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It depends a lot on the specific field that you're talking about. I studied both music and physics in college, and I think that teaching the history backwards w

by foob 8y ago

It depends a lot on the specific field that you're talking about. I studied both music and physics in college, and I think that teaching the history backwards would work for music, but not for physics. You can understand modern harmonic theory without knowing the details of how it evolved out of contrapuntal theory. It would be easy to learn about the current state of music theory as is, and then extend your understanding afterwards by learning about the context and history which led to the current state. Physics isn't really like that. There's no way that you're going to understand general relativity first, and then learn afterwards that the theory evolved from Newton's laws. Some fields successively build on top of their own histories while others morph and change in such a way that knowledge of their histories is nonessential for understanding their current state.

ddebernardy 8y ago
Well, I suppose OK, fair enough. Maybe for the likes of technical history, Newtonian mechanics is easier to understand than Relativistic mechanics, and the same holds for a variety of other scientific theories. Though I'd put forward that in teaching the old ones before the most recent ones, we end up with lots of people who end up not studying the latter at all and not grokking how or why, insofar as we understand things at least, light speed is a speed limit in our universe. But then, as you correctly point out, some fields change in such a way that knowledge of their histories is nonessential for understanding their current state. As to history proper, explaining the cold-war era proxy wars warrants a dive into WW2 and the onset of the cold war at some point; which then naturally leads you to dive into GD and WW1 as to why there was a WW2 in the first place; and why there was a WW1 to begin with; and why there was so much German-French animosity then; and why Europe was a powder keg at the time; etc. One can go on and on all the way back to the Roman Empire and Classical Greek history. I'm admittedly an armchair historian at best, but methinks reversing the arrow of time in history books might yield a very interesting take on the topic that is a lot more approachable to kids and teenagers.
ljw1001 8y ago
I suspect that if you're studying the History of Physics, as opposed to just physics, you've already got a special interest in the subject. And if you're not, you're not replying to what the earlier post said, which referred all kinds of _history_. The original post, I think, was broadly about trying to engage people in the history of something they're not already interested in. For that, the device seems reasonable. At least it does to me. But maybe that's because I actually did work backward from Led Zeppelin, to the Stones, to Muddy and Wolf, to Robert Johnson and learned to love them all. But if you started me on Johnson, or worse, Charlie Patton with those horrid recordings, you'd have lost me immediately.

by foob 8y ago

ddebernardy 8y ago

Well, I suppose OK, fair enough. Maybe for the likes of technical history, Newtonian mechanics is easier to understand than Relativistic mechanics, and the same holds for a variety of other scientific theories. Though I'd put forward that in teaching the old ones before the most recent ones, we end up with lots of people who end up not studying the latter at all and not grokking how or why, insofar as we understand things at least, light speed is a speed limit in our universe. But then, as you correctly point out, some fields change in such a way that knowledge of their histories is nonessential for understanding their current state. As to history proper, explaining the cold-war era proxy wars warrants a dive into WW2 and the onset of the cold war at some point; which then naturally leads you to dive into GD and WW1 as to why there was a WW2 in the first place; and why there was a WW1 to begin with; and why there was so much German-French animosity then; and why Europe was a powder keg at the time; etc. One can go on and on all the way back to the Roman Empire and Classical Greek history. I'm admittedly an armchair historian at best, but methinks reversing the arrow of time in history books might yield a very interesting take on the topic that is a lot more approachable to kids and teenagers.

ljw1001 8y ago

I suspect that if you're studying the History of Physics, as opposed to just physics, you've already got a special interest in the subject. And if you're not, you're not replying to what the earlier post said, which referred all kinds of _history_. The original post, I think, was broadly about trying to engage people in the history of something they're not already interested in. For that, the device seems reasonable. At least it does to me. But maybe that's because I actually did work backward from Led Zeppelin, to the Stones, to Muddy and Wolf, to Robert Johnson and learned to love them all. But if you started me on Johnson, or worse, Charlie Patton with those horrid recordings, you'd have lost me immediately.