Toward a Philosophy of Learning
By
Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
Aristotle
(attributed to) (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher.
Truth in our ideas means their power to work.
William James
(1842-1910), American philosopher.
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility.
Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and
men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree.
It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand,
and that this is his mission. …Knowledge for the sake of understanding,
not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being.
None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
Vannevar Bush
(1890–1974),
Three seashell collectors spent the summer at a beach.
The first collector carried a basket that held ten shells. Each day she collected ten pretty shells in her basket. She took them home and displayed them. At the end of the summer she had hundreds of pretty shells.
The second collector carried a basket that held ten shells. He spent two weeks collecting ten very pretty shells in his basket. He took them home and displayed them. He spent the rest of the summer fishing. At the end of the summer he had ten very pretty shells.
The third collector carried a basket that held ten shells. Each day she collected ten pretty shells in her basket. She took them home. Of her existing and new shells, she kept the ten prettiest, and displayed them. At the end of the summer she had ten gorgeous shells.
The disciple trudged across the remote Tibetan valley and slowly pulled himself up the steep slope. He caught his breath, knocked on the monastery door, and asked the wizened monk who answered: “Master, may I ask you a question?” The monk slowly nodded.
“What is the secret of wisdom?”, the disciple asked. The monk smiled and replied, "One secret of wisdom is to think plural, not singular."
The disciple smiled. “Well, then. What are the ‘secrets’ of wisdom?” The monk smiled and replied, “One secret of wisdom is to think partial, not final.”
The disciple smiled. “Well, then. What are ‘some secrets’ of wisdom?” The monk smiled. The disciple smiled. “Thank you”, he said.
A young woman saw a lamp washed up on the beach. She polished it. The face of a genie appeared in the air before her.
“I am the Genie of Skills”, the genie said. “I was trapped in this lamp by my enemies. If you follow my instructions and let me out, I will grant you expertise in one skill”.
The young woman said to the genie “Please let me think a minute”.
She pictured herself as an expert figure skater, an expert actress, an expert businesswoman, an expert mother, an expert lawyer, an expert teacher, and an expert politician.
She then replied to the genie “Yes, I will let you out, if, in return, you grant me expertise in the skill of acquiring expertise”.
The math contest judge looked sternly down at the girl. “What is 70 divided by ten?”, asked the judge. “Seven”, replied the girl. “What is 71 divided by ten?”, asked the judge. “Seven point one”, replied the girl.
“Hmmm”, said the judge, frowning, “What is an iron bar divided by ten?”. “Ten iron pieces” replied the girl. “What is an iron smelting process divided by ten?”, asked the judge. “Ten iron process steps”, replied the girl.
“And what is the skill of blacksmithing divided by ten?” the judge asked smugly. The girl pondered for a moment. “Ten iron skillets?”, she ventured. She won the contest.
The road to wisdom?—Well, it’s plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again but less and less and less.
Piet Hein (1905-1996), Danish inventor,
poet.
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), American
writer, journalist.
These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), English
renaissance author, statesman, philosopher.
If I
have seen further… it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English physicist, mathematician.
An Experiment
I studied engineering in college, where I worked part time in a research lab. As a researcher, I often used a problem solving technique I called “goal, flail, ratchet”.
Goal, Flail, Ratchet
To learn something yourself (as opposed to from a book or from others), you must use trial and error. But it can be difficult to know, a priori, where to start and how to conduct the trial and error.
Therefore, first set a learning goal, then try anything and everything. Talk to many people. Read many books and papers. Keep those ideas and techniques that move you closer to your goal, and discard those that do not, just as the teeth of a ratchet retain motion in one direction only.
As you gain knowledge, you will be able to improve your search for further knowledge. The initial random search will slowly evolve into a directed search, bringing you ever closer to what you want to learn.
In 1991 I switched careers and became a computer programmer. Over the next few years, I had small successes using “goal, flail, ratchet” as a software programmer, working on moderately hard problems. I was encouraged, and I also bacame curious.
What would happened if I applied “goal, flail, ratchet” to a very difficult problem?
In 1995, as an experiment, I set the audacious goal of speeding up my software develoment by a factor of ten. In other words, doing what I do for a living ten times faster.
I chose a factor of ten, and not a factor of two or three, because I was also curious about a second question.
