Reflections on the forward and reach an understanding
INTRODUCTION The
young college professor who begins teaching after nearly ten consecutive years of study at the academy, through undergraduate, master's, doctoral and postdoctoral studies, it is often someone who understands the theory of the discipline with which they work and who can speak over it with ease. This is a great professional seminar leader, understands the logic of scientific work with his introductions, methods, results and discussions. In the Introduction, presents the theoretical origins of their work and propose a testable hypothesis, the methodology he describes how this hypothesis should be tested to corroborate or refute a hypothesis, the data obtained are then analyzed in graphs and tables presented in the Results section, and finally the talk, which he summarizes in his latest work contributes to the increase of knowledge described in the introduction. He is able to present their work in front of peers, argue in their favor, describe it and answer questions and criticisms. He is a scientist, but was never taught to teach. So this guy is thrown into a classroom in front of about fifty individuals in search of a title, or the real learning.
After 10 years of scientific education, the society plays the scientist into the classroom trying to explain to students the basics of the theories he has worked for so long. The young teacher, even if you have taken courses in teaching, no longer understands what the average human being (layperson) knows about the discipline that he knows so well and of which he speaks and articulates concepts and technicalities excels with ease. He must now do the reverse path of the ultra-aware of the common sense way that can be understood by lay their students. It is hard work, and the teacher will be largely misunderstood.
In theory, this would be and is a great idea: a company invests in and selects those who want to know and then ask back the change in the way of education. Excellent idea. But she forgets that invested in a scientific training, not didactic. And then you see the teacher ahead of half a hundred students to pass a knowledge that is so developed and worked and thought, is not able to reach way back to common sense. The young teacher understands what's known in his area, but he does not understand very well what the average citizen knows about it . And then he incurs a repetition or an explanation of technicalities that need a more basal which students still lack familiarity. The concepts that the teacher develops and applies with ease are not understood linguistically by young people that are, to educate the scientific learning through the concepts and relationships between concepts, ie through the learning of something that can compare to a sub-scientific language that is within the language, in this case Portuguese. Thus, the young teacher for some time and will be largely misunderstood. Something similar to what happens in language classes when a teacher tries to teach in English to an audience that does not know the language, the young teacher will talk and will thus be a tecnicaliquês misunderstood by students. Fact is that the incorporation of knowledge takes place by way of apology and depends greatly on all luggage (life and intellectual) that if that individual has already gone down. It seems to me that the more diverse their interests have been lifelong, another student will be able to understand any kind of class or lecture. Much of what is understood in the classroom must merge to what is already known and what has already lived for the construction of understanding in an individual.
ACQUISITION OF UNDERSTANDING
In some experiments with undergraduate students, the young teacher explains a project based on the common sense that believes it and passes along this explanation for all the logical chains necessary for the understanding, until its true object of study. At this point, the path between the language of common sense is crossed by the tecnicaliquês, that are used for figures and texts that explain better what are the concepts and what the relationship between them [1]. The student listens attentively each of the stages, he follows it, ask questions even relevant, others not so relevant as well, and can finally say with some certainty that they understood the question whether to propose [2]. In the following days, however, when brought face to face with the problem, the student shows that sometimes has no idea what you are doing is (a) through questions irrelevant to the question, (b) by performing work not directly related to what is proposed or, (c) of the complete entertainment concept generated by the detachment, that is, not knowing what to do. These three events attest to the fact that the student initially did not understand the question of fact as supposed. Of course, sometimes he can think of any issue but offered divergent extremely important and previously unimagined by scientist-advisor, just as his entire life experience and intellectual is different from what has your teacher. However given the greatest amount of education of teachers and their more solid understanding of the scientific enterprise and the concepts involved in the practice of a discipline is more often the question that the teacher himself put it more relevant and that, precisely because otherwise, or because the experience of student to be smaller, this usually confuses issues and concepts, not being able to truly understand the depth or the particular importance of a particular study [3].
