Learning

Two pitfalls along the academic path

⩩ 12

How much do I know?

This question has gotten ahold of me and won’t let go.

I have been led – by circumstance, by propensity and by chance – onto the path of a scholar, an academic, a professional philosopher, and I think there are two errors in particular those on this path can fall into: forgetting that the knowledge wanted is not specialized but total, and forgetting that in the end it is not theoretical but practical, expressed in action.

These pitfalls are dangers inherent in the line of work. They are lodged in the idea of a discipline and its members.

By definition, a discipline has a shared object of study, a field. You can picture the world as a globe and the field as an area on it, a certain portion of its surface. While it is big enough that it bewilders newcomers, the size of a discipline is roughly small enough that it can be well known in several decades of study. At least, that’s the hope – the promise, the premise of a discipline, and one of its primary attractions to its members.

The reality is more complicated. No sooner has one begun to understand a single plot in the field, a strain in the literature or a problem or thinker, than one sees it has a context, analogies, neighbors, a history, and one forms the idea that it is necessary to have traced them before one could properly speak of the single plot.  

And in that moment a switch flips. A priority has been established, and with it – cascading effects. Study, learning is seen as preparation, with judgment to come later. Independent and total thinking is postponed. We think we have to know more before we can exercise judgment. We believe we have to explore further, wider, to go back earlier, to have swept a wider compass of knowledge. So we go out from our humble cabin and are drawn out in larger and larger circles.

But there is no edge to the forest, no fence to the field. It blends into others and extends in every direction.

Problem after problem opens up before us, thinker beyond thinker, school beyond school, age beyond age, — because the field is continuous and endless. At some point, on some level we realize this, and the library takes on something of the obscene to us. And yet we don’t face up to our terrible insight, but hurry off to bury ourselves in some other book.

At this moment we have become party to our own subordination. When we receive titles and promotions in this state, we put on the costume of learning; we ourselves are perhaps even half convinced by it, though only half. And so as you enter the woods of learning you see some of the lost; breathless, deprived of their judgment, unable to speak in their own voices or stand on their own feet.

Enough. We want learning and not the show of it.

Where is the error? The error is the separation of learning from action. At the bottom of learning is the desire to understand the world. But to wholly understand a scene before acting in it is impossible. Our deeper relation to the world is in action rather than in knowing.

What is the solution?

I have found one in William James’ work. He writes that a person possesses of learning only as much as comes out of her in action; that, as a tree is known by its fruits, so a person is known by her deeds. If it is to be learning, our studying should be to us as stimulation and not as preparation, our reading simultaneous to and not preliminary to our creation. What we possess of learning is what we can use.

The other error? It’s related. As a member of the discipline, the field becomes more or less the exclusive object of our theoretical reflection, especially early on, at the expense of everything else that would otherwise interest us. It dominates the space of our critical attention. We favor the questions, figures and problems internal to the field, we neglect those external to it. We adopt its assumptions. Effectively, the field takes the place of the world we want to know. The result is that things outside of it are overlooked and neglected, including the leadings of free and native intelligence.

Perhaps the problem itself is simple. We want to know the world but we can’t, so we learn a part of it, a field. But we can know the world, because — here’s my assumption — a person is a world. You are a globe, and this globe is yours, and everything you encounter and perceive in it is akin to you and worthy of reflection and contemplation. 

When Pete Rock asks, “Whose world is this?” in the chorus of the song from the album Illmatic, Nas answers with the titular refrain, “The world is yours, the world is yours.”

---

---

Did a part of this essay resonate with you? Make you think of something you have seen, heard or read? Have another angle on the topic? Please leave a comment.

---

You are reading Footnotes, by Garrett Allen, a series of philosophical-ish short essays. You just read ⩩ 12. Here are some highlights from what came before.

Firsthand

⩩ 11 Secondhand

⩩10 Habit

⩩ 9 Firsthand

Stagestranger

⩩ 7 Mistake

⩩ 6 Whim

⩩ 3 Speechless

⩩ 1 Headsup

If you enjoyed one of them or the series as a whole, please consider passing it along to a friend. And if a friend passed it along to you, welcome. By subscribing you can have these notes delivered to your inbox, too. If you would like, stay abreast.

---

A shoutout as usual to Danny at breakfastswerved for his ink. See his drawings for the series here.

---

If you’ve come this far: thank you for reading my work and spending time with me. I would love to hear from you.