Could I force a paradigm shift in my software development approach?
I probably could have doubled or even tripled the speed of my software development by becoming much better at the approach I was already using. But to increase the speed of my development by a factor of ten, I would have to completely change my approach to software development.
A Surprise Paradigm Shift
I answered my two questions.
What happened when I applied “goal, flail, ratchet” to a very difficult problem?
It worked, and is working. I made, and continue to make, steady progress toward my goal.
My conclusion is that “goal, flail, ratchet” can be applied
to problems of any difficulty. What
seems to occur is that very difficult goals become pointers that guide the
direction of progress, rather than milestones that measure the amount of
progress. An image that comes to mind is
signpost in
Did I force a paradigm shift in my software development approach?
Yes and no. I did force a paradigm shift, which is exciting. What is more exciting, very surprising, and very interesting, is where the paradigm shift occured. The change did not occure in my software development approach. The change occurred in my learning approach!
Learning Paradigm Shift
To facilitate speeding up my software development, I completely changed the way I learn about software development.
A priori, I had no idea this would happen. In hindsight, it makes some sense. To solve a hard problem, you must learn a lot. If the problem is so hard that you will not be able to solve it in your lifetime at your current learning speed, you must increase your learning speed. To increase your learning speed, you must change the way you learn.
Third Grade Student, Fourth Grade
Problem
A third grade student encountered a fourth grade problem. He pondered whether he should work hard trying to solve the problem using his third grade techniques, or put the problem aside, work hard at school, and tackle the problem when he reached the fourth grade, using fourth grade techniques.
The Quickest Route
Two men, each with an old car that
could drive no faster than forty miles per hour, decided to drive to
The first man spent the week figuring out the shortest route to take. The second man spent the week figuring out how to fix his car so that it would drive faster than forty miles per hour.
When I started my experiement in 1995, I had no clue how to speed up software development. So I waited to see what would happen.
Collecting and summarizing
Lacking a better idea, I started to jot down software development ideas and practices in a journal. This helped. Occasionally, I summarized the better ideas and practices into short lists. This helped even more.
Collecting and summarizing collecting and summarizing
I became intrigued with this learning approach, so I started collecting and summarizing “collecting and summarizing” ideas and practices. This helped, too. My learning process had started to recursively improve itself!
Economic ideas
In 1996 I became curious about economics, and started collecting and summarizing economic ideas, in addition to software and learning ideas and practices. After a year of collecting and summarizing, my comfort with economic ideas had improved greatly. This reinforced my confidence and my interest in “collecting and summarizing”. I include the summary of my economic ideas as an appendex to this book.
Wiki Wiki Web
Also in 1996, I stumbled upon a web site founded and run by Ward Cunningham called the Wiki Wiki Web. I was excited for two reasons. First, because the site contained a collection of software development ideas. Second, because the site described and used a literary form called patterns to summarize the software development ideas. Patterns are a way to describe practices that work, with the context they occur in.
I learned much about software development at this web site. I also learned much about describing software development practices at this web site.
Short, meaningful names
One of the description techniques I learned, that I am attempting to use in this book, was to use short, meaningful names for ideas and practices.
By collecting and summarizing, I had been learning steadily for four years. I remember distinctly Christmas day, 1999. My mind wandered, and began thinking about what would happen if I always summarized my ideas and observations into the same number of items. By not allowing such a list to grow in length, any improvement to the list would have to come in quality, not quantity. I became intrigued.
I thought about list sizes. Seven, ten, and twelve are common small sizes. Sixty and one hundred are common larger size. Other candidate larger sizes were 7 x 7 = 49, and 12 x 12 = 144. I arbitrarily chose list sizes of ten and one hundred for my summaries. For short and (hopefully) meaningful names, I chose “decasophy” for a ten-item list of what works, and “hectosophy” for a one-hundred-item list of what works.
My learning practices had now become:
Collect What Works
To learn and improve, collect what works. Write down what works in notebooks, on scraps of paper, or in computer documents.
Occasionally Summarize into
Decasophies and Hectosophies
Occasionally summarize what works into a decasophy or a hectosophy. Over time, this forces increases in quality, not quantity.
