Hey Bethany,
Thanks for the reply and good thoughts.
I have spent some time in this area before, but not using those specific terms. This is talking about learning at a “deep” level, I think.
For example, it appears that “thinking” animals, such as humans, progress through field independence toward field dependence as they gain higher education, or more specialized skills and experience. It seems to me that this is analogous to the adaptation of organisms to their environment, and is one of the reasons for both human progress though optimal adjustment and for senescence.
As we become better and better adapted to a specific environment and it’s “time snapshot”, we become more and more capable of “mastering” that environment. We grow into it in many ways. We grok the zeitgeist, among other things.
However, time waits for no man. Or other being. After a period of time the environment has changed enough that what was formerly optimal adjustment is no longer so.
It is necessary to “refresh” the generations to re-do the adjustment process to the new environment to obtain optimal fit and finish. Only that which grows up into the new environment can be optimally adjusted to it. The older optimally adjusted are now obsolete, and their mass and protoplasm must be recycled.
Or so I have thought. Now you introduce the possibility of field independence, which might hold out hope for those who can recycle their adaptation without a generational do over.
Will we accumulate so many data sets from our increasing abilities to store the products of our extensions. ie media, that there will be no advantage to starting over from biological scratch? Has our environment taken on characteristics that now make senescence itself obsolete?
Kind of don’t think so, but it’s at least a little bit intriguing…
And I’ve been wondering a lot about the way we learn things that are less rationally organized, and more intuitive and “creative”. We have disagreed somewhat on “creative” learning before, with you positing that it’s a recombination of previously existing knowledge, or elements, and me saying that it’s a newly birthed thing out of some combination of mind, environment, and that mystical space of being that Jung called the collective unconscious. To be roughly approximate of our expressed opinions.
Not to sound too crazy, but for all that I respect rationality, my experience leads me to believe that the mind has many ways that cannot be accounted for by rational analysis at present. Even rational analysis eventually leads back upon itself, the snake eating it’s tale. Have to make room somehow for that uncomfortable realization that we see only through the glass darkly. Reality not for sissies…
I forgot that from the beginning you have said you like to have these kinds of speculative conversations. Me too.
Do you still work on your own car?
John
