If this post oversimplifies things, that's probably good. It will make my point more clear. The point is not technical anyway, it is intuitional. It can only be injured by adding technical clarity.
![[Yin and Yang: Knowledge and Intuition]](/files/knowledge-intuition-2-250x250-1237510404.gif)
Knowledge and intuition are Yin and Yang, complementary opposites.
We begin our lives with intuitions about what we expect the world to be. Through our growth, we acquire knowledge. Often at the expense of our early intuitions. We spend a lot of our time learning why the world cannot be what we hoped it would be.
It is the rare person who succeeds in acquiring knowledge without losing his vision of why he wanted that knowledge, of what justified the expense of acquiring that knowledge.
Our early instruction of children emphasizes simple truths, sometimes oversimplifying, but offering echos of what we wish the world really were. Or sometimes even what we used to wish what the world was before we forgot that wishes were of value.
Children know how they want the world. They want it free of guns, of violence, of war. They want no one denied health care or left starving.
We explain why these are not goals, why they never could be. Soon enough, they forget they even wanted them. Then we smile approvingly and call them adults.
Computer novices ask for computers to be smart. But we explain to them about how to articulate their problems well enough that they can Google for workarounds. Soon enough, they are so proud of their own ability to overcome computer stupidity they've forgotten it would be better if they didn't have to. Then we smile again approvingly and call them computer literate.
Knowledge wears down intuition.
We bring children into the world in part to remind ourselves as a society of what we started out to be. Not having yet become jaded, they ask anew the hard questions we'd forgotten we used to ask. All too quickly, the reflexive temptation is to answer them, rather than to hear their inquiries as an opportunity for reflection: Are we going in the direction we set out to? Are we sure there was no other way?
They often try to find that better way. Sometimes they learn, as we did, that it's elusive. But sometimes they do better than those that came before them. In many ways, the virtue is in the trying.
If you're an expert who speaks routinely with others who know less about your area of expertise, always remember that they may have something that you may have lost—that in offering your knowledge, perhaps, if you also listen, you'll be lucky enough to recover some of the intuition you lost in acquiring that knowledge.
If you got value from this post, please "rate" it.
Public domain yin/yang symbol obtained from Wikipedia.
Text and composed artwork
Copyright © 2009 by Kent M. Pitman
For more on this topic, see my follow-up post:
Intuition and Knowledge
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"If you're an expert who speaks routinely with others who know less about your area of expertise, always remember that they may have something that you may have lost—that in offering your knowledge, perhaps, if you also listen, you'll be lucky enough to recover some of the intuition you lost in acquiring that knowledge."
I loved this post! Thank you for the insightful reminder.
If only I had known.....
It intrigues me, but only in the sense that I'd like to sit down with you and a 24 of beer and chat & sip all around this concept, for hours.
Value received ~ rated.
As always, you provoke. Thank you.
"Children know how they want the world. They want it free of guns, of violence, of war. They want no one denied health care or left starving."
I don't know what children you have been around. Children do not behave with a superior morality at any age. True morality requires experience and mentoring from adults.
The majority of boys are naturally attracted to guns and other forms of expressing power over their environment including power over animals and other children. Girls also seek power, they are just more sophisticated about it.
Now, as to your broader point, I do agree that gaining too much expertise can sometimes result in people getting trapped in boundaries whereas someone not informed will not see the same boundary.
MA Woman, looks like you have more to write... I'm listening.
Larry, I'll post another time with related detail, maybe eventually find the rosetta stone... though if you're ever in the New England area, you should let me know and we'll see if we can find time to chat. Meanwhile, I'm glad I got you—and Tim—to think.
Jim, yep, cycle of life.
Very well written, Kent. And yes, this makes a lot of sense. ;) Rated.
cartouche, thanks for visiting, especially since it was a question you asked that reminded me I'd wanted to write about this.
Coyote, I knew someone would have such an intuition. :)
Example #1: I have spent years doing data analysis -- not statistical analysis, but assembling seemingly disconnected pieces of data into information. At this point, if someone asks me for information, I often have a kind of "vision" or "religious experience," for lack of a better term, in which I instantly understand how to do it -- how all the tables join together, things to watch out for, how to verify the results -- it just all appears without me really having to think about it.
