First Contact and Language as a Way of Knowing

I caught the tail end of today's episode of This American Life, in which Ira Glass speaks to Paul Davies, who is the go-to guy for figuring out how to communicate with aliens. And his answer (you guessed it) is that we should communicate mathematics (quantum mechanics) via binary code.

So when we are thinking about knowledge, there is a question about the link between knowledge and language - if we can't express it, do we know it? Put it on an intergalactic scale, wherein the best minds figure the only way to communicate in a first-contact situation is a way I personally cannot communicate. In that sense, what do I as an individual human really know? Nothing?

So perhaps the link between language and knowledge is overblown. Learning new languages, we may find ourselves provided with better nuances we can use to express with precision the knowledge we have, but does this make language an actual way of knowing? Is language nothing more than a way of sharing context? A system of symbols for putting us on the same page?

Is the feeling of being unable to put your finger on an idea a lack of knowledge or a lack of language for expressing knowledge - thereby blocking the knowledge from actualization and utilization? Is it one and the same? Is intuition knowledge without language?

(In reading over this post, my dependence on metaphor and idiom to express my ideas strikes me as pertinent, insofar as metaphor and idiom are so language- and even culture-specific, and so difficult to translate.)

No, I haven't given up...

I've been reading the course guide. The first half of which explains the concepts to be covered, followed by many, many questions one might explore. The second half is about grading.

I'll follow up more when there is more to write - hopefully within the next week.

Getting Started

Full Disclosure: I'm cheating just a little. I've been getting started for several months now, so although this is the start of the blog, this is not the start of the process. The task, however, is immense enough in all directions that it's still early enough to start a blog and see where the journey goes.

So here we are. Not at the Big Bang moment. Just afterward.

The origin of all this?

The school where I teach participates in the IB Programme. The Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class is required for all students pursuing the IB diploma. In a nutshell, the class asks how we know what we know, how and by whom advances have been made in the various disciplines, and how we can become better thinkers ourselves. Education in a nutshell. The goals are ambitious and exhilarating.

I am lucky and thankful to be receiving help in preparing from our current TOK teacher. He really is an intellectual giant with the apt quote or source always at his command. A few months ago, he gave me a copy of his current syllabus, including the primary and reference texts he used to develop the course. While I had read some of the books, I hadn't read the lion's share, and over the next couple of months bought some crates, got on Amazon, and proceeded to fill said crates with what will be my reading list for the next while. I also consulted with my sister, the most avid reader I know, and added a few other books to the crates. I then raided my bookshelves and added to the crates books that I think will add to the discussion. I have a lot of reading and re-reading to do.

My goal in blogging about this enterprise is to keep myself on track. Here are the pitfalls:

1. Right now, the books are like a candy store, and it would be very easy to treat them as such, picking the flavor of the week and running with it. I need to be systematic about my reading. Case in point: Nineteen Eighty-Four came. It has been on my reading list since I read Animal Farm in eighth grade. I promptly picked it up and read it. Next in line on the candy list? A Brief History of Time. Wait. At this rate, I am never going to get to Cases in Bioethics. So I'm hoping that blogging will help me be responsible enough to start at a logical square one and follow through rationally.
2. The topic is big enough that it will be very easy to get tangential and paint myself into a corner unrelated to my larger goals. Again, let's use Nineteen Eighty-Four as an example. I encountered some great ideas about stupidity and ignorance while reading it. I spent some lovely time chasing some implications out in my brain. I don't know that these ideas will have anything to do with my larger goal, preparing to teach TOK. So I'm hoping the blog will keep me (somewhat) within the boundaries of my objective.

I will tell more about Nineteen Eighty-Four in another post, I am sure. But for now, let's set up some objectives.

1. I am bad at doing what I am supposed to do. So it will be important to finish reading the TOK guide from IB before I get much deeper. No later than the end of the month. Preferably within the next week or so.
2. Even though it's not as fun as the primary sources, I really need to read the textbook the students will be using as well. So let's make that step mandatory for any section I am studying.
3. The hardest goal of all: pick a section and stick with it. No more candy store raids. Hmph.

So here's to the (almost) start of the journey. Away we go.