On Sunday October 11 2009, Steve Newcomb wrote:
> Randall R Schulz wrote:
> > It
> > only takes one person to advance knowledge or ability, after that,
> > it is merely the transmission of information that makes that
> > advancement available to others.
>
> With respect to the "transmission of information", I personally don't
> think there's anything "mere" about it. The phenomenon eludes
> objective observation, and it's not well understood. I'm not at all
> sure that "it only takes one person to advance knowledge", either. (01)
Monkey see, monkey do. People learn from each other with ease. It
doesn't matter whether we understand what's happening in people's
brains when they teach and learn or how we formalize knowledge and
information, we know facile knowledge transfer is an inherent part of
our evolved nature. (02)
The inadvertent suggestion that all advancements come from individuals
is very inaccurate, of course. For one thing, at at this point in the
history of science and engineering, virtually all new knowledge is
built upon earlier understandings (with the rare overthrowing of old
systems). And naturally, many scientific and technological advancements
are the fruit of the labor of groups or through cross-fertilization of
results between independently acting teams or individuals. (03)
But the essential point, that the advancement of human knowledge and
ability is driven by a small portion of its population, remains. (04)
Randall Schulz (05)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (06)
|