What the student really understands when you say "understand"? How does the formation of a new knowledge in the brain of a human being? A link conceptual and a logical chain of relationships between concepts formed? New synaptic pathways were made and connected with neurons in the brain? It seems that we acquire new ideas through the association of previously known ideas to new concepts and powered through electrical bridges (neuro-synaptic) that connect knowledge not previously reported in our brain synaptic complex graph. And a week after having understood a problem, the student forgets? How to strengthen the new brain connections? Certainly you need repetition and memory.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that freer to leave the student to work all these issues and incorporate these concepts slowly - but a solid, creative and integrative - the greater the chance this student contribute significantly in solving the problem or even the discovery of issues not yet addressed But the real relevance to the issue. No one should doubt that the student truly understood the question when it was explained to him the first time. What happened was that he went out of the lab and returned to their daily lives, received different neurological influences that made him lose the knowledge acquired - which now is in their understanding such as clouds sparse. The fixation of knowledge in human brains is undoubtedly a slow process and scientific theories are theoretical frameworks complex networks, inter-relationships of concepts, ideas and questions about ideas (conceptual clusters) that do not appear in the heads of individuals but after some time has been spent in its maturation, which goes by several factors: (i) storage capacity, (ii) inter-connection of new knowledge with old knowledge already settled, (iii) acquisition of new knowledge, ( iv) accommodation of new knowledge between conceptual-si (v) manufacturing new connections conceptual bridge type, (vi) beyond the acquisition of familiarity with linguistic terms, relationships and ideas (fixing bridges through repetition of the idea and neuronal path to crawl through).
I believe once the construction of neurological conceptual networks in human brain is a slow process. All human knowledge consists of conceptual networks reasonably complex (the sciences certainly are) and it takes some time until someone's brain gets used to different information and ideas, being able to articulate them with ease, until such knowledge help the individual in understanding the physical world with which it interacts at all times [4].
EXAMPLE: The young student of biological sciences logo is surprised, for example, by being able to classify diseases such as viral or bacterial. You learn that bacteria are unicellular organisms, some free-living parasites. One learns that the virus has no metabolism, while outside the host cell, which has no cellular structure, which is an obligate intracellular parasite. It is questionable even if the latter is alive or not. Such knowledge, though simple, help in daily life to better understand what they say when someone sick; the difference when it gets cold or when it is an antibiotic that will cure a bacterial infection, the bases of diagnosis and medical practice. Knowledge are useful in day to day. It is understood at one point the differences in medical treatment in diseases caused by prokaryotic organisms (bacteria) or virus: the prokaryotic can take antibiotics which will kill them selectively, there is no cure for viruses and you should just stay home and expect to recover the body [5]. Believes soon after because it is easier to contain a bacterial infection than a yeast infection, for example. Fungi are eukaryotic organisms, and what it takes to kill querque it can also affect human cells themselves (also eukaryotic) of the patient. The bacteria already work differently, they have ribosomes different from those which selectively bind the antibiotic molecules to prevent its operation, without affecting human cells themselves. An antifungal drug that blocks the ribosomes of the fungus would have more chance to block also the ribosomes of human cells, and would, for the patient, a poison. It is understandable so the evolutionary relationships between organisms and common ancestry that was the big idea of \u200b\u200bDarwin [6].
An example of concept map obtained here. The new concepts learned need to be related to old familiar concepts and interrelated with each other through the characteristics they have in common. So much for learning new languages \u200b\u200bwhen to learn new chains conceptual (scientific language), these webs of relationships must be formed in the quest for understanding. The more these concepts are used and related to daily life events of individuals, they are more easily learned. Joseph Novak seems to have been one of the greatest theoreticians of the subject since the 70's.
