Experts

Today's Wall Street Journal had a couple of interesting articles about Jane Goodall's study of the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park.  She was originally sent there when working as an assistant to anthropologist Louis Leakey.  He was excavating hominid fossils in Kenya and was seeking a better understanding of the way early human species behaved.  Goodall's lack of formal training and/or a doctorate degree seems to have helped her to make discoveries that were overlooked by those who did have formal training.  Obviously she had learned much via her informal training with Dr. Leakey, however I find the following excerpt interesting:

Part of her success sprang from the fact that she wasn't a trained scientist. Field observations of great apes were long characterized by their Blumenbach-like sense of human superiority. When researchers startled the animals into threat displays, they assumed such behavior was simply an indicator of mindless fury. But Jane Goodall didn't carry that baggage with her. So she made a simple decision—the kind that looks brilliant in retrospect—that she would try to observe as unobtrusively as possible and would make up her mind based on what she saw.

Of course there was and is much to criticize concerning her approach.  She wasn't quite as unobtrusive as the article indicates.  She baited study areas with food, possibly effecting behavior patterns.  She also gave the individual troop members names instead of numbers, thus anthropomorphizing them.  Still, she made some very significant insights into a non-human species.  A slight parallel, while Albert Einstein was trained as a physicist, I found it interesting that he made his earliest breakthroughs while working at the Swiss patent office.  Of course my cherry-picked samples size of two is quite weak, but I wonder could it be that education, like religion, works best when kept at an arm's length?

Comments

[Amy]

Neither. It is having the gift of intuition.

Education should never be kept at arm's length, but I'll add the caveat that an education will take you only so far if you lack the intuitive ability to use it in perspective.

Religion is different than education because knowledge demands thinking. You might be a flatline thinker, but you do engage in thought processing. Religion asks/demands no though, and it holds no quarter for intuition. It's God giving you that understanding, you know.

Look at our former compadres at the farm. All highly educated and not a one has a scintilla of intuition. Revolting people who look on the 'fact' that they have an education and count it fair and leave it at that. Full flatliners.

Beyond intuition, which is an inborn trait, there is another trait that is the true gift. Curiosity. It is the driving force behind most genius. There is probably no more a boring person than one who is not curious.

~~~~~

Hi KRW! Hi Sleuth! I've missed you guys. Things are still bad, and I have had some extremely bad times, but just getting on here and writing makes me feel as if there is some hope I will survive intact.

[WTP]

Welcome back, Amy See...

" Religion asks/demands no though, and it holds no quarter for intuition."

Well, big-R Religion, pretty much so. I'd say mysticism is pure intuition. Don't trust it too far, though.

[Sleuth]

Sorry that I took a bit of time to reply (here I find myself apologising again) but I haven't checked in on the site for a while.

Welcome back Amy!

I would say that belief is a very personal thing if it's any good (I say belief so that we might inlcude the views of Atheists and so on). It seems that education could be simiar, as people tend to learn and understand more when taught in smaller groups, allowing the teacher to tailor tuiton to individual needs. A lot of big religions are like huge classes of thirty or more in which the teacher can only say "memorise this, this is what's right" and not explain why. From the big classes come various small groups which interpret the knowledge in different ways, sometimes reaching an answer of their own devising. This is how certain beliefs of people who seem to be part of a big religion can appear ludicrous.

On the subject of the chimpanzees, I recently saw shepards leading a horde of sheep down from some hills. The sheep dogs used were amazing, in that they appeared to have a leader amongst them who went around keeping others in line and giving orders. At first they appear very intelligent, until you remember that they've been taught by humans. Though the ability to learn is most useful indeed, are we being lured into a trap of thinking that these animals are great, when they are not? After all, it is often easy to repeat something that you have seen without understanding it.

Education can grab one's attention but it's the actual ability to perfrom in real situations that counts.

Aside from this: good luck Amy, I hope that all can be sorted out soon.

[WTP]

Sleuth,
I think you have a point there about the size issue. Most of my educational experience was in classes of more or less 30 kids, which likely colors my perspective. And at the university level, much higher numbers. But on the other hand, many people whom I have known who attended private (and I would assume, smaller class size) institutions were of the type to just accept what they were told. There's definitely a difference between "learning" and "thinking". Depending on the instructor, the instructor's patience level as influenced by the demands derived as a function of the class size, and various other intangibles such as discipline, parental involvement, etc. the opportunities to expand from the "learning" that is the base of education into "thinking" which can be exponentially more valuable, can be quite limited. The resulting drill-instruction methodology is similar to religious dogma/canon. But as Amy points out, an innate curiosity can offset the damage.

Quite tired this evening, so I might like to explore this later in the weekend, if I get the time. Or maybe a new post...

[Sleuth]

Education is a difficult subject. Few people can get the most out of their education, yet it is compulsory in various countries. One would certainly have trouble discerning what best to do about the problem: if education in schools becomes optional, the country will potentially have a great number of idiots walking about and attempting to improve the system across the board would be a monsetrous task.

I can't help myself thinking that there must be a reason why we generally have the vast unwashed proletariat on the one hand, people with a qualification in their head instead of brain on the other, and lastly a tiny superior group looking down on the problem. Another one people have tried to answer with religion.

Curiosity is good, but a lot of people aren't too curious.

Perhaps one could describe the world (or the universe) as a school designed to educate all of us, or some of us...

It's easy to see why some believe in the soul and reincarnation.

[WTP]

What I was leaning toward in my response above is this...

The subject elsewhere has come up of what does one really know. Take for example, the scientific fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Every educated person (and most "ignorant" people too) knows this fact. A person who questions or doubts this fact will not be taken seriously by anyone. Yet, the vast majority of those who would ridicule and dismiss such a fool cannot explain the science behind this understanding. How are these people, who are so sure of the scientific basis for their belief, different from the religiously faithful?

Yet life is short, an individual has only so much time to question the establishment. Some things must be taken on faith. Perhaps the only difference is what one chooses to doubt, or even what one's culture says is acceptable to doubt. Bill Maher once said "The younger generation is supposed to rage against the machine, not for it. They're supposed to question authority, not question those who question authority". Apparently he didn't see the irony in this observation before he said it. While intellectually we find this sort of thinking about thinking appalling, perhaps it is unavoidable?

Ah, but football's on the telly, and I'm so easily called away...

[Sleuth]

Indeed there are many widely accepted facts, such as the earth revolving around the sun, that most people, even some scientists are unsure (don't know or doubt) about the theories behind. Even those whose made the theories still have to accept that they are only 'theories'.

Forgetting Descartes for a moment, we can only be 100% sure of something if we see it happening. The universe could be incredibly mutable, the sun might be revolving around us behind our backs, how would we know? With life in general, it is easiest and probably best to accept certain 'facts', simply because there is little or no point in questioning them.

Then we bring in Descartes and find that we can't trust anything anyway; but that includes not being able to trust that the world isn't real. Oh, it's all a grand muddle.

I'll come back to it later after a good cup of tea.