of triangles “better” or more deeply because he uses a slide rule and log table to find the answers or does the person who uses a graphing calculator? they are totally different understandings.
do they arrive at the same answers?
if so, what’s the difference?
well you turn left, then you turn left again, and then turn left one more time…
I should first give you an explanation of what I mean by the word ‘understand’.
Understanding is a step beyond knowing and is seldom required or measured by schooling. Understanding is generally of disinterested knowledge, i.e. disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.
Understanding is often difficult and time consuming and the justification is not extrinsic but intrinsic.
These claims may be too general but I do not think so.
Understanding is a step beyond knowing and is seldom required or measured by schooling.
Understanding is generally of disinterested knowledge, i.e. disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application
I do not think understanding can be taught. Understanding is an act of creation and each of us must learn how to do it if we are every to recognize the “ecstasy of understanding”.
Let’s put it this way. We have two words; knowing and understanding. Do we all recognize that there are two very different experiences that we correlate for these two words? I find that I have two separate kinds of experience. I have a different experience that I call knowing from the experience that I call understanding.
I have an experience that I call knowing and I have that kind of experience very often. I have a different experience that I have very seldom but I recognize a difference between the two. When I look out the window I see the rain falling and I know it is raining. I read a book and I gain much knowledge about the Grand Canyon. I look out the window of the plane while passing over the Grand Canyon and I can talk to my neighbor in the next seat and I can tell him some of the things about the Grand Canyon that I know.
Suppose my friend and I spend three months camping and rafting in the Canyon. I suspect I will have an entirely different experience of the Grand Canyon after those three months than before. I will know a great deal more and I will have another experience that I can call understanding. These are two very different experiences. I suspect I can tell you that I did this and I can say that I understand the Grand Canyon and most people will comprehend that my experience exceeds or is different from knowing the Grand Canyon.
If you agree that these two words represent two different kinds of experience then the next question is—How are they different? I have made numerous attempts to explain what these two different experiences are—what is you explanation of the meaning of these two words or do you think we only need one word because there is no difference?
coberst - have you tried to think of either word as describing a continuum? That either word represents less of an abstration if viewed solely as activities, and not objects?
The meanings of these words overlap in usage. And they share senses with other words, as well.
I think the paradigm you are using is too static to fully describe your aims here.
Statically speaking we gather a bunch of knowing. The ‘light’ comes on and we see a platform of understanding on which we stand to gather a bunch more knowing.
Dynamically speaking, with each bit of “knowing”, we gain a bit of “understanding”. When it reaches a critical mass it forms a platform of “understanding” on which we stand to begin gathering more bits of “knowing”.
I call the process simply, “reaching out to the limits of our capacities…” Whatever way you look at it “knowing” and “understanding” are inseparable; maybe not a continnum but definitely contained in the same process.
So, you can be funny. I mean, understanding in a museum in the next 50 years? This is funny in an engineer, mathematical, kind of way. How will they know or recognize to place said understanding in a museum?
What’s going to replace understanding? Okay, part of your argument hints at the dumbing down of all citizens due to technological expansion (I believe you called them hand-held gadgets) by 2050; I’m thinking you’re espousing comprehension hinderance here, but I am not sure. Said gadgets are created to promote efficiency (now, dependency on said gadgets… different argument? Subset of the same argument?) in hopes of facilitating even more efficient gadgets and thus helping us formulate coherent grammatical constructions so that we can know and understand more complex gadget making formulations.
I’m sure no one will notice that big of a difference in 2050 or 2056, which ever comes first, as long as the stream of consciousness is still conscious (grammatical construction notwithstanding).
I have to say, you have a fascinating mind ( this is not meant to be a strawman or ad anything).
Coberst- I’m not exactly clear on how you define “understanding”. It seems to me that your definition of “knowing” something is having some adequate representation of an aspect of reality in your mind. It seems like your definition of knowing involves taking a mental picture of “what” is true in reality.
I disagree. I think the understanding to knowledge ratio will grow and must grow for greater technological innovation.
The way I view understanding is kind of similar to the way Spinoza viewed adequate and inadequate ideas. For Spinoza, an experience by itself is an inadequate idea. He thought that simply observing what nature does causes errors in thinking, due to its unsystematic and often subjective nature. So mental snapshots of “what” are second-rate ideas (or to use his term, inadequate ideas).
Adequate ideas are of a different nature. They involve not merely “what” things are, but “how” and “why” things are. Spinoza was a materialist, he saw the universe as a great big connection of causual interactions. He thought knowing how and why these causual interactions occur is to have adequate ideas, or to have real “knowledge”. I equate adequate ideas in the Spinozan sense with understanding.
