Is your knowledge broad or deep? If broad – has it been deepening over time? If deep – has it been broadening over time?
I'm a generalist, although I do have a handful of interests in which I can claim an above-average level of knowledge, though far from expert-level. I'd also rate myself as being a slow learner – the result of attention deficit. It takes quite a while for the for me to grok something fully; that Eureka! moment arrives late. And even then, I often later realise that what I took for my complete understanding of something was actually quite superficial – as I acquire newer and deeper levels of intuition.
I marvel at the mind of a mathematician, who can intuitively grasp, for example, the concept of Euclidean spaces in topology. "Euclidean spaces of any positive integer dimension n are called Euclidean n-spaces when one wants to specify their dimension. The qualifier 'Euclidean' is used to distinguish Euclidean spaces from other spaces that were later considered in physics and modern mathematics." I literally understand none of that. And yet our world depends on science and technology that is founded by people with on a solid understanding of such concepts.
Mathematics at school became an insurmountable challenge to me once d y over d x equalled, uh, something. Differential equations. Calculus. Couldn't get my head around it. Couldn't grok it. Aged 16, with a scraped pass at O-level maths, I just gave up. A succession of poor teachers? A brain that wasn't (and still isn't) wired for maths? Or just an inability to focus? Anyway, I abandoned the sciences at A-level and chose easier things – more interesting things for my brain – like English Literature, History and French.
Learning is not just about memorising facts – chemical formulae, laws of physics, Latin declensions, historical dates. It's about putting these facts into some kind of structured perspective, creating a narrative around them that makes everything fall together and suddenly go 'click'. A gifted teacher will be able to tell that story, be it about Euclidean spaces, abiogenesis or the causes of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
And here I fall into my first rabbit hole. I enter a Wikipedia page entitled 'Austro-Prussian rivalry'. There's a map from 1756. German towns, east of the Oder/Odra river. Liegnitz – Legnica. Been there. Glogau – Głogów. Been there too. But hello, what's this? Kay. A town called Kay, similar in size to Liegnitz and Glogau – what's that in modern Poland? Turns out it's now a village called Kije (literally 'sticks' or 'staves'), the site of a battle (1759) in the Seven Years War.
New connections click into place, adding to learning that I'd acquired earlier this year while in Bystrzyca Kłodzka. The history of Western Poland was not just about Germans competing with Poles for land in Silesia and Pomerania – it was about different branches of the German-speaking world competing among themselves for land in Silesia and Pomerania.
For this understanding to fall into place, two qualities of mind are needed: curiosity and observation – the gift of being able to notice things, correlations, patterns. Some people are more curious, some less curious. Now, in the old days, my curiosity would run into the brick wall of lack of access to information. Once I'd scoured my own books, once I'd been to the public library, most times I could get no further. Today, there's unlimited information a few clicks away.
Google, Wikipedia and now AI, the internet has given us access to knowledge the likes of which we couldn't even imagine in our youth.
This is a double-edged sword for the easily distracted. A rabbit hole can drag you deeper and deeper until you find intellectual satisfaction that you are seeking. "Yes, now I understand". But the rabbit hole will have many shafts running off to this side or that side. Rabbit holes can become so engrossing that you dive down one, then another, and then another, losing track of what it was you were originally trying to find out. An addictive activity, sucking the unwary browser deeper and deeper into a topic, before sidelining them into some other area of research far removed from the original topic. The instant gratification, the dopamine hit, of stumbling on something more interesting. Loss of focus. Distraction.
Rabbit holes can also be serendipitous. You're researching something, you get distracted by something that seems at first sight utterly irrelevant – you check it out by clicking on the link – and fate determines that you learn a new fact that somehow connects the dots, and adds a new value. I find I often learn things accidentally, stumbling across them having been distracted from the task in hand. The benefits of losing focus. Attention deficit is not necessarily a bad thing.
According to Google's Ngram viewer, the term 'rabbit hole' became ten times more common across the corpus of English-language literature in the quarter century between 1994 and 2019. The internet, search engines,Wikipedia – and now AI – have opened up new galaxies of information.
My feeling is that our new information age will spawn far more generalists than specialists.
But is this a brain thing? Traditional thinking here is that in some folk the left hemisphere is dominant and they are good at maths and science where binary answers are called for, while right-brained folk are better at creative work, the arts and language. Professor Iain McGilchrist is good on this. But is it more than just left-brain/right brain? I have posited that we are all on one spectrum or another. The autism spectrum can result in a mind with the capacity for deep focus; restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests. Specialism. The ADHD spectrum, on the other hand, can result in a butterfly mind that lands on a thousand flowers, acquiring a superficial appreciation of a wide range of knowledge. Generalism. Do these two minds overlap? Is autism spectrum disorder linked to left-brain dominance? Or does one mindset preclude the other?
I pop the question into Google Gemini. It replies: "Recent research suggests a more nuanced relationship between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and brain function. Studies have indicated that individuals with ASD may exhibit:
- Reduced brain asymmetry: This means that the differences in structure and function between the left and right hemispheres are less pronounced compared to neurotypical individuals.
- Altered brain connectivity: There might be differences in how different brain regions communicate with each other.
I feel we have a vast amount to learn about ourselves.
This time last year:
The US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety and Government Transparency.
(and what can be more rabbit-holey than UFOs!?!)
This time two years ago:
Gloucestershire, 1830 and Ohio, 1946: automatic writing
This time three years ago:
New phone, new laptop, Part II
This time four years ago:
Two images from my early childhood
This time five years ago:
How PKP PLK's planners should treat pedestrian station users.
This time six years ago:
Foreign exchange: don't get diddled!
[for the saps who pay £250 for €200 at the airport]
This time eight years ago:
Defining my Sublime Aesthetic
Porth Ceiriad on the Llyn Peninsula
This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, late July
This time 13 years ago:
Jeziorki sunset, after the storm
This time 16 years ago:
Rural suburbias - the ideal place to live?
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