We define:
decasophy, noun: A
collection of ten ideas, observations, practices, rules, and techniques. From the Greek “deca” meaning ten, and
“sophy” meaning knowledge or wisdom.
hectosophy, noun: A
collection of one hundred ideas, observations, practices, rules, and techniques. Often composed of ten decasophies. From the Greek “hecto” meaning one hundred,
and “sophy” meaning knowledge or wisdom.
Prithee A Pithy Appellation
Label ideas, observations, and practices that work with short, meaningful names.
The rest of this book is (roughly) a hectosophy of the learning ideas and practices that work for me.
Learn by doing
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
Aristotle
(384-322 BC), Greek philosopher.
Know-like-do-learn-know
If you know how to do something, you like it. If you like something, you do it. If you do something, you learn it. If you learn something, you know more about it.
This learning cycle is a positive feedback loop that has two states: on and off. You are either doing and learning, or not doing and not learning.
Machine gun approach
When starting to learn, you will often not know where to start. So try one hundred arbitrary things. Try anything and everything. Use random or guessed-at goals. Do not worry if what you are trying is fully appropriate or not.
One hundred near-random efforts will teach you something. Use this knowledge to plan your next one hundred (hopefully less random) actions. Eventually you will learn enough to progress in a systematic way. In other words: flail, ratchet, repeat.
Learn about it, then learn it
If your goal is to learn to swim, you might first have to learn about swimming, until you know enough to start swimming. If your goal is to learn to play basketball, you might first have to learn about basketball, before you know enough to start playing basketball.
A doable equation
undoable = ∑ doable
Doable tasks
It is important that self-assigned tasks be doable and get done.
Even if you do not know how to achieve your end goal, assign yourself short-term tasks you know you can complete. Complete them. Set yourself up for progress, and set yourself up for success.
For example, use “try ten times” or “try for one half hour” or even (if you know it is probable) “try until you shoot five baskets in a row” rather than “make 75% of your baskets”.
Between Scylla and Charybdis
If you avoid the Scylla of not knowing where to start, be careful of the Charybdis of knowing exactly where to start, having it be wrong, and not changing it.
You learn what you practice
If you practice swimming, you learn to swim. If you practice learning, you learn to learn. If you practice succeeding, you learn to succeed. If you practice failing, you learn to fail.
Learning to fail
To learn, you must conduct trial and error. Trial and error involves failure.
Since you learn what you practice, you face the danger of learning to fail as you attempt to learn something hard. As you try and try again to reach a difficult goal without success, your attempts become similar and halfhearted. You stop trying new things, yet continue to try old things. You assume continual failure, and achieve continual failure.
Wheel spinner goal
A wheel spinner goal is a goal that puts you into a try and fail loop, without making progress. Picture a car that is stuck. The accelerator is repeatedly pressed. The car does not move. Instead, it digs itself deeper into a rut.
Emotional attachment
You are often emotionally attached to a goal. “I just wish I had better people skills”. “I just wish I was better at math”. “I just wish I could get things done on time”. Emotionaly goals often become wheel spinners, because they are not rationally chosen and are hard to give up.
Who Moved My Cheese
“Who Moved My Cheese” is a popular book by Dr. Spencer Johnson in which two of the characters continually try a strategy that worked in the past but does not presently work.
It feels like one big secret
Expertise-based endeavors, such as software development, business, and getting along with other people, are improved by learning many small rules.
However, when one does not know how to do somethings, it feels as if one is missing one big secret, not many small rules.
In the process of learning these many small rules, often one of them causes an “ah-ha” or a “eureka”. The learner switches from not knowing how to do something to knowing how to do something. The “know, like, do, learn, know” learning cycle flips from “off” to “on”. The small rule that causes this shift feels like a big rule.
And when one eventually becomes good at something, and tries to explain it to others, it feels as if there is one big rule to explain, not many small rules.
These feelings are real. Misleading, but real. And they do not diminish. These feelings are as strong in good learners as in poor learners. However, good learners tend to ignore them better.
Beware the ASP
Often, we subconsiously switch our focus from a fuzzy desire (what we want to accomplish) to an assumed-in-seconds problem (ASP) that needs solving. We then spend our time and energy trying to solve the assumed problem.
Reflexively recasting a goal or desire into a problem to be solved is dangerous. First, since the decision is not concious, there is a good chance that it is wrong – that solving the problem will not attain or enable the goal or desire.
