Richard Feynman’s very insightful and colorful descriptions and expositions in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out engages the reader in a conversation; to episodes in his life, specific physics topics, and even the meaning of life itself. A crucial concept relevant to ITP students is the passage on doubt and uncertainty – the “wedges” through which knowledge is gained since they point toward further questioning and investigation. Feynman describes in a clear and concise way how the scientific method, applied again and again since the life of the great Galileo, has provided the means for human progress. This approach, and the thorough immersement in an environment that celebrates it, is a primary means for valuing Feynman’s words in the ITP education.
However, Feynman asserts (in a challenge to problem-solvers everywhere) the scientific method is isolated from human life in general and especially alienated from creative methods. Perhaps there’s hope in directly immersing non-linear thinkers in scientific knowledge/methodology (like at ITP). I believe the main reason for reading Feynman’s piece is to rediscover the joy of heuristic knowledge – knowledge gained while discovering and experiencing or actualizing thought experiments. This is the knowledge every 5-year-old gains every day without fear, and maybe more outside than in the classroom. But perhaps the greater purpose of Feynman’s challenge can be met by examining how children are taught critical thinking. To do this we should re-think how intelligence itself is defined to include multiple intelligences and how the scientific method is defined to include non-linear problem solving. Perhaps by embracing more, we can rediscover this same joy.
Feynman differentiates the scientific process – the hypothesis, gathering of evidence and analysis process – as discrete from the ends to which we drive – the drive towards greater meaning as source of human purpose in life. Scientific methodology used “disinterestedly”108 contributes to the greater good; adding knowledge to the giant pool of ideas forming the knowledge of the human race. Introducing the scientific method to widely diverse groups in society serves the purpose of that greater good by ruling in or out the meaning of astrology for example, or faith healing. However, I would challenge whether the scientific method is even taught in early childhood, since the problem seems systemic. Feynman is no complainer, he proposes to directly “attack in the sense of discuss”110 the issue with the adversaries. So perhaps we should use his methods and attack in the sense of discuss the notions of education to reveal why the ensuing isolation has formed.
There is truth to the claim that the scientific method is isolated from the general population at large beginning quite early in the intellectual life of children. At my home in Hawaii, most children are taught straight off a state-approved curriculum, made even more stringent recently by the passing of the Leave No Child Behind Act of 2003. I was lucky in that my parents’ behavior provided the example of critical thought – the ability and regular practice of argumentation in order to reveal, to burrow into truth, to lay bare assumptions that may have been mistakenly laid, and to winnow out hidden insights. However, Hawaii, like many colonialized areas who only in the past 50 years gained democratic recognition either through nationhood or statehood, carries within its culture and educational system the remnants of that racist past and the structure of the modernist approach to social organization. This approach is typified by the educational policy written into law in 1895 during the presidency of Grover Cleveland, with William Torrey Harris serving as U.S. Commissioner of Education. The approach viewed the citizenry as parts to be assembled into the giant machinery of society. The outcome of this viewpoint has been highly stratified learning processes that marginalized critical thought; the track system and standardized testing. Students are not trained to doubt or question, but constantly fed data, tested, and monitored for verbal and mathematical-logical talent. Students are segregated into separate tracks to be trained for their appropriate functions in society, with top test-takers trained for leadership. In all students, obedience and silence in a state-controlled classroom environment is required from an early age, separating the child from the alternate educational unit of family or community. As Feynman says himself “You can communicate truth and you can communicate lies.” 113 The subtlety that can be lost here is that you can communicate hierarchies of intelligence and methodology innate to the system itself.
A problem with this approach is that the inherent hierarchies of race, sex, and culture were built in, a long-standing critique that many reformers, including Red Burns at ITP, have addressed through multi-disciplinary curricula that ignores or directly counters these factors. But it goes much deeper than that. The prioritization of certain intelligences is an assumption rarely challenged. Feynman indicates in several scenarios throughout his book that systems that work in certain situations must be completely redesigned when constructed in new environments; likewise intelligence classification itself must be re-concepted. The issue of people lacking what Feynman calls the scientific morality must be seen as a problem with both how intelligence is concepted as almost exclusively based on mathematical and verbal – and how the scientific method itself is conceptualized as a strict linear path from singularly identified cause to singularly effected outcome. In contrast, I would propose that intelligence includes categories such as musical, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, emotional, spatial and pattern/systems-recognition intelligences and that multi-linear and non-linear approaches add concrete reliable knowledge of the world in the quest for enlightenment.