KNOWLEDGE, LANGUAGE AND NEUROBIOLOGY BRAIN
Thus the acquisition of knowledge and the internalization of concepts help in the everyday practice of human beings, as has been demonstrated since the dawn of our species [7]. At the same time, the task of understanding - I insist it can be compared to learning new languages \u200b\u200b(inter-relationships of concepts) - is arduous and time consuming, and certainly require a physical structure and brain-mounted. The differences between the brains of humans can be better understood, I think, about this prospect. It is clear that intelligence is a complex system that integrates different characteristics and that can be understood as (i) the ease of catching conceptual systems, (ii) the ease of integrating new systems with other systems conceptual conceptual pre-existing in the mind of the individual, (iii) the growing perception more detailed physical reality as the arbitrator for the selection of concepts to which we can be confident (natural selection ideological and effective disposal of unverified theories in the physical world).
The German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein showed us with his language games or word games that the concepts we learn are often overlapping and not easily translatable from one language to another, for example. When learning a new language or scientific language, which is done is create this kind of association of the brain, where different concepts are mixed to form broader concepts and general. There is a single, clear concepts and all concepts are mixtures of pre-existing concepts that are mixed in a particular and fairly different in the mind of every individual. From this point of view, what becomes striking is how can we understand so well with each other.
The question (Ii) above seems to be of particular importance: the classic example is related to learning a new language and wordplay Wittgensteinian. When you learn new words and concepts in a given language, such new concepts are not 100% overlapping with the known concepts of the language of the speaker. In a simple example, the word "ciao" in Italian can mean either "hi" and "bye" on our Portuguese, while the insight of English does not translate into a need for substantive Lusitanian (insight?), While on the other hand our "nostalgia" has no corresponding (orthologous) nominal in English or French [8].
I venture here to say that the difficulty of incorporating conceptual clusters in the mind of an individual may be a possible cause of certain neurological disorders such as schizophrenia. The individual who is schizophrenic, having been born and raised under a particular cluster of concepts that were integrated harmoniously in a given period of his life may have been confronted with other conceptual clusters fairly complex and antithetical as to what he learned in his ever life. The individual problem may not be able to bring together two competing and contradictory ideas in one coherent conceptual universe. Schizophrenia can be well understood as one of the great harm caused by a repressive society like we have, where the individual is created to be some kind of Superman, which he never could be. A girl is raised to be a princess and a guy caste is created to be a great and courageous leader. Then when the world presents itself in the face to destroy these mythological ideals of individual lives that often include a large extent the denial of the most basic instincts, the individual can create an exit to another self that goes against social norms but in favor of baser instincts. In his new personality, the individual can express repressed desires and ideas in their most basic personality, it creates a new character in which libertarian turns, relieving the guilt of the first and looking at this again, the end than the other abhorred.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS: THE DUAL Dialectic By continuing CLASS
Delivery of this hook to say that our brain also acquire the knowledge and incorporate concepts from the technical Greek dialectic, which create stereotypes of certain super- and super-wrong with a great chasm between these two concepts. This ability to separate the extremes appears to be the first used by our brains in search of knowledge and the incorporation of concepts: is the technique of divide and conquer intellectual. Fact is, however, that the physical world does not respect the dualistic separations we do it and then we believe strongly in separation of the ends for - sometimes - for years, is that we get to see more detail and nuance clouds that stands between them. The evil side as well and vice versa. The yin and yang mix to create understanding. This is also what I mean to point (iii) highlighted above. The perception of reality by humans is normally coarse and rough, it separates it into two levels. Morally speaking the division is between Good and Bad, Right and Wrong. From the epistemological point of view, I think any division of concepts occurs initially in this way, like the integers which were subsequently invented the fractional numbers that link the concepts of natural numbers in all possible micro-nuances. The discretization of the world into classes often help advance the knowledge, and only later realized how it is false and gives us an incomplete view of the object to be known. However, just when we were able to initially separate from our knowledge and mount these first two clusters conceptual That That X, X Mal Well, we can then observe the world and check the characteristics of This and That separately. They now do not form a single whole, incomprehensible and inseparable. And then we notice that every detail of This and That we are able to characterize them better and we slowly realizing new intermediate classes that interact there in the middle, between one-That-What we once thought non-existent. There seems to be true in the physical world-is as accurate discretization for which we create in our minds, and the advancement of science has increasingly bogged down precisely in the continuum of matter and energy, epigenetic modifications of the genome that deny the theoretical models discrete initially proposed. In the universe, everything seems to be well known to some extent integrated in a more basal level and conceptual discretizations often tend to become solid in epistemological questions. Moreover, this is not to say there are not too different things and different world: of course they exist. But it seems that increasingly we corroborate the words of Darwin's "Natura non Facit saltum" and as a general rule there are no leaps or revolutions throughout nature, and everything operates as a wave that is changing slowly and that has some inertia. Not seem to have great breakthroughs in knowledge but continuities.