And even if the problem to be solved is a valid one, focusing only on the problem and forgetting the original goal or desire results in less flexibility and less room for trade-offs.
Walk out of the room
If a group of people ask you to help them, ask them what the problem is. If they tell you about a solution, ask them again what the problem is. If they again tell you a solution, walk out of the room. There is nothing you can do to help them.
Gerald
Weinberg, US software consultant, author.
Much to my surprise, fully one half of my learning research over the past ten years has dealt with setting goals. Setting goals seems easy. In fact, setting goals is easy. Setting good goals is easy (good in the sense of “noble”, or “good for you”). However, it turns out that setting useful goals is tricky (at least for me).
Setting a single goal did not work (all the time)
At first, my learning approach was to set a single desired goal, and to collect what worked until I achieved that goal. I had beginners luck when I applied this approach to improving my software development speed, and to improving my learning techniques. However, when I attempted to apply this approach to improving my personal efficiency and my people skills, it did not work. My improvement progress was glacial.
My next learning approach was to “collect goals that worked”. I reasoned that if my first goal did not work, I would try other goals until I found one that did work. Although I liked the name of this approach, it worked only marginally better than my first approach when I applied it to improving my personal efficiency and my people skills. My progress was that of a fast glacier. I think this was because I was still focused on finding good single goals.
Axis of improvement
A small light bulb went on when I stated investigating the concept of an “axis of improvement”.
There are certain goals that define a single “comparison axis” or “comparison dimension”. Such an axis can be used to compare two practices.
For example, if the axis of improvement is speed of software development, you would choose which of two practices speeds up software development more.
Axes of improvement are a weaker tool than metrics or measurements. But in the absence of metrics or measurements, axes of improvement are better than no tool at all.
An interesting spell
It is interesting that the plurals of “axis of improvement” and “ax of improvement” are spelled the same. When improving, chopping deadwood is as important as growing new trees.
Ten goals
A second small light bulb went on when I tried setting ten goals, instead of one goal. My reasoning was that when you do not know how to do something, you also do not know how to set good learning goals for that something. But if you set ten goals, the hope is that at least one of the goals will accidentally be useful, and that you will gravitate toward the goal or goals producing results and away from the goal or goals causing pain and frustration.
Desired consequences
I also experimented with specifying the desired consequences of my learning goals. For example, I specified “internet surfing cut by 50%”, in addition to “become more efficient”. I specified “all birthday cards sent on time”, in addition to “get things done on time”.
My conclusion was that specifying desired consequences was similar to spcifying axes of improvement, and that both could be used interchangeably to subdivide learning goals. I kept the two names, however, as variations on a theme.
Combining concepts
Gradually, I started to combine the above concepts. I expanded the name of “axis of improvement” into “single axis of learning and improvement” to make a better acronym (SALI, as in “sally forth”, a form of attack). I changed the name “desired consequences” to “resulting consequences” which allowed me to use the abbreviation “ReCon’s”. “ReCon’s” and “SALI’s” are both two syllable words, are both easy to say, and are both military terms that imply small sorties against the enemy. My approach had now became to “evolve toward learning goals using ReCon’s, SALI’s and doable tasks”.
Steady Progress
On Thanksgiving Day, 2005, I realized that if I used the fore-stated approach of subdividing learning goals, and combined it with collecting what works and occasionally summarizing what works into decasophies and hectosophies, I could hopefully attain steady progress toward any learning goal. The progress might be slow, or it might be fast, but it would be steady.
I believe that steady progress one of the holy grails of learning. Among many other things, it gives hope and confidence, which contibute to further steady progress.
I decided to coin a name for a collection of ReCon’s and SALI’s that worked. I had now added the following four items to my collection of learning observations and practices…
It’s
the goal’s fault
If steady learning progress is not being made, it’s the goal’s fault.
Evolve
toward learning goals using ReCon’s, SALI’s and doable tasks.
Do not conduct a single frontal assult on a desired learning goal. Instead specify desired resulting consequencs (ReCon’s) and single axes of learning and improvement (SALI’s) that contribute to progress toward the learning goal. While striving toward the ReCon’s and along the SALI’s, always assign yourself doable tasks, to set yourself up for continual success.