Most of these intelligences have been laid out by the work of Harold Gardner at Harvard and others, illustrating how the mass-education system Feynman describes is designed to minimally challenge students on whom the only consistent expectations placed are to not stir things up, answer what they could but defer to their betters, and stay quiet and follow orders. I have seen years first-hand of this antiquated modernist approach rolling along unchallenged in public schools. It will always be striking to me that the Hawaiian children I went to public school with who were incredible swimmers, musicians and storytellers but were NOT trained to critique are now often janitors, health aides, security guards, and secretaries while the white children I to private middle school with who tested well and were trained in critical thought are business owners, accountants, lawyers and professors. The irony here is that the modernist approach to education was designed by educators like James Bryant Conant at Harvard, who saw themselves as applying the scientific method towards curriculum – building a system that could serve all of society and turn out moderately competent citizens – while actually discouraging the scientific approach in the large mass of students
The methodology used in the educational systems is striking. The public school I attended emphasized the tracking system to segregate intellectual ability groups so “order” could be preserved, while the private school I attended emphasized heuristic knowledge – whether it be gained by performing Shakespeare, conducting sound experiments or gardening. So besides the strictly tested intelligences, children’s multiple intelligences were stimulated in many areas and advancement was based on a holistic balance of talents. A more holistic method allows for critical thought in many areas and encourages the accompanying self-respect that heuristic knowledge brings to the individual child. Recognition of musical talent for example, goes largely unrecognized unless there is an especially endowed program, the cultural background of the child allows for this recognition or the family unit actually encourages this talent outside the classroom, while at the same time the child may be deemed a failure according to standardized testing. Athletic or dance capabilities likewise are rewarded tangentially rather than directly, not specifically for the intelligence the child is deemed to have but for the prestige that the achievement brings to the school. For systems/pattern recognition talents, the problem is different – a Yanomami Indian in the Amazon may have advanced systems knowledge of his ecosystem, but the talent may not translate to an advanced interconnected system of machinery.
The point here is that these other intelligences ARE recognized by the wider society, but are not rewarded as intelligences, but rather rewarded as lower-level skills, like the ability to draw a straight line. These intelligences have been relegated to lower levels that serve purposes designated by leaders who have been rewarded by the system, in self-perpetuating cycle. So part of the response to Feyman’s challenge that scientific methodology is irrelevant and that wider society doesn’t need it, is a need to recognize other intelligences firstly and to identify how each intelligence is currently using the method, if at all. For example, athletes use the scientific method constantly, measuring their progress against previous performances utilizing specific body stances or combinations of muscles and thrust, but are not often recognized using anything but “a new move,” because this knowledge is hard to pass along using verbal language.
A second response to Feynman’s challenge is to examine the linear process he describes as the most effective. The research and growing body of knowledge in the arena of complexity theory, self-catalytic processes and emergent systems properties point to a different way to understand causality and gain subsequent knowledge. In the standard scientific method, you begin with doubt and proceed through a hypothesis to a tested outcome and concluded result, in a linear path with as much isolation of individual elements in the experiment as possible. This is done so as to not “taint” the results with unfactored elements – such as the presence of noise in a sound experiment. The proofs that have been resultant for hundreds of years using the linear method are unarguably great and have shown the power of using the method in the realm of the intelligences tested.
However, the evidence collected at the Santa Fe Institute, for example, and by individual researchers such as Timothy A. Kohler and George J. Gumerman, shows a non-linear method closer to the processes inherent in dynamic systems of motion, growth or change. According to this research, groups of elements that are in motion – bodies in a crowd, schools of fish in the ocean, snowflakes piling up on a precipice – display properties that result in something more than their collected individual values. In other words, you can pile up all the individually observed snowflakes you want but when you get them in a group, their sum will display different properties in varying temperatures – they will eventually avalanche. This understanding of behaviors seen when elements are dynamically grouped points to the concept of collaborative or group intelligences, such as those used in interpersonally talented people. This is only now at the verge of being recognized as a method that could be used side-by-side with the classical scientific method, complementing it. With Feynman’s description of the marginalization of the scientific method in the mathematical/scientific sector of highly tested, highly rewarded, highly modernist educated population, it only makes sense that these people use their linear method well with their own intelligences, but find not only their method but their intelligence lacking in such people as faith healers and astrologers. A central rule of the standard scientific method is that it views the element individually and over a highly specified segment of time. In contrast, the methodology observed in self-catalytic processes factors in multiple elements over a time segment that might be described as a cycle, or as a process change from one state to another; like a snowpile building and avalanche falling.