The formation of knowledge begins with the identification of opposites, good and evil, right and wrong. Thus we can see the world and characterize events in certain extreme already featured in our thinking. Later we realized that these dichotomizations are false and that there is a whole continuum between the concepts that allow us to finally understand the world better in their nuances.
languages \u200b\u200balso do not ever seem to change from one moment to another. Revolutions language takes years to happen, just by presenting themselves as the great masses of conceptual clusters (memeplexes) instilled at heads of millions of human beings who need to modify their thinking so that there is cultural change. Such events happen slowly and gradually, with different accelerations depending on how ingrained are the old thoughts in the minds of men and how are the new liberators. Many of the traumas of modern society comes from social events in our history that have changed from one moment to another and traumatized societies: the colonization, false geographical borders between African states and the creation of Israel are some examples of abrupt and traumatic had and still have huge repercussions in our society. Thus the cultural, because they involve a large number of people are bound to happen gradually, or even more, only those which actually happened is that gradually ballast will remain steady and for a longer time in developing our society. Of course it is always necessary to fund education and human rights and labor, so that more humans can work with freedom and creativity. Governments should always direct their societies to which brings more power, but they should know that changes are gradual and will only be achieved over decades. The society is a sphere of memeplexes each of which has concepts and ideas associated moral and value judgments about various issues of daily practice. No NoVideo is able to penetrate reasonably overwhelmingly fixed conceptual clusters that form the conservative society present in all modern states and of humanity as cultural background [10]. All changes are doomed to gradual, so that the seeds of new concepts of liberty, equality, humanism, tolerance and education need to be planted and watered constantly by governments. For the sake of humanity and world peace.
CONCLUSION
When I started this test I thought to say something about the experience of the young teacher who is to understand what the students do not understand . The task of the scientist-turned teacher is to deconstruct the knowledge through which he has specialized for nearly ten years and make it digestible for the uninitiated minds in scientific theories. It is an arduous task in which the teacher is taken to the extreme of their own issues regarding the discipline with which he works: he must be able to remove what it in fact makes it important to make the connection and (ii) of this theory with several other systems conceptual (memeplexes) in order to transmit it effectively to students. It is a study that takes years to perfect and according to which the teacher must continue never underestimate the ability of their students and trying to encourage them in seeking to understand, a lover of knowledge that is every true educator.
The three riders that provided the basis for understanding the structure of human knowledge. From left to right: Kant (1724-1804), Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Lyotard (1924-1998). To understand the problem of understanding, first we need to decouple the human knowledge of truth (Kant), to observe the relationship of knowledge to the practical language (Wittgenstein) and understand the scientific reports as metanarratives rhetoric of magnanimous (Lyotard). Then we went to a logical approach to learning through concept mapping, memory, and neurobiology.