For
each learning goal, collect ReCon’s and SALI’s that work
Good resulting consequencs and single axes of improvement often cannot be found using logic and reason alone. They must be found using trial and error. Start with the best ones you can think of, and be continually on the lookout for better ones.
Occasionally
summarize into decatermas
Occasionally summarize ReCon’s and SALI’s that work into a decaterma. Over time, this forces increases in the quality of your subgoals, as opposed to increases in quantity, and as opposed to continually aiming at one static learning goal.
We define:
decaterma,
noun: A collection of ten resulting consequencs (ReCon’s) and single
axes of learning and improvement (SALI’s). From the Greek “deca” meaning ten, and “terma”
meaning end point or goal (literally the post round which chariots had to turn
at races). For convenience, I use the
English plural decatermas, rather than the Greek plural decatermata.
You, too, can become great
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too,
can become great. - Mark
Twain
Be discouraged
“Don’t be discouraged” is a rule that is hard to follow. Be discouraged. Even for a while. Then become excited again.
One of the ingredients
Losing is not the opposite of winning. Losing is one of the ingredients of winning. Failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is one of the ingredients of success.
We should all be thankful
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. - Albert Schweitzer (Refdesk.com thought of the day, Oct. 6, 2005)
Our deepest fear
(Although this speech is frequently attributed to Nelson Mandela, who used it for his inaugural address in 1994, it was written by Marianne Williamson and appeared in her book A Return To Love.)
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is out light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Three special skills, three special hectosophies
Learn
Learn to learn. Collect what works in a sophosophy – a hectosophy of learning.
Do
Learn to do. Collect what works in a tachosophy – a hectosophy of efficient doing.
Cooperate
Learn to cooperate. Collect what works in a anthroposophy – a hectosophy about people.
Confidence is not the opposite of humility. Extreme confidence coupled with extreme humility enables extreme learning.
Please repeat after me: “I am clueless now, but I will succeed. I am clueless now, but I will succeed. I am clueless now, but I will succeed…”
More Learning Observations and Practices
Put the map at the back
The king gave the famous explorer a partially completed map showing the known territory of his kingdom and asked him to explore the unknown territory.
While traveling through the known territory, the explorer put the map at the head of his column, and used it to navigate.
When he began to explore the unknown territory, he put the map at the back of his column, and used it to record where he had been.
AAA
In addition to occasionally reducing a list to one hundred items or ten items, another culling approach is to occasionally reduce a list until all items on the list are of equal (high) value. In other words, keep all the A’s, and remove the B’s and C’s and D’s.
This approach is useful when culling material things, such as clothes in a closet or junk in an attic.
A learner of distinction
Before the young man attended butcher school, meat was meat. As he becam more adept at slicing meat, meat became beef, pork, chicken, and lamb. Beef became chuck, rib, short loin, sirloin, shank, brisket, plate, and flank. Short loin became top loin steak, T-bone steak, Porterhouse steak, tenderloin roast, and tenderloin steak. And each cut of beef came in prime, choice, and select quality grades.
Do your own research
In his book “The Economic Laws of Scientific Research”, Terence Kealey states that it is more profitiable to copy others’ research results than to do your own research. However, the best way to prepare to copy others’ results is to do your own research (so you become fully knowledgable in a particular area of research). Thus, he argues, research advances are ironically secondary byproducts of the main task of preparing to copy others’ advances.
The relevance of Aristotle’s ideas
I remember reading an essay on Aristotle a few years ago that stated Aritotle’s ideas about physics had long been superseeded, but his ideas about people were just as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago. At first, I smiled in agreement– after all, people have not changed in 2500 years, while science has made tremendous progress. But on deeper reflection, I was puzzled. After all, the laws of nature have not changed in 2500 years either.
Snowballs
Collect what works about collecting what works.
Learn the skill of learning skills.
Develop the habit of developing good habits.
Enjoy learning to enjoy learning.
Ask for advice about asking for advice.
Granny gear
The long-distance byciclist pedaled at a constant pace. When he got to a hill, he down-shifted. His bike went slower, but not his pedaling.
When he got to a steep hill, he down-shifted to his lowest gear, called “granny gear”. And when even that gear was not low enough, he took a different route, still pedaling at his constant pace.
Secret self improvement
Do self improvement in secret, or better yet, with a small band of co-conspirators (such as teachers, coaches, fellow students, or close friends).