Example #2: Recently I had breakfast with a friend and his son. The kid was working on a math problem, trying to prove that there is no sequence of natural numbers the sum of which equals any power of two. I hadn't done math proofs in decades, and even back in the day I wasn't very good at it. But once again, I had this "vision," and the main parts of the proof appeared to me. All I had to do was to fill in the intermediate steps. (It blew the kid away, and me too!) While I hadn't done math in a long time, I had spent a couple of decades solving other kinds of problems, and it seemed to me that the knowledge of how to solve problems gave me insight into this proof.
Example #3: While playing guitar, sometimes the right chord just "appears" to me. I know what the chord has to be even before I play it. I can't do that like the professionals do, but it does happen on occasion, no doubt because I've been playing for years.
Frankly, it works that way when I post something on OS. I don't post very often, but when I do I typically know what I'm going to write, and it's just a matter of typing.
While I agree that knowledge can cause one to fall into habitual ways of thinking, for me knowledge somehow seems to open me up to other ideas more than shutting me down. It seems to me that knowledge simply gives one more tools to work with, more options to consider. Or perhaps I'm thinking of knowledge differently from how you are.
I also think you're assuming I'm trying to describe intuition and I'm doing it badly. In fact, I'm trying to name a quality that comes with naivete, and doing that (the naming) badly. The entirety of the piece was intended only to allow me to write the last paragraph.
well-done, Kent, it made me think of Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", not the same idea exactly, but not entirely dissimilar
Ok, I got it. I thought it was more of a general meditation on knowledge and intuition, with the last paragraph being just an example, not the main point.
Rob, yes, it's that "losing track" thing. I'll have to google for Klee sometime. Or maybe you can mail me some useful pointers.
You did a great job of showing how "knowledge wears down intuition". Two different human powers. Unfortunately, we're living under the aegis of the Computer God presently, so: cram all those gigabytes of info into yr kids' heads, with no overarching talent to judge what's worth knowing. And under what perspective it's worth knowing. Man as Meat Computer is not a very hopeful image...
rated, JME
"Children know how they want the world. They want it free of guns, of violence, of war. They want no one denied health care or left starving."
These sentiments shouldn't ever be dulled in the face of "the system". Talk about imbalance.
James, you seem to agree, which is cool. I'm glad you liked the oversimplification thing. That makes it easier to present, I think.
Karin, thanks for pointing out your favorite line, too. I like when people do that. Helps me see their focus. (Incidentally, I don't mind when people point out least favorites or things they most disagree with, too. As the post hints, I'm writing to learn, not just to blather.)
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. (Sigmund Freud)
Of course, there's always the other side:
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. (Mark Twain)
So I thought I had a copy of Paul Klee's diaries or notebooks (that is, the published versions of course :-), but it turns out I don't. I think I've read passages in collections of writing about art. I'll have to track those down now...
Susan comments on the idea of children being natural philosophers. I'd originally thought that this idea was popularized by Piaget (though I expect it's older than that) but now I'm not sure. It sounds Dewey-ish, too. In any case, there's an interesting openness in the way children approach problems, lacking the more detailed knowledge we adults have. Sometimes, in my research, I end up reading the animal cognition literature, and there it's also interesting to find out about what can be accomplished without knowledge.
so the virtue is in growing up, more than the actual product of that process?
and say , hey, this is the Way...
So! Y'all become volunteers somewheres
and now you say ,
as i now say, evry tuesday...
"no, that is NOT the way. This is the way.."
Then ya teach him what part of the Way was given unto you to perform..perhaps a magnificent poetic one
in the opening realmof UberCyberspace...
where the thought of the many can be abstracted &
simplifyed yes
by our reason, yet...
at the same time reciev the love of our
big manly or womanly hearts.....
WE CAN & must do both...
Roomey the arab sufi mystic theologian i met in the park
sez "we can do no more than is given to us to do/
except when we are given more
to do, ha"
i think he MAY be onto something, Rumi
Jim.rated.
Kent, "less knowledge before and more after" in science maybe- in personhood it seems to me like we just learn the same things (more or less completely based on our personality) as individuals that a person 1000 years ago learned, with very little actual growth towards a goal of being better people.