Lifelong Learning?

Most of life’s learning serves adaptation in the sense that its subject is the world. In a real way even such arcane studies as astronomy help us in a practical way; they provide an important grounding for our stance and action: orientation. The knowledge of history belongs in this bin too; we can no more meaningfully shape history by individual action that we can steer the stars, but knowing great patterns of collective behavior and their cyclings makes us more sober and therefore detached observers of that which unfolds about us on quite another time scale than our own brief life.

The adaptive urge has been a great teacher for me. Amusingly the very subjects I dismissed in youth because they didn’t draw me became central to my work-life: mathematics and chemistry. These were among “required” courses, but C- was good enough for me. Then, under the prod of necessity I later learned them on my own; the difference both in the feel of these subjects and the experience of learning was enormous. What matters is the inner self wanting to learn something. Without that we get, ah, what goes by the name of education. There is also a lucky part to this, at least for me. I can’t abide understanding something “just enough” to get some job accomplished. Once I’m into a subject, I can’t rest until I’ve grasped its entire inner pattern. This does not mean academic level command of the subject—but it means penetrating to its essence, at least so far as this is possible. And since that essence is elusive, it leads to a lifelong interest.

There are two kinds of forced learning: the first is delivered by collective social pressure; the second is delivered by the will of the individual. The first is easily resisted, finessed, satisfied. The second is horribly demanding, irresistible; it arises from desire. In my case the image of the junk yard dog always arises. I’ll be damned if you resist me! Let’s call that the response if the subject appears as an obdurate enemy. But the mystery of the subject may appear in feminine guise as well, in which case what drives one on is total love.

So where in all this, one might wonder, is the quest for truth? Curious business that. The Truth seems at first to be wrapped in the garments of the world. Slowly, slowly, as these are examined, understood, and removed, more and more of the real Truth emerges to view. Then, in advanced years, the world itself becomes more and more transparent, manner of speaking. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings more merriment than awe. That is because something has begun to shine beyond such petty matters and the Real is finally emergent.

Let the RA do it!

Learning has a visceral aspect—a touch and feel and hear and smell component. I’ve always known this at some level, but conscious knowledge of it dawned when I was already a man. I joined Midwest Research Institute as an analyst. The Econ Division employed analysts, the midlevel, and research assistants, the next level down. The idea here was division of labor: RAs did the repetitious, boring tasks, analysts the more demanding. But something in my innards resisted this division. I was always getting down, into details, doing my own literature searches, crunching my own numbers, plotting my own graphs. Something odd always happened in this process, and I became aware of that. I absorbed more information; my sense of mastery over the material grew; my confidence increased. I never trembled meeting with clients—as other analysts frequently did. I knew where all the bones were buried and the reason why.

For this reason, at staff meetings, under pressure of deadlines, I often heard myself admonished: “Don’t do that stuff yourself. Let the RA do it.” I found it easier to take a job and simply let the RA do it all herself, start to finish—not least customer contact. In those days RAs were typically women with liberal arts backgrounds. One of these ladies rapidly developed as a consequence of such assignments and soon became an analyst. Yes. A little help with the final report—but then I was still helping with those years later when I’d become at division director at MRI. In my group we assisted other such rapid promotions, and the RA position more or less faded away.

Hands on, direct contact. Drudgery educates. It produces a real democracy of work. In a way it’s costly, but the societal benefits are great. Vice presidents of sales and marketing appointed solely on the basis of a Harvard MBA?—who’d never made a single sales call ever on a real customer? I encountered such and analogous cases. Such things breed phony aristocracies and support phony class structures. A good rule is to do it yourself; don’t let the RA do it. At least until you really know something.

These memories arise as I engage in the mathematical drudgery of comprehending how and why logarithms first arose. I was never made to experience directly what the founders of these arts experienced—and think it is a symptom of poor math education. Many more would be math-literate if we went about the education of the young in a slower, more costly, but a more genuine way.