Mireille de Moura (Mireille_de_Moura@compuserve.com)
Tue, 3 Aug 1999 04:30:16 -0400
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1999 04:30:16 -0400 From: Mireille de Moura <Mireille_de_Moura@compuserve.com> Subject: Learning in the 21st Century
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About Crispin Weston's mail (30.7.99). He wrote : <The acid test of whether
you understand the world is whether you can predict its behaviour>
It seems important to add : and whether you can recognize that some
behaviours remain unpredictible (too many causal factors, and many factors
undetectable and unmeasurable) - and whether you can evaluate in what
extent some events are likely predictible.
It's not a matter of experience, nor of experiment : I'm quite unable to
test by myself what could happen on August 11, if I stopped the path of the
moon. I just put my trust in the astronomers and I predict that the light
will lower over Paris (dear friends from America and Australia, come and
see).
<...the concrete is much more familiar and accessible than the abstract,
particularly to inexperienced learners.>
But this does not imply that the concrete is easier to handle, and its
outcomes more predictible.
Just three examples :
- what will happen if I click here, or there, on my apparently familiar
computer's icons ? Surprise !
- what temper will be shown to-morrow morning by my mother-in-law (yes, an
admirable woman) ?
- what amount of pleasure shall I get from the next Woody Allen's movie ?
(I'm generally a fan, but....)
<Such power of prediction has always been given by knowledge of abstract
concepts, not by knowledge of experience per se.>
On what level appear "abstract concepts" ? Far below sophisticated maths
formulae. To name an "object" is a processus of abstracting, from the
feelings that the object or the event has given rise.
Last question : are my sentences "thoughts" ?
Friendly yours
Mireille de Moura
Paris, France.
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