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I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have

by alexb_ 4y ago

I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have come up with it on their own.

msla 4y ago
Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it. A good teacher sands off those edges, leading to an oversimplified history, but not starting from the firm conceptual footing we only got later on still makes things overly difficult to grasp. Good teaching builds on concepts, even if history took a messier route.
- sifar 4y ago
  >> Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it To know this gives us some perspective on our own biases/limitations and not take things as gospel.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    > some perspective on our own biases/limitations This is sometimes prescribed in such form as: "Fraction X of your reading should be of authors writing at least 100 years ago." Similar: In defense of the reading of old books by C.S. Lewis ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFHQDIE7CSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFHQDIE7CSw "All contemporary writers [of any period] share, to some extent, the contemporary outlook."
tchaffee 4y ago
That's not the biggest thing that can help you learn something complex. Practice is the biggest thing. And there are many variations of what motivates people to practice.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
amluto 4y ago
I don’t see why the history of discovery of something should be a particularly good way to rediscover it. As a concrete example, if someone asks “how do we know the Earth is round” or “how do we know the planets orbit the sun”, one could go through ways to figure this out with math and minimal technology. But one could also point out that we have spaceships and probes and have actual pictures! You can see the Earth from a satellite or the ISS or the moon, and you can see the planets from space! I agree that a process of rediscovery can be a useful teaching technique, but that doesn’t mean that rediscovering something the way it was first known to have been discovered is the right approach.
- VLM 4y ago
  Another concrete example of the conflict is classical vs quantum physics which is nearly exclusively taught as the historical story of the quantum revolution or whatever you call it around 1900. It would be trivial to skip the historical story and just "yo here's a FET transistor, a solar cell, and a vacuum tube, and the math just works, so get used to it" but nobody is ever taught that way. Would be interesting for someone to attempt to write a non-historical physics textbook. On the other hand, in IT, this style of learning is considered normal. "This is how the kool kids do things today. The past does not matter and probably didn't exist anyway. The end."
  - chriswarbo 4y ago
    > Would be interesting for someone to attempt to write a non-historical physics textbook. I recall some prominent physicist saying they've never read Einstein's original papers on relativity; and they don't have any real desire to, since we understand it much better now, and have better examples, notations, etc.
    - hyperjeff 4y ago
      Most physicists have never read them, fwiw, as interesting as they may be for their historical role. Most classic papers go unread, and it’s not a bad thing pedagogically. How things get sorted out is usually a huge mess and following the real history can be an enormous distraction (and can confuse and misdirect students).
friedman23 4y ago
I agree, one book I recommend that does this for computing is "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software"
bmitc 4y ago
The way calculus was discovered was via highly geometric methods that are beyond the comprehension of people today. So the historical development of calculus needs to be modernized into modern notation and concepts, which at that point basically becomes examples. While calculus is actually easy to develop and motivate, the way we "discover" it today is nowhere close to how it was originally discovered. In my opinion, calculus is most easily motivated via physical examples. Here is a curve, it represents some information, and what are some things we'd like to know about this curve and thus the information it represents? What are some things we can do with that information? Such motivation can be more abstract and not rely on physical examples, but I think the physical examples help tie it to the so-called real world and somewhat mirrors, in spirit, how and why calculus was originally developed.

by alexb_ 4y ago

I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have come up with it on their own.

msla 4y ago

Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it. A good teacher sands off those edges, leading to an oversimplified history, but not starting from the firm conceptual footing we only got later on still makes things overly difficult to grasp. Good teaching builds on concepts, even if history took a messier route.

sifar 4y ago
>> Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it To know this gives us some perspective on our own biases/limitations and not take things as gospel.
- a9h74j 4y ago
  > some perspective on our own biases/limitations This is sometimes prescribed in such form as: "Fraction X of your reading should be of authors writing at least 100 years ago." Similar: In defense of the reading of old books by C.S. Lewis ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFHQDIE7CSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFHQDIE7CSw "All contemporary writers [of any period] share, to some extent, the contemporary outlook."

tchaffee 4y ago

That's not the biggest thing that can help you learn something complex. Practice is the biggest thing. And there are many variations of what motivates people to practice.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

amluto 4y ago

I don’t see why the history of discovery of something should be a particularly good way to rediscover it. As a concrete example, if someone asks “how do we know the Earth is round” or “how do we know the planets orbit the sun”, one could go through ways to figure this out with math and minimal technology. But one could also point out that we have spaceships and probes and have actual pictures! You can see the Earth from a satellite or the ISS or the moon, and you can see the planets from space! I agree that a process of rediscovery can be a useful teaching technique, but that doesn’t mean that rediscovering something the way it was first known to have been discovered is the right approach.

VLM 4y ago
Another concrete example of the conflict is classical vs quantum physics which is nearly exclusively taught as the historical story of the quantum revolution or whatever you call it around 1900. It would be trivial to skip the historical story and just "yo here's a FET transistor, a solar cell, and a vacuum tube, and the math just works, so get used to it" but nobody is ever taught that way. Would be interesting for someone to attempt to write a non-historical physics textbook. On the other hand, in IT, this style of learning is considered normal. "This is how the kool kids do things today. The past does not matter and probably didn't exist anyway. The end."
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > Would be interesting for someone to attempt to write a non-historical physics textbook. I recall some prominent physicist saying they've never read Einstein's original papers on relativity; and they don't have any real desire to, since we understand it much better now, and have better examples, notations, etc.
  - hyperjeff 4y ago
    Most physicists have never read them, fwiw, as interesting as they may be for their historical role. Most classic papers go unread, and it’s not a bad thing pedagogically. How things get sorted out is usually a huge mess and following the real history can be an enormous distraction (and can confuse and misdirect students).

friedman23 4y ago

I agree, one book I recommend that does this for computing is "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software"

bmitc 4y ago

The way calculus was discovered was via highly geometric methods that are beyond the comprehension of people today. So the historical development of calculus needs to be modernized into modern notation and concepts, which at that point basically becomes examples. While calculus is actually easy to develop and motivate, the way we "discover" it today is nowhere close to how it was originally discovered. In my opinion, calculus is most easily motivated via physical examples. Here is a curve, it represents some information, and what are some things we'd like to know about this curve and thus the information it represents? What are some things we can do with that information? Such motivation can be more abstract and not rely on physical examples, but I think the physical examples help tie it to the so-called real world and somewhat mirrors, in spirit, how and why calculus was originally developed.