meanders In this writing I came to a question that really interests me as an intellectual and that is the question "what is understand? . Kant said in his criticism, "what is known?" since it seemed to have an idea of \u200b\u200bknowledge as something objective and straightforward. But when Wittgenstein comes to propose his word games and question the veracity of knowledge and concepts, he begins to wonder about the appropriateness of language and knowledge of linguistic basis of a physical reality. Kant himself was well acquainted with these issues and made the division between nuomeno (comprehension of the thing) and phenomenon (the thing itself), arguing that nothing will ever know about the phenomena. Wittgenstein has yet to say that groups of inter-concept relationship mix their meanings proposing questions about the word games that Jean-Francois Lyotard summarizes in his concept of metanarratives , where representations of the physical world are no longer seen as correct, but as arguments that have been helpful to our understanding or the development of our society. After these philosophers, we find a clear disconnect between knowledge and physical reality. But it is clear that if we could develop technology, if there are cars and airplanes that fly with precision, there is undoubtedly still a tenuous relationship between knowledge and reality of men. Even if our knowledge is rhetorical, he manages to summarize and find a pattern in certain events of the physical world. We understand very little and our science is nothing more than a theoretical myth that is reasonably in agreement with the empirical data. But something certainly understand. We will never know the true relationship between what we think that there (Nuomeno) and what actually exists (the phenomenon), but we know that such relationship exists.
Returning to the classroom, what the student understand when he says he does are the logical and linguistic webs which are based on the scientific rhetoric used by the Western tradition to represent the universe or society of men. The French philosopher Lyotard argues that such rhetoric does not necessarily relate to the phenomena: "Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?" [11]. No matter, what the educator should be able to do is guide the student through the logical and conceptual pathways that lead to modern society to sustain and support of certain knowledge in the insignia of Truth. Nevertheless, the educator must also finally show how our knowledge represent only a thin line that travels over a supposed "truth" that exists in the physical universe. Few students are able thus to relativize the concepts of knowledge and doubt that is in the books, unfortunately the vast majority of scientists consider the Kantian nuomeno as faithful representation, if not perfect, the phenomena natives. It is also possible to think that many students would choose to go down the complex vocabulary of science if the teacher already show a relativistic forehand. The question now is giving: Before this extreme epistemological doubt about our knowledge inherited from Kant to postmodernism, as we move forward? What sense is there in advance of the sciences? If the theories are nothing but rhetoric, as it explains the technology? As we are increasingly able to control the environment to our surroundings if the theories are just metanarratives and scientists are just gullible? How to explain the advance of technology compared to the deeper epistemological questions?
=========== NOTES
[1] For example, in a lecture on cellular respiration, the teacher presents the design of the mitochondrion, explaining that she is a cellular organelle and then she has inside the cell, connected with the nuclear DNA and with various types of metabolites produced in the cytoplasm. The teacher taught the concept thus: mitochondria, and the relationship of this concept with other concepts previously known, namely: cell nucleus, DNA, cytoplasmic metabolites, metabolic pathways for the degradation of sugars, etc..
[2] The difference in the comprehension of a lecture to a scientific work is that you need to understand at first what is known about a subject; in the second degree of complexity is greater, you must now understand not only what we know, but what is not known, generate pertinent question about it and figure out some way to solve it empirically, by proposing, conducting and analysis of experiments that will produce an increase in human knowledge about a particular problem.
[3] One can assume, moreover, that the teacher himself has accepted dogmatically a certain stage of the argument makes. The student, however, did not fully understand the linkage between the current paradigm, ie, not be indoctrinated, have the possibility to question certain concepts taken for granted by the previous generation. Thomas Kuhn in his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions "and notes that a teacher is working to help proliferate the critique of science as a young man and his old age will become a defender of the paradigm that helped build, and that would now "normal science." The young critic seems the best of all scientists, it is he who actually does advance knowledge when questioning the received information and builds a new explanation for certain observed facts before dogmatically. (Notably, the young critic need not be young in age but young in relation that kind of knowledge, ie, not started in the paradigm.) A good example is the old saying of when Einstein: "To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me grow, even I, an authority "(free translation into English:" To punish me for my contempt of authority, fade has made me an authority myself "). If Einstein had ever accepted the explanation of Newtonian gravity and had not asked the knowledge that came to him, he never would have published their grand theories, something that made even with 25 years of age. Later, however, has proved its worth, Einstein was the great canon of physics research and respected as an authority, might also have held the advance of physics into new directions while trying to defend their ideas.