Large teams of humans are concerned with daily work. Though self improvement benefits daily work in the long term, it detracts from it in the short term. Self improvement causes changes in the pecking order, which leads to stiff resistance. And self improvement takes a different route, at a different pace, for each individual.
Do not tell them
Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield
Beware
When collecting what works:
Beware the urge for correctness.
Beware the urge for completeness.
Beware the urge for consistency.
Beware the desire to use aliteration (and other tidy patterns).
A collection of what works is messy, incomplete, and contains contradictions.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
(1819 - 1892) American poet.
Old-new notation
X Eat with your fingers
X Eat with your fingers and a knife
√ Eat with a fork and a knife
Alignment notation
Have <> Use Have what you use; use what you have.
Place <> Thing A place for each thing; each thing in its place.
Do <> Say Do what you say; say what you do.
When writen longhand, this notation is two half arrows at opposite ends of a line, so that it can be written in one stroke.
Plan /__ Work Plan your work; work your plan
/
X 100
(Meaning “times one hundred”) A brainstormed, numbered collection of one hundred ideas, written fast and without analysis. Can be done by one person or a group of people. Of the one hundred generated ideas, usually one or two are useful.
Riding a half-tamed horse
Sometimes it seems as if we are five percent rational beings and ninety-five percent habitual beings. As if we are in charge of ourselves in the same way a rider is in charge of a half-tamed horse.
Good habits are different than good skills
Making a bed every day is different than knowing how to make a bed.
Being punctual is different than being able to tell time.
Always saying please is different than knowing how to say please.
Saving ten percent of each paycheck is different than opening a savings account.
Success is different than good habits
Success is more strongly related to good habits than to good skills, but it is still not quite the same thing. However, all three - good skills, good habits, and success - can be learned.
Acquire quality
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way...you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher.
Braver
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek philosopher.
Do <> say
Say what you will do, and do what you say you will do. Scale back, scale back, scale back until you learn the habit of keeping commitments. Add new commitments slowly, always keeping them, and backtrack as needed.
Agreeable
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626), English renaissance author, statesman, philosopher.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Bacon left a heritage to English science. His writings and his thoughts are not always clear, but he firmly held, and, with the authority which his personal eminence gave him, firmly proclaimed, that the careful and systematic investigation of natural phenomena and their accurate record would give to man a power in this world which, in his time, was hardly to be conceived.
He did more than anyone else to help to free the intellect from preconceived notions and to direct it to the unbiased study of facts, whether of nature, of mind, or of society; he vindicated an independent position for the positive sciences; and to this, in the main, he owes his position in the history of modern thought.
Though Bacon did not make any one single advance in natural knowledge—though his precepts, as Whewell reminds us, “are now practically useless”—yet he used his great talents, his high position, to enforce upon the world a new method of wrenching from nature her secrets and, with tireless patience and untiring passion, impressed upon his contemporaries the conviction that there was “a new unexplored Kingdom of Knowledge within the reach and grasp of man, if he will be humble enough, and patient enough, and truthful enough to occupy it.”
The Cambridge history of English and American
literature: An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes, ed. by A.W. Ward,
A.R. Waller, W.P. Trent, J. Erskine, S.P. Sherman, and C. Van Doren. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons; Cambridge,
England: University Press, 1907–21.
Upon the shoulders
In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British
mathematician, philosopher.
Insights
Some problems are just too complicated for rational, logical solutions. They admit of insights, not answers.
Jerome B. Wiesner (1915-1994), American
scientist, engineer.
Where does “Collecting What Works” fit in the larger picture?
Is it science? Is it continuous improvement? Is it a fancy name for the learning process that people use naturally?
These are subjective questions. The reader can answer them however he or she wants to answer them.
The viewpoint that I currently find useful is that there are three main categories of emperical improvement:
1. The scientific method coupled with peer-reviewed journals,
2. Process improvement using metrics, and
3. Expertise improvement by collecting what works
The scientific method is used to improve our knowledge of the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and medicine, and to improve our practice of the engineering disciplines based on these sciences. In my opinion peer-reviewed journals deserve equal billing with the scientific method. I believe it was the scientific method coupled with peer-reviewed journals that enabled the scientific revolution of the past four hundred years.
