The internet almost
makes it too easy
My recent post “How to Understand Everything (and Why)” discussed an untaught, integrative kind of knowledge, and why is so important in science and engineering — how it can leverage specialized knowledge and improve the trade-off between bold innovation and costly blunders. I discussed the nature of this knowledge and how it can be applied, but not how to learn it.
Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.
This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.
Studying to learn about everything
To intellectually ambitious students I recommend investing a lot of time in a mode of study that may feel wrong. An implicit lesson of classroom education is that successful study leads to good test scores, but this pattern of study is radically different. It cultivates understanding of a kind that won’t help pass tests — the classroom kind, that is.
- Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. Include Science and Nature.
- Don’t halt, dig a hole, and study a particular subject as if you had to pass a test on it.
- Don’t avoid a subject because it seems beyond you — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to absorb more vocabulary, perspective, and context, then circle back.
- Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic.
- Notice which topics link in all directions, and provide keys to many others. Consider taking a class.
- Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about.
Why is this effective?
You learned your native language by immersion, not by swallowing and regurgitating spoonfuls of grammar and vocabulary. With comprehension of words and the unstructured curriculum of life came what we call “common sense”.
The aim of what I’ve described is to learn an expanded language and to develop what amounts to common sense, but about an uncommonly broad slice of the world. Immersion and gradual comprehension work, and I don’t know of any other way.
This process led me to explore the potential of molecular nanotechnology as a basis for high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing. If broad-spectrum common sense were more widespread among scientists, there would be no air of controversy around the subject, milestones like the U.S. National Academies report on molecular manufacturing would have been reached a decade earlier, and today’s research agenda and perception of global problems would be very different.
(Revised 9 Feb 2010)
See also:
- How to Understand Everything (and Why)
- A Map of Science
- The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering
- Science and Engineering: A Layer-Cake of Inquiry and Design
- A Telescope Aimed at the Future
- Exploratory Engineering:
Applying the predictive power of science
to future technologies
{ 25 trackbacks }
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Mark Bruce 05.27.09 at 10:52 am UTC
Interesting things happen to a mind exposed to such a wide swathe of human knowledge. Good things. An expansion of the imagination and appreciation for what might be possible. The development of robust cognitive filters and resistance to the irrational. I’ve noticed it in myself over years of reading widely and frequently across all areas of science and technology – with some unfortunate gaps (for me personally) in computer programming fundamentals (can still appreciate applications and development paths). I’ve become a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. But I’m happy with that; I take pleasure in such a broad knowledge-base and it helps with assisting technology developments into the marketplace.
ben 05.27.09 at 3:13 pm UTC
Wow, I have never met someone else who does this. For years I simply went to the library and pulled journal after journal and did this on random topics. I looked up the textbooks for random professions such as medicine, pharmacology, finance and physics and read them.
The only subject I have not been able to do this with is pure math. Everything else is relatively easy to get to grips with.
Once you have done 10 or so topics, things start getting easier from my experience, and there isn’t much you can’t learn to converse in within 24 hours. This year I have learned varied topics from nanotech to mechatronics to science of persuasion and it seems to be speeding up.
The one great thing about this is that you can talk to field leaders (research scientists) about their topic, often in great depth and sometimes even teach them a thing or two by comparing fields.
Peter Vander Klippe 05.27.09 at 4:05 pm UTC
Wow from me also. This is exactly how I learn. I read way too much about everything, often things way over my head, but I understand more and more.
Immersion in the subject makes so much sense.
Thanks for the post.
Kaushik Katari 05.27.09 at 6:04 pm UTC
This is indeed a very good post. Another way of staying abreast of random subjects is through book reviews and editorial pieces. As a full time graduate student, I loved reading the first few pages of Nature, which were editorial pieces, and the book reviews.
