4 ms·
> If you want to learn about topic X , land on the stories around X, and then expand into X itself. How do I know what story/books surround X without reading X
by a_c 7y ago
> If you want to learn about topic X , land on the stories around X, and then expand into X itself.
How do I know what story/books surround X without reading X first?
More, how do I know what books surround X without reading those books first?
- wenc 7y agoYou can do high level research before committing to X. Skimming subject literature, asking others, googling (someone's probably talked about it before), wikipedia, even flipping through X etc. are all useful. Subject areas rarely exist in a vacuum. A big part of education is learning how to learn things -- it's a metaskill. Knowledge exists in a network, and knowing how to use the network to bootstrap is a tremendously useful skill.
- smogcutter 7y agoThe history podcaster Mike Duncan gave a good example. On one of his shows he explained that when he’s researching a new topic, he’ll start by searching “[topic] historiography”. This gets you a history of the scholarship around a topic, rather than the history itself. What do experts think about different approaches and primary sources? How have those approaches changed? What are the major theories and strains of thought? Then the initial meta-historical reading points you towards actual sources and gives you a context to understand them in.