Process improvement, based on metrics, is most used for improving assembly lines. It seems to be applicable to endeavors that contain processes with strict repetition (strict in the sense that the exact sequence of events repeats in the exact same way).
Expertise improvement by collecting what works is the weakest improvement method of the three, and should be applied only when the other two methods do not produce good results. Endeavors involving humans seem to be candidates for this method, such as business, politics, military science, and education. Software development, despite it’s technical nature, seems to also fall into this category.
The hidden strength of expertise improvement by collecting what works is that it can be used to improve itself!!
Single theories
Influenced by the amazing power of the scientific method coupled with peer-reviewed journals, we often attempt to share subjective ideas in the same format we use to share natural-science results: a single theory, supported by well presented, rational arguments.
Scientific theories and their corallaries are atomic units. They are the bricks on which science is built. Scientists propose, test, accept, reject, improve, and publish complete, whole, undivided single theories.
Unfortunately, single theories seem to be of less value when sharing subjective ideas. When theories lack the backing of science’s repeatable experiments, people quibble over them. Even if one author agrees with eighty percent of another author’s theory, she must propose a new theory to express her viewpoint. This results in two competing theories with a small difference, which may or may not lead to controversy.
Granted, it is conceivable that sharing single subjective theories could lead to a progression of ever better theories. But does it really? And even if it does, is the process efficient?
Is there a better format?
Is there a better format than single theories for sharing subjective ideas? A format that better allows us to disagree, while at the same time learning from and adding to each other’s views?
Comparing boxes of apples and boxes of apples
The judge walked among the apple stands at the county fair. One stand displayed three big apples. Another displayed a basket of apples decorated with flowers. Yet another stand displayed a pyramid of fifty-five apples.
“How can I fairly compare these displays?”, the judge asked himself.
He had an idea. He gave each stand an identical box that held ten apples. “Put your best apples in this box”, he told each stand, “and I will select the stand with the best box”.
Combining boxes of apples
The state fair was one week later. Instead of entering the box of apples that had won first prize at the county fair, the apple stand owners decided to combine their apples. They created a new box, with the ten best apples from the existing boxes, and entered the new box in the state fair.
I have a dream. In my dream, I see professors convened in a room, discussing a subjective topic. Each presents a decasophy of the ideas and practices that work for them, in the same agreed-on format. The other professors ask questions for clarification only – none of the presentations are debated or disagreed with.
The professors adjorn to modify their presentations, based on what they have learned from each other.
The professor reconvene to present their revised decasophies. Again, questions are asked for clarification only, and again, there is no debate or disagreement.
The professors then socialize and go home, each a little wiser.
A dark and stormy night
It was a dark and stormy night. Fred Ranck (Ph.D., mathematics) walked
briskly out of the set theory conference in the “Mediterranean” room of the big
uptown hotel, and hurried down the corridor, clutching his PowerPoint slides
and Mountain Dew cola. Susan Tyne
(Ph.D., philosophy) wandered slowly out of the history of philosophy seminar in
the “Aegean” room of the same hotel, balancing 84 index-carded notes on how
She paused at the corner, her eyes absently noting the wave-like patterns of the corridor lights on the long expanse of blue-green carpet, deep in thought about philosophy and evolution. He barreled around the corner. Lighting flashed, thunder bashed. Researchers crashed, coffee and cola splashed. Slides and cards were mashed in a heap on the floor.
“You got philsophy and coffee on my set theory!”, yelped the mathematician.
“You got set theory and cola in my philosophy!”, exclaimed the philosopher.
They looked down. The pile wriggled and writhed. Suddenly what looked like a large, brown and yellow, origami centipede slithered from under the papers.
“Wh-What are you?”, gulped Dr. Fred Ranck.
“I am a sophy-set”, said the creature, matter-of-factly.
“Wh-What do you want?”, stammered Dr. Susan Tyne.
“I want to find a sophy-set of the opposite gender”, chuckled the sophy-set.
“Wh-Why?”, mumbled Drs. F. Ranck and S. Tyne together.
“Why do you think?”, chortled the sophy-set. “I’ll give you a hint: I am looking forward to a lot more than small talk.”
I love to win,
I love to lose,
The grandest
fun
Is to improve.
I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Irish
playwright, novelist
Never, Never, Never Quit.
Winston Churchill