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Teaching and the Expanding Knowledge
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10412 |
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NATURAL SCIENCE
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12 / 1986 |
1,914 Words |
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Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
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Our attempt to harmonize teaching with expanding--or rather exploding--knowledge would be hopeless should growth not entail simplification. I will dwell on this sunny side. Knowledge is a sacred cow, and my problem will be how we can milk her while keeping clear of her horns.
One of the reasons for my optimism is that the foundations of nature are simple. This was brought home to me many years ago when I joined the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. I did this in the hope that by rubbing elbows with those great atomic physicists and mathematicians I would learn something about living matters. But as soon as I revealed that in any living system there are more than two electrons, the physicists would not speak to me. With all their computers they could not say what the third electron might do. The remarkable thing is that the electron itself knows exactly what to do. Thus, the little electron knows something that all the wise men of Princeton don't and this can only be something very simple. Nature, basically, must be much simpler than she appears to us. She looks to us like a coded letter for which we have no code. To the degree that our methods become less clumsy and more adequate and we discover nature's code, things become not only clearer, but much simpler too.
Science tends to generalize, and generalization means simplification. My own science, biology, is today not only much richer than it was in my student days, but it is simpler too. Then, it was horribly complex and fragmented into a great number of isolated principles. Today, these are all fused into a single complex with the atomic model at its center. Cosmology, quantum mechanics, DNA, and genetics, are all, more or less, parts of one and the same story--a most wonderful simplification. And generalizations are also more satisfying to the mind than details. In our teaching, we should place more emphasis on generalizations than on details. Of course, details and generalizations must be in a proper balance: generalization can be reached only from details, while it is the generalization that gives value and interest to the detail.
Storing Knowledge
After this preamble, I should like to make a few general remarks, first, about the main instrument of teaching--books. There is a widespread misconception about the nature of books that contain knowledge. It is thought that the contents of such books have to be crammed into our heads. The opposite is closer to the truth. Books are there for storing knowledge while we use our heads for something better. Books may also be a safer place for such knowledge. In my own head, any book knowledge has a half-life of only a few weeks. So I leave knowledge to books and libraries for safekeeping and go fishing--sometimes for fish, sometimes for new knowledge.
I know that I am shockingly ignorant. I could take exams in college but could not pass any of them. Worse than that, I treasure my ignorance; I feel snug in it. It does not cloud my naiveté, my simplicity of mind, my ability to marvel childishly at nature and recognize a miracle even if I see it every day. If, with my 71 years, I am still digging on the fringes of knowledge, I owe it to this childish attitude. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," says the Bible. "For they can understand Nature," say I.
I do not want to be misunderstood. I
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