Hey people! I’ve been thinking about Bell Hooks’ take on learning—not just cramming facts but growing, connecting, and staying open. It got me wondering: do we find understanding by chasing it, or does it hit us when we’re ready?
Picture this: The Tale of Knowledge, where Knowledge is this warm, glowing vibe, cruising through worlds with Curiosity as its wingman. They face Doubt and Apathy, their biggest hurdles. But is the real issue not enough info, or just being too closed off to catch it? maybe?
Some stuff I’m curious about:
- Can truly listening—like really hearing someone—feel like a deep, reflective moment?
- How does passively picking up stuff (like overhearing a convo) mess with the idea of “study hard to learn”?
- Ever had an “OH, it clicks!” moment where something you barely noticed before suddenly makes sense?
Teachers, students, researchers—what do you think? Does The Tale of Knowledge vibe with how learning happens in classrooms or labs? Or does it feel too formal for real-world learning? thoughts?
Comments
That’s an interesting question. I tend to feel that the fact-cramming and theory-grinding is a necessary but not sufficient condition for understanding a new idea.
I’m in STEM, so this question comes up most often in terms of the math vs intuition tradeoff: Do you need to know every step of the proofs, or can you just understand how the idea in question plays out in the real world. A big “Oh, it clicks!” moment for me was implementing ergodic control from scratch. I’d been exposed to the ideas, and the underlying math for years, but until I actually got into the weeds myself, they never really came together. I suspect without the proofs and theory the practice wouldn’t have been that “ahah” moment, but I suppose it’s hard to say. I also think part of this has to do with what you consider to be “understanding”. I “understand” differential equations well enough to use them, but I couldn’t re-derive those ideas for you without a textbook. Beam-bending on the other hand, I really do know end-to-end and that’s just a different feeling.
To take another example, I’ve read my wife’s favorite sociology book(s) probably 4-6 times cover to cover at this point. I read them once on my own, I read them once with her, and I’ve read them a few times so I could be fresh talking about them with other members of our extended family. I’ve also spent dozens of hours talking about them with friends and family: The ideas, the people, the methodology, the authors, etc. It’s safe to say I know those books pretty well, but even after all of that I still don’t have the kind of understanding that my wife did after reading them once.
What she had then, that I still don’t have now, was a bone-deep knowledge of the history and sociology-of-ed theory, that frame the work. I have a good intuitive understanding of the material, but the theory-grinding/fact-cramming has given her more structure and tools for reasoning about how it interacts with the rest of the world.
I also think a piece of this is about the philosophy of learning and knowledge though. In undergrad I had a friend who told our physics prof (a crusty old experimentalist) that he “understood the theory, but couldn’t do the math” to which our prof replied “if you can’t do the math you don’t understand the theory”. I think about that a lot. Whether or not the vibes or the rigor are the core of an idea is really a question of how you look at it, and I’m not sure an engineering prof (vibes-y group that engineers sometimes are) would have replied the same way.
TLDR: I think surface level mastery of an idea can be achieved in a bunch of different ways, and that it’s often more than sufficient to use that idea in life and in thought. That said, I do also think that a deeply grounded understanding requires diving into the underlying theory, history, and (if applicable) math.
Consider laconism.
Both, IMO. Kind of like the preparation meets opportunity thing. You have to put in the work of amassing information. Whether and how that information becomes knowledge is a complex and often mysterious process, but one certainly has to be open to serendipity and surprise, else we’d just be confirming our biases 24/7 and creative leaps would never happen. I find that when I’m actively working on something, it jumps out from the world around me wherever I look, and it’s very important for me to be both alert to it and open-minded about what “it” might look like or where it might come from. There is a reason that “Eureka!” is a…classic scientific exclamation, if that’s a category?, or that people talk about doing their best thinking in the shower or on a smoke break or a walk, or inspiration “striking,” or something suddenly clicking. But that almost never happens if you weren’t actively working away at the problem/question beforehand.
I might use an analogy from when I used to work with horses. Some horses will let you walk right up to them in the paddock, clip a lead rein on, and bring them inside. Some won’t. With those that won’t, you have to master a particular kind of focused companionship. Just be still and be near them. Every so often you get closer, but you cannot walk straight at them because at the end of the day they are faster and bigger than you, and if they decide to make it a chase it’s over (and probably bad for your relationship in the long run – that’s not a pattern you want to create). I consider this different from, say, stalking prey, because both you and the horse know each other is there and you are specifically not trying to sneak up on them. You are approaching them with respect and care. Eventually the moment comes when you can actually “get” them, and at that point they’ll usually be willing. There’s no real predicting when that will be or singular timed protocol you can execute every time. It happens when it happens and it’s up to the horse more than it’s up to you. But the whole time you’re waiting for the horse to accede, you are entirely focused on the horse and being near it, and the eventual aim of meeting it. It is something you’re doing, but actually completing the task isn’t really in your hands.
I think understanding is chasing me, but unfortunately I’m faster.