knowledge

Is It Still Important To “Know” Things?

A parenthetical addition to the title of this piece could have been “Was it ever important to know things?” which we might disagree on. I’m going to say that yes, it was important, but that whether it is still important is debatable. I don’t want this to be an epistemological debate that starts with “Well [...]

June 22, 2011 READ MORE →

Learning, Thinking, And Questioning

I was scheduled from 9 PM to 6 AM. The library was being re-carpeted. My job that night was to be in the building and make sure that the carpet-layers didn’t spend all their time reading Jane Austen and Stephenie Meyer. I had never been so excited to go to “work.” I figured that I [...]

June 24, 2010 READ MORE →

How And Why To Be Curious

The greatest comment I’ve ever had on this blog was in response to the post 10 New Labors For Hercules. In that post, I mentioned 10 things in modern day that I wished someone could take care of or create. Conor added this: Remove the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ from our language and memory. [...]

June 14, 2010 READ MORE →

The Only Thing I Know (Maybe)

Back when I was (briefly) a philosophy major, it was fun to say words like “epistemological” and stare intently at theorems as if they really mattered. I’m not saying that the stuff can’t be worthwhile, and I’m certainly not trying to talk people out of philosophizing if that’s what they like.  There’s certainly nothing wrong [...]

March 13, 2010 READ MORE →

Book Learning Vs. Experience

This is a guest post from Adrienne Carlson, taking a look at two different types of learning. by Adrienne Carlson It’s a question that has been debated down the ages, one that often has no concrete answer but which has been argued well and hard nevertheless – do we need book knowledge or is practical [...]

January 16, 2010 READ MORE →