I think in order for humans to progress technologically, humans need to acquire more adequate ideas. We need to understand things more. The advance of society and technology has become dependent on the advance of science. Scientists do try to provide descriptions of “what” the universe is like (“knowledge”), but they are primarily concerned with testing theories that explain “how” and “why” the universe is the the way it is. They are attempting to comprehend the causual framework that guides the changes of everything in the universe. They are pursuing adequate ideas (maybe not exactly as Spinoza defined them, but definitely something similar). They are trying to enhance their understanding.
Thus, the continued progress of science is dependent upon greater understanding of the causual interactions of the parts of the universe. And since technological growth is dependent upon scientific growth, better understanding of nature is necessary for technology to continue to become more advanced and ubiquitious.
So I disagree. I think understanding will advance in the future, and I think that a greater understanding to knowledge ration is in fact necessary for more technological progress.
When you say “We need to understand things more†I agree wholeheartedly. However, when you say “The advance of society and technology has become dependent on the advance of science†I go bananas!
I recently watched a TV show based on Greene’s book “The Elegant Universeâ€. The book gives us a broad brush outlook on physics from Newton to Einstein to Quantum Theory to String Theory in an attempt to focus on the TOE (Theory Of Everything). Pretty big ambition for a one hour TV show!
In my layman’s view I would say that this business of trying to comprehend the nature of the universe within the atom is the equivalent of what empathy tries to do when we attempt to ‘get into’ the mind of another. When we try to ‘get into’ the world of the other person and when we try to ‘get into’ the world of the atom we are doing what I call ‘understanding’.
In both cases we are creating a model of the other that will make the behavior of the other comprehensible. This model in the case of Electromagnetic Theory consists of four equations. This model for QM as depicted by Feynman in his book QED is much larger but nevertheless it is small compared to the knowledge required to reach the conclusion.
A little bit of understanding stands on a giant pyramid of knowledge.
Our future depends upon our success with empathy and not our success with finding the TOE.
When I first read this I was going to offer unqualified, unequivocal, absolute, total agreement; but then I started thinking. I knew what empathy meant but I looked it up any way. In my dictionary I found “empathy: the ability to understand and share another person’s feelings and experiences”. What bothered me Chuck were the words “understand…another person”. I wondered if perhaps in your frenetic effort to understand others you’ve overlooked your most important resource, yourself.
I believe your statement should more appropriately be “Our future depends upon our success with understanding ourselves”. If we understand ourselves then we will “have success with empathy” for our feelings and experiences have the same source. It is the “TOE” in human nature; it is what will remain the only missing fact of life, the reason why. To quote a thread title in this forum “Life (is) a reaction to the void”. I believe when we accept that fact we will begin understanding. If we persist in “reading backwards” we will continue self-destructing.
Wow, this is uncanny; I was just about to introduce you to coberst. You are an exemplar of his model (if I understand it correctly thus far). You are what happens when all the pieces in coberst’s utopia fall in place. You my friend are the American dream. No pressure.
Now, I am not sure if you acquire knowledge; you may acquire information/data, and with this acquisition, who knows, you might know something about something or come to an understanding regarding something. I don’t know. Only you know for certain. I don’t know what you know; I only know what I know. I can speculatively glean, and if I speculate with another, we can come to, or formulate, a consensus. Yet, this certainty remains a speculation. A psychological state of mind at best. I think I need more disinterested data to know for sure.
I’ve read this whole thread and I still only have a vague idea of how you arrive at your speculative conclusion. It seems to me that understanding is locked into the capability of assigning meaning. I can agree that meaning in the technological world is turning over at an ever increasing rate, but even as an accelerated pace of evolutionary activity, understanding seems secure. It is keeping up with the changes of meaning that is difficult.
Umm… I don’t get it. What do you mean? I am like, super-Coberst? I am the Great Gatsby? huh?.. explanation please.
Coberst:
You don’t really explain how or why you went bananas. You go on to talk about modern physics is doing something analagous to “empathizing”. You also don’t give any reason as to how the advance of technology is independent of the advance of science.
Right here, you just took the view that hand-held electronics and computers are increasing the “k/u” ration. So let me ask you, how will advances in electronics and computing power come independently of advances in science? Will some alchemist brew up a supercomputer in his cauldron? Will God drop the hottest new handheld out of the sky? It’s impossible for us to make progress in information technology without gains in physics and chemistry (specifically nanotechnology).