Thomas Petersen 05.27.09 at 10:40 pm UTC
Me to!!! Crazy that is exactly how I think. Good to know there are other who “know less and less about more and more until we know nothing about everything”
Ulisses Marioto 05.28.09 at 4:31 am UTC
Hi Mr Drexler
You are a genius, i talked to you here in Brazil at Institute of Research Technology, did you remember?, IPT (Instituto de Pesquisa Tecnológica)
I´m a young economista , i sad you that i will study a paper with molecular nanotecnology, and what´s the impact of your technology in the capitalists relation of production, a new industrial revolution
I get some revolucionary technologies , like a cold fusion, nanomedicine, your technology, and other
It´s a liberalism anda marxism and these technologies, I´ll use a lot of economists: Carl Manger, Bohm Bawek, Mises, Hayek, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Schumpeter, David Ricard , Adam Smith and other
I hope you like
It was pleasure to met you here
I hope some day , we can meet again.
Write to me
I need more information, if you translater your books in portuguese , i apreciate you, because, i.ve been talked to a economists here , they loved my theory anda some of them can help, for more studies about
Sorry my english hehehehe
See you
Ulisses Marioto 05.29.09 at 3:48 pm UTC
Did you the supercomputer which IBM created?
SEQUOIA: “Sequoia will be based on future IBM BlueGene technology, exceed 20 petaflops (quadrillion floating operations per second) and will be delivered in 2011 with operational deployment in 2012.”
Only with 1 petaflop is possible to create virtual reality like matriz, it.s mean that 1 million c.p.us
Imagine the 1 billion like the example of nanofactory posted in youtube ou in site nanofactory collaboration.
I think the education of the future will not monopolized in large estrutucteres university or schools, It will be very democratic.
Imagine, id´like to learn aboute THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, it´s easy, I use may notebook with 1 billion c.p.u.s anda i get into a reality virtual, and I see Robespierre and the revolucionaies taked the power, so real
Suppose that i wanto to learn aboute the atoms, I get into the atom, and i see , how this work, in another reality.
The softwares can be in internet available for anyone would like to knowledge, this is a great revolution.
It´s already possibel, in mainframe
Now we need with nanotecnology´s help minituarize this mainframe in a nootbook for the population, it´s possible only the molecular manufacturing.
Ulisses Marioto 05.29.09 at 3:51 pm UTC
sorry my wrong, i wrote very fast hehhehehe
Pat Galea 05.30.09 at 8:29 am UTC
It’s great to see a post on this way of learning, and to see that so many other people do the same thing. Yes, I’m also one of these learners. Even as a kid, I’d get books on strange topics that I knew nothing about, and I’d build up a working model of the subject.
Robin Gleaves 06.01.09 at 8:13 am UTC
Eric
An interesting article (found from MargRev). I also try to immerse myself when learning about new areas and yes I’m a consultant.
Another analogy I have for this is the darkened room – until I’ve touched all the walls I don’t know the scope of the subject/space. For me this scoping out includes the history of a subject. I was gobsmacked recently to read about Descartes’ laws of motion, for example.
You might also want to look at expertise and H. Collins recent introduction of the idea of interactional v. contributory expertises.
bartkid 08.06.09 at 2:39 pm UTC
>Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand.
I recommend doing title searches at your local library for:
“… Demystified”,
“Introducing … “,
“A Brief History of…”,
“A Short Introduction to … “, and
“… For Beginners”.
They have allowed me to be such an armchair expert on everything.
Doug Treadwell 10.23.09 at 2:59 pm UTC
I have a similar habit. Even though I’m just a lowly undergrad, I’ve got books on my shelf on Biochemistry, Biomechanics, etc. that I won’t actually reach in college for another year, two, or more. It’s interesting how much a person can actually understand even though you don’t have the prerequisites.
I think the idea of learning things with the purpose of test taking has good sides and bad, but I do notice that while a person can obtain functional knowledge of a subject reasonably quickly (and then work out the bugs by doing), learning for test taking requires a much greater amount of time. That most of that time is spent learning trivial details is why I don’t prefer that method.
