All of a piece: connections and elections

Continuing yesterday's topic, one common response from students disenchanted with science is that the material "just isn't that relevant to me." Such a response always seems especially odd coming from Human Biology lib ed students since the entire course is devoted to understanding the workings and failings of our bodies and minds. At the same time, this sort of response is symptomatic, I think, of a fundamental problem with current modes of public education in the US. It seems that somehow we have moved toward training students to pile up facts and skills relevant to particular career goals or interests and have neglected the art of drawing (tentative) connections among diverse facets of human experience. Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto (Terence). Learning is "all of a piece" and each bit of new understanding illuminates all others, sharpening focus and (perhaps somewhat holographically?) improving conceptual resolution. Ability (both inborn and acquired?) to see and to critically evaluate provisional connections would seem to be a key distinction between profound wisdom and merely "useful' knowledge.

Because 'including the knower in the known' makes all human understanding necessarily incomplete, any provisional connections we draw between disparate and, at first glance, isolated nodes of knowledge must always be speculative conjectures. Moreover, the broader the span of these speculations, the easier it is to amass seemingly confirmatory evidence and thus to rather quickly believe that we have recognized some fundamental truth. Consequently, as Karl Popper realized, secure understanding ultimate must stem from a search for damning rather confirmatory evidence. Unfortunately, our system of public education has become intrinsically timid -- prevailing "I'm OK, you're OK" notions mean that students are never encouraged to think in a way that puts fundamental assumptions and conjectures at maximum (or even significant) risk. Ironically, while 'cultural sensitivity' has been most often championed by well-meaning liberals, it primarily serves the interests of the most reactionarily conservative elements of our culture -- those in both major political parties who benefit most directly from continuing business as usual. In addition, standardized testing exacerbates an already bad situation by emphasing knowing right answers over asking the right (hard) questions.

Undue respect for unquestioned assumptions and conjectures is at the core of the rotten situation in American political life. Pervasive "I'm not an expert" and "That's outside the bounds of my knowledge" stances tend to preclude the kind of long-term, big-picture thinking that constitutes wisdom. Both major political parties (and a vast majority of their respective ideological mouthpiece candidates) are built on fundamentally flawed conjectures about human nature. Are we really as one dimensionally self-interested as the Republican Party dogma assumes? Are we as altruistic as (at least some left-leaning) Democrats believe? Is the alternative to reside with John Kerry somewhere in the gray and mushy, neither-nor middle? Seems like there must be a better way. Stay tuned, news at 10:00... /dps