Perhaps for example, a faith healer or shaman is highly talented in interpersonal and emotional intelligences, being able to soothe stress and mediate between parties, but has never been shown a successful application of the scientific method in these areas of intelligence. Taking it a step further, perhaps the shaman utilizes both intelligences, along with his/her internal knowledge of a capability to solve the problem and can see very clearly when a hysterical wife is actually showing symptoms of spousal abuse, rather than signs of demonic possession, and can effectively wield all these intelligences in PARALLEL and OVER TIME, while recording it in oral history for future disciples. The shaman might be viewing the whole system, the woman as part of the family unit entirely and the family as part of the tribe and the tribe as part of the larger culture simultaneously. In contrast to building knowledge only with discrete elements – a pill cures the woman; the shaman might “cure” the woman by activating a disciplinary member within the family, or by affecting an environmental circumstance; a non-linear or multi-linear approach that may have both immediate and long-term benefits for both the woman and all women in the tribe. Another example of this type of systems problem solving over cycles of time might be how diverting foot traffic and placing sound barriers violence can avoid a riot in a crowd (a change from peaceful state in a crowd to energized state). These solutions are non-linear in the sense that they may work not individually but collectively and incrementally over a larger time cycle.
In contrast to knowledge gained by discrete experiments gaining a single fact, this type of knowledge gained, I would guess, has historically been too complex for humans to record, and too politically and computationally complex for computer scientists to process. However, throughout history, knowledge gained from this type of multi-factor situation HAS been recorded into the wider body of human knowledge, albeit without the controls Feynman refers to. The method most often used is language and bodily based - summing up the scenario in statements or sequences of language and dance/ritual movements that have multiple meanings. Some cultures use oral storytelling, some use religious or contemplative koans, others use myths, religious parables, paintings or sculptures or great works of art along with dance or physical ceremony. Human factor knowledge, exhibiting complex interactions with each other, can be passed along to generations with each generation taking part in its meaning. By telling or illustrating stories, cultures allow for freedom of the storyteller to explore the meaning of the knowledge within the life of both teller and listener, as in the example of ancient hula, which recounts orally, musically and physically the stories of the Hawaiian people. Though this does not conform to the guidelines of scientific method, I would suggest there is a developing methodology to gaining deeper and more consistent knowledge of the data in these diversified bodies of knowledge stored up by the other intelligences that Feynman admits he lacks interest in. In other words, if a particular Greek story tells about father-son conflict, there may be a way to abstract that knowledge and add it to the body of knowledge more like Feynman suggests, but it requires a different question and a different multi-linear methodology, a different design of the entire scenario than he presents.
Allowing for this growth may be an area of huge gains in human
understanding -- in recognizing respecting, understanding and rewarding
intelligences of a more widely varying nature and in allowing for the existence
of a scientific method of a more complex order. IF faith healers are the adversaries that Feynman wishes to
attack perhaps they are good ones, since as has been shown, a particularly
talented one may reveal to Feynman and to all of us where we lack appreciation
for our own human talents, and where we can apply methods that reach into out
past and show a way towards a more holistic and humane future. Tying together
talents that many cultures have evolved to adapt and pass along knowledge in
widely varying environments and recognizing non-linear investigation methods
brings greater knowledge into that great body that used to be called the canon
in the Western tradition, perhaps fulfilling part of the promise Feynman
encourages us to fulfill, breaking off the chains that hold “the limits of our
own imagination.”115
Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Howard Gardner, Intelligence Reframed
Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind
Timothy A. Kohler and George J. Gumerman, Dynamics in Human and
Primate Societies: