James Burke is best known for a series called Connections that he did in the the 70s and again in the 90s. The central theme to these shows was to demonstrate how seemingly inconsequential things led to things of great consequence by examining how they are connected. His latest project is called ‘the Knowledge Web’.
Burke’s vision is rather grand. He believes that formal education is structured mostly to make it easy for the teacher. By reducing things, by placing things in well defined boxes it becomes (relatively) easy to teach them. Examination of any school’s curriculum bears this out. Burke’s point is that the world, that knowledge is much more complicated than that. By being reductive we manage to lose a lot. In Burke’s words:
“The Knowledge Web counters the tendency of modern education to encourage specialized learning and thinking. With formal education today, learners may study either history or physics, or perhaps only Renaissance history and astrophysics,” says James. “People tend to become experts in highly specialized fields, learning more and more about less and less.
“Unfortunately, so much specialization falsely creates the illusion that knowledge and discovery exist in a vacuum, in context only with their own disciplines, when in reality they are born from interdisciplinary connections. Without an ability to see these connections, history and science won’t be learnable in a truly meaningful way and innovation will be stifled.”
Interesting stuff.
Thoughts on things 