Now, I’m going to change positions here slightly. I think the K/U ratio will increase (we’ll have more knowledge, but less understanding), but I think it is impossible for understanding to disappear completely.
What we know consists of facts of the universe. Facts are arrived at by empirical observation. You yourself Coberst declared the “knowing is seeing”. What we know consists of all the data we gather from our senses. It is the “what” of the universe, to use my previous terms.
Now what we “understand” is different. Scientists create theories that try and explain why and how the universe is the way it is. I see these theories (which include Neo-Darwinian Evolution, Maxwell’s equations and Feynman’s quantum theory, and many others) as understanding. Scientists make up theories to try to explain how and why phenomena occur, and then go out and see if the facts actually support their theories. If they do, the theories is upheld; if they don’t, it is rejected. That’s science. So scientific theories are ways of conceptually orgnaizing and understanding the facts of the universe. And they do stand upon mountains of knowledge, because they need to be verified by looking at the nature of the universe, seeing what it’s like, KNOWING what it is.
And our theories are getting more and more complex. They rest upon other theories (and thus upon more knowledge) and require greater precision and minutae to verify. Science is getting more complicated, and more intricate observations are needed to explain the meticulously detailed theories modern biology is presenting. So in order for science to advance, our K/U ratio needs to grow.
But yet our understanding must progress in order for science and technology to progress. Like it or not, science must generate or validate more theories. And these theories must be made applicable for new inventions for technology to advance. Centuries ago, technological progress was made largely by trial and error. The process has been refined greatly, to the point where it is scientific. Inventors create new machines, based upon the theoretical work of scientists, and then test the to see if they actually work. That’s science. Scientists test new ways of understanding the world, and technologists take advantages of their findings to create new ways of changing the world. But the understanding, the ways of organizing information and facts, those are critical to the technologist.
I like this statement. Understanding nature through science will give humans a greater appreciation for and greater power in our place in the universe. Social sciences also tell us meaningful information about ourselves, they tell us how we work in groups. The brain sciences (neuroscience, psychology) tell us how we operate as organisms. The better we understand ourselves and how we fit into the universe, the better things will be. My physics teacher gave my class a poem, written by a student (If anyone really wants it, I can get the author for you). It is:
Understand the flower, understand man. Understand man, Understand God
flower, then man, then God
flower, man, God
Flowermangod.
So the advance of scientific theory is the advance of understanding (supported by facts of course). And this understanding serves to make new machines, new technology. Thus, understanding cannot totally disappear if humans (or computers) continue on developing new technology. The average person may understand less, scientists, buried under all the mountains of data needed to test their theories may understand less, but understanding itself cannot disappear entirely. It may just get buried under a mountain of knowledge.
Also, no one’s talked about quality vs. quanitity. Even though the quanitity of our understanding many diminish, our theories of the world will better describe the nature of our world. They’ll be more meanigful, being able to explain a greater number of phenomena. So even though the K/U ratio will increase, the quality of our understanding will also increase (because we’ll have a firmer grasp of how nature works).
My claim is that one will thrive if they understand more and know less in a low tech society. In a high tech society it is the opposite. In hi-tech a few people can understand for everyone in a low tech everyone must understand for themselves. In hi tech we go to the hardware store and buy what we need. In a low tech world we must create everything we need.
technik is not knowledge, you can catch to drive a car but it wont let you use the car to give a ride to who cannot walk, but still if yourself cannot walk you will be obsessed by the idea of having a car that you wont be able to think out to walk, so sorry coberst but what you are saying is untrue, give me all the hi tech of you maybe you will be able to think further
I did not elaborate on my statement “However, when you say “The advance of society and technology has become dependent on the advance of science†I go bananas!†because I thought it to be off the topic. I would elaborate more on this matter if you started a new thread.
My claim is that one will thrive if they understand more and know less in a low tech society. In a high tech society it is the opposite. In hi-tech a few people can understand for everyone; in low tech everyone must understand for themselves. In hi tech we go to the hardware store and buy what we need. In a low tech world we must create everything we need.
Understanding is not something that we become acquainted with in our schooling. Industry wants knowledge and doesn’t give a hoot about understanding. Understanding requires caring, curiosity, and hard work and only detracts from the size of our data base of knowledge.
Understanding, if it is every going to come to a person will come in the adult years when a person recognizes an inner curiosity and caring about something sufficient to cause us to do the hard work necessary for understanding; i.e. the creation of meaning.