The Beauty of Knowledge
Many of my friends seem to have the perception that education is a curse; and that they would be better off without it. Others do not completely embrace it, but rather conform to study for the pure purpose of "being able to enroll into a university" or to "get a good job in the future". According to my mother, my purpose of studying should be to "put food on the table", which I find is a rather archaic way of thinking. I tend to look at knowledge with a rather philosophical point of view, which I would like to write down on this blog to embark on an endeavor to change your view of education or knowledge as a whole so as to perhaps motivate you to embrace it, or have at least a bigger respect for it.
Knowledge is beautiful; it enables us to finally answer questions that were once known to be rhetorical not too long ago such as "why is the sky blue?" or "how do magnets work?". I find it amazing how everything you ever want to know has already been asked by someone else centuries ago and answered by the same person. The only thing that ever truly unites us with our past is education/knowledge; this can be seen especially so in mathematics. Often I am asked to prove theories written by great people like Pythagoras born over two millennium ago using algebra founded by Muhammad ibn Musa al Kwarizmi 800 years after him. As I have said, knowledge unites us all. (Note that I am using knowledge and education interchangeably. Of course they are not the same but I'll leave that for another time).
Physics is one of my favourite subjects because of its relation to the past and the clear acknowledgements of the credit due to the 're-discoverer'. In Physics, often you are given credit for what you have discovered by naming the unit of the value discovered after yourself. For example, the Newton and the Gray. Of course there are much more than that. Inventions are named after you, such as the Michelson Interferometer (refer to previous blog posts) and Newton's Cradle. Comparing it to mathematics, this does not get expressed as much.
One of the greatest things that I find about knowledge is how they are primarily passed on through the word of mouth. Books can be read of course, but who would teach you to read in the first place? Often books are no substitute for human interaction and a book would be no use to a person if the fundamentals or content first explained by a teacher. Looking at a macro scale, we as humans are in a race against time to try and impart as much knowledge to the next generation so that they can pass it on to the next. What I find amazing is that this knowledge has been passed forward and has not distorted over the years (unlike many controversial things like the interpretations of the Bible. These theories can be tested for legitimacy over and over again to prove their authenticity).
Unfortunately, many of my friends have disregarded this gift due to intense training in schools and institutions. As Einstein said "it is a miracle that curiosity has survived formal education". I am happy to say that I am keeping the curiosity alive, and whenever I see a scientific term, I would not hesitate to search it up on the internet to see what the process of it means to me. An hour later I would still be on the internet, probably 10 clicks away with 15 tabs open in a field totally different than what I was researching on an hour earlier. THAT my readers, is the miracle of knowledge and curiosity. If you are one of the people like me, I encourage you to never lose that sense of curiosity in you for it is that that keeps knowledge alive, and you would be one of the people remembered in history to pass that knowledge on, in the biggest race of the world; the race against time.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
Knowledge is beautiful; it enables us to finally answer questions that were once known to be rhetorical not too long ago such as "why is the sky blue?" or "how do magnets work?". I find it amazing how everything you ever want to know has already been asked by someone else centuries ago and answered by the same person. The only thing that ever truly unites us with our past is education/knowledge; this can be seen especially so in mathematics. Often I am asked to prove theories written by great people like Pythagoras born over two millennium ago using algebra founded by Muhammad ibn Musa al Kwarizmi 800 years after him. As I have said, knowledge unites us all. (Note that I am using knowledge and education interchangeably. Of course they are not the same but I'll leave that for another time).
Physics is one of my favourite subjects because of its relation to the past and the clear acknowledgements of the credit due to the 're-discoverer'. In Physics, often you are given credit for what you have discovered by naming the unit of the value discovered after yourself. For example, the Newton and the Gray. Of course there are much more than that. Inventions are named after you, such as the Michelson Interferometer (refer to previous blog posts) and Newton's Cradle. Comparing it to mathematics, this does not get expressed as much.
One of the greatest things that I find about knowledge is how they are primarily passed on through the word of mouth. Books can be read of course, but who would teach you to read in the first place? Often books are no substitute for human interaction and a book would be no use to a person if the fundamentals or content first explained by a teacher. Looking at a macro scale, we as humans are in a race against time to try and impart as much knowledge to the next generation so that they can pass it on to the next. What I find amazing is that this knowledge has been passed forward and has not distorted over the years (unlike many controversial things like the interpretations of the Bible. These theories can be tested for legitimacy over and over again to prove their authenticity).
Unfortunately, many of my friends have disregarded this gift due to intense training in schools and institutions. As Einstein said "it is a miracle that curiosity has survived formal education". I am happy to say that I am keeping the curiosity alive, and whenever I see a scientific term, I would not hesitate to search it up on the internet to see what the process of it means to me. An hour later I would still be on the internet, probably 10 clicks away with 15 tabs open in a field totally different than what I was researching on an hour earlier. THAT my readers, is the miracle of knowledge and curiosity. If you are one of the people like me, I encourage you to never lose that sense of curiosity in you for it is that that keeps knowledge alive, and you would be one of the people remembered in history to pass that knowledge on, in the biggest race of the world; the race against time.
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
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