Levels of Detail

We spend (or at least we should spend) our whole lives learning. Acquiring new knowledge, learning new facts, and hopefully, from internalising that, gaining new insights. It is from a succession of such small eureka! moments that we grow in overall wisdom - wisdom that can be passed on.

I written several times before about the generalists and specialists. I consider myself a generalist with a broad but shallow understanding of our world. I only need to stop and consider one specialist area in any kind of depth to realise how much knowledge I lack. Focus is key to specialism; my mind drifts off all too easily. But as life goes on, I am deepening it here and there, in particular in science, but all the time aware of how much there is still to know that only specialists know.

Maps are a good analogy. You can have a map of the world which will inform you about the position of Ellesmere Island (only slightly smaller than Britain) or whether Mauritius lies to the east or west of the Seychelles. And you can have a local map that gives you the height of Horsenden Hill or the distance between Gołków and Głosków. You can start with a world map and drill down, or start with a local map and add adjacent sheets-worth of knowledge.

Like the scale-models I wrote about the other day, level of detail is relative. You can make a kit straight out of the box and, assuming reasonable craft skills, it may turn out looking reasonably attractive from a few feet away. Or you can obsessively detail the cockpit interior, the wheel-wells, the exhaust pipes, the whole surface, and have something that is stunning when viewed close up - but then - so what?

The construction sector - building real buildings, not models - has taken to BIM (building information modelling) to create annotated 3D plans that architect, developer, civil engineer, contractor, sub-contractor, landlord, tenant and facility manager can all share. Do they all need these plans to the same level of detail - down to the texture of the door-handles? 

What levels of detail should we aspire to in our understanding of life? What can be considered sufficient to live a reasonably fulfilled life? 

My recent interest in mosses has opened a new area of inquiry for my mind. I have become far more observant of the forest floor and pavement cracks, looking different types of moss, where and how they grow, the soil underneath, the amount of light falling on it, the drainage. I suppose I can dive into numerous websites or buy a large book of Mosses and Lichens of the World - but I feel for now, this is all too much detail to digest in one go.

So coarse-grain or fine-grain? How is your worldview structured? Tiny areas of human knowledge, captured in obsessive detail, with many areas almost entirely unknown - or a general layperson's grasp of the basics of most things? Enough to get by?

Some areas of knowledge - electricity, for example, or mechanical engineering - are eminently practical. Others, such as history, have no direct impact on one's daily life, but give a broader picture of where we as a species are right now and the intricate timeline of factors leading up to the present day.

An infant will discern blocky shapes all around them, and with time, these shapes gain definition, context, meaning, like sculptures emerging from a lump of clay. As we grow older, the familiar shapes become parts of our lives - and here, observation and curiosity are what matter. What questions do you ask yourself of the things you see all around you every day? I often think of Copernicus, especially at sunset - the insight that looking at the sun dipping below the horizon it actually you, the observer, spinning back away from it. It took thousands of generations of Homo sapiens before one of the species worked out empirically that our sun does not orbit our earth. 

What will be the big breakthroughs in human knowledge in coming years, decades, centuries - millennia? I feel that our IQ as a species needs to continue to increase, memory accessible externally, and education increasingly focused on gaining insights rather than memorising facts. Armed with insights, we can easily acquire more information yielding ever-greater levels of detail which opens doors to the next levels of insight.

This time last year:
Droga donikąd by Józef Mackiewicz
[I'm struck by the similarities between the Soviet playbook of 1940 and Putin's actions in Ukraine today - propaganda, outright lies, terror, brutality, counterproductive stupidity and rigged elections.]

This time two years ago:
Words that pop into the mind, unbidden

This time four years ago:
Hops there for the taking
[Drinking hop extract right now!]

This time five years ago:
Two weeks and two days of travel

This time six years ago:
Final end to a local landmark

This time 11 years ago:
Independence Day

This time 12 years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time 14 years ago:
Puławska by night