[4] In an information society like ours, the correct knowledge and information processing by human brains, in addition to the clearer connection between data and ideas, helps greatly in understanding the world by individuals and casts no doubt the future professional youth. The teacher thus has a major responsibility of developing a nation. The more knowledge one has, the more successful it is in modern society, or at least to some extent the wages of individual is related to their educational level. The individual who connects best ideas is also a better citizen, better parent, better person. The best teacher is one who teaches students to learn to understand. Who learns to understand is then able to understand anything that he can teach.
[5] Of course there are also protease inhibitors and viral reverse transcriptases that can be used in more severe and chronic infections, such as the treatment of AIDS and other immunodeficiencies.
[6] On this subject I have written extensively, particularly here and here .
[7] This is perhaps so sought difference between humans and other animals. It was the language, coupled with the knowledge acquired and shared among the humans who made us wise, sapiens. What saves us is also our tormentor, this same feature has been used against humans or the supremacy of one over another. On the other hand, is absurd to think that only we humans have a language developed. Just because we do not understand the languages \u200b\u200bof animals, we believe they are simple or nonexistent. However the animals exchange information through sounds all the time and perhaps mock at us than we realize. How ridiculous is not in our search saganiana exchange information with beings from other planets in spaceships, even our relatives do not understand that animals, without any doubt, have much to teach us about life on our planet! We do not understand our brothers and we wish to understand the evolution so far, unimaginable? Oh, man dreamer.
[8] orthology is a concept from molecular biology. Imagine a gene that has a function already known in some particular species. Say the human gene for the protein insulin. Also on the fly, in the monkey and the whale, there is the same gene that is similar to letters of the DNA with the human insulin gene, but is a little different ... there are certain The nucleotide where Ts should be informational, and other small differences. In these organisms, however, all the accumulated evidence points to the fact that the gene that resembles the human insulin has the same biological function of insulin in these animals. So they are called genes for insulin and it is said that the different genes of insulin: the Human, the ox and giraffe are orthologous genes. Here convey the use of orthology for the language work: orthologous words are spoken as words that usually have the same function in either language. [9]
[9] In fact, the theory preaches the orthologous genes are a subclass of genes counterparts, which are defined as those who have a common ancestry in the past. Genes can be like without having been originated from the same gene duplicated in the past, the event called adaptive convergence. In these cases, the physical reality of the process directed by natural selection, for which a specific function - linguistic or molecular - the Darwinian (gene or word) was achieved from different starting points. In adaptive convergence, similarity function does not come from common ancestry and it is as if two paths have converged and started separately and independently. Tributaries of River that flow into the sea. This is not the case with counterparts who arrive at sea from confluent routes that begin at a point and then diverged.
[10] Moreover, the technological ideas such as computers, cell phones and various other modern technology have come with speed to change the lives of humans and appear to have been well adapted by all memetic (or ideological) of humanity. In this case, the problem is the serious problems that these types of technology to bring an environmental standpoint, generating more difficult to biodegrade waste and pollution.
[11] Excerpt complete on the subject in "The condition postmodern "by Jean-Francois Lyotard." Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity of metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of the progress of science, but this progress in turn presupposes himself. The crisis of metaphysical philosophy and the academic institutions in the past led to trusted and supported, most notably in making the methods metanarratives of legitimation become obsolete. The narrative function is losing its grounds, its big heroes, its great dangers, its great voyages, and its major objectives. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative elements language - narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on (...) Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? . "Lyotard's original text translated from the hard work" The Postmodern Condition: Introduction ":" Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern incredulity Toward the metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but progress in turn presupposes That it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most Notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy of the university and institution-Which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing ITS functors, its great hero, its great Dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It Is Being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements - narrative, But Also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, canon legitimacy reside? "