Gerard Sorme 11.27.09 at 5:04 am UTC
I’m late to the party on this thread, but it’s truly spot-on. I wanted to add one thing to the learning-by-immersion process that I have used for years: Book Summaries. There are several good services that offer top-notch non-fiction book summaries. The key is to receive the summaries on topics you know the LEAST about (on the assumption you’re already reading in your own fields of regular interest). It’s amazing what you can learn from reading a ten-minute summary of a book that you otherwise wouldn’t touch. Multiply this by dozens of these summaries a year, every year, year after year; and while you’re learning a lot, you’re really learning what you really want to learn more about!
Thank you Dr. Drexler, this was truly an excellent post on a method of learning that is, in fact, common sense. Unfortunately, too many of our temples of education attempt to enforce rigid rules on compliance of a uniform structure (no matter the subject) rather than focus on the process of learning (again, no matter the subject). Kudos.
Eric Drexler 11.28.09 at 3:46 am UTC
@ bartkid, Gerard Sorme —Thanks for offering suggestions with good, concrete advice. We’ll never know what will be learned by readers you’ve advised, or what they’ll do with the knowledge. The possibilities range from nil to world-changing.
J. Scott 12.01.09 at 4:56 pm UTC
Dr. Drexler, Great post…I found your work via John Robb and Zenpundit. I’m largely self-taught, so your recommendations in many cases are a way of life for me. 25 years ago I taught myself economic and political theory by chasing footnotes from one classic to another—which meant I read a lot of older books.
Right now I’m learning about knowledge via a book by Japanese academics—using Michael Polanyi’s seminal Personal Knowledge; Kuhn is next up.
One thing that has been a challenge is maintaining mathmatical abilities—-I have found that is one skill-set that requires fairly consistent use.
Great blog, I’ll be back.
Many thanks!
Eric Drexler 12.02.09 at 5:54 am UTC
@ J. Scott — Thanks. I enjoyed Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, which helps to dispel the illusion (fostered, for example, by what we are taught) that all knowledge is the kind of knowledge that can be taught, or that is general enough to be worth teaching, or even explicit and conscious enough to be recognized as knowledge. This is related, of course, to the Austrian school’s most fundamental critique of strong central planning — that much of the vital knowledge used in the human world cannot, even in principle, be transmitted to a center.
Re. mathematics, there are at least two useful kinds of knowledge: practical know-how — the mathematical skills you refer to — and general awareness of the scope and structure of mathematics. The best book I know of for the latter is Mathematics: Form and Function by my favorite mathematician, Saunders Mac Lane, one of the founders of category theory. Mac Lane’s book examines the origin of mathematical concepts (e.g., numbers, geometry) that predate literacy, and the form, function, and inter-relationships of everything from calculus and group theory to topology, tensors, and adjoint functors. Worth chewing on (though marred by typos and mis-drawn diagrams).
J. Scott 12.02.09 at 1:46 pm UTC
Dr. Drexler, Thanks for the tip on MacLane’s book…a copy is on the way!
Michael 12.19.09 at 5:35 am UTC
Nice to see so many others that learn the way I do. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding what I want to specialize in. But at the same time I’ve found that I really enjoying knowing about everything.
Like you mention the “about” is having a deep understanding of how each process works, it’s structure. I hope I one day find a field to specialize in so that I can apply all this general knowledge of everything to it.
One thing I noticed, someone said they had trouble applying this method to Math. Math has to be approached like learning a new language. There are crash courses out there for getting a solid grasp of it just like there are for learning Spanish or German. Where you can build a conversational capability and be able to read it for the most part.
Sara 02.26.10 at 2:12 pm UTC
I agree with what you said about just reading journal articles (I’m starting to do that now on the long commute to school) and I’m constantly looking for new books or recommended books on the topics I’m studying in school but I find it hard to find time, the enemy for all of us seeking great bounds of knowledge.
I’m also attending an extra lecture because the professor teaches rather well but I suppose I should stop attending because I DO want to be able to read the extra books and have time to question some fundamentals, research the history behind the topic and try to work it out myself instead of having someone feed to me. Would that be wise? I hope so.
Could you perhaps write up an entry about some of your favorite books particularly for nanotechnology or courses that you feel are important to take to understand nanotechnology?
Thanks a lot in advance!