– Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind
Throughout my school years, and on up into law school, there was always one complaint I heard every year, without fail, regarding a course I was taking. The complaint was this: “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” Variations on this theme included “But why can’t I just use my calculator?” and “Is this going to be on the test?”
Of course, looking back I can’t see that this attitude is much of a surprise. As I have mentioned before, American culture does not place a very high value on intellectual achievement, choosing instead to value more practical things, like being able to lip sync while pole dancing or being able to be a starting athlete on a professional sports team without having ever been convicted of a felony.
This is something that’s quite tragic and, I might add, not in keeping with the American tradition of admiring intellectual prowess. Whether knowledge is found valuable tends to wax and wane in society, but the value of knowledge remains important regardless of how popular it is.
The Practicality of Knowledge
– Proverbs 24:3-4
What always bothers me about the “when will I need this in real life?” question is that it ignores the fact that knowledge is virtually always practical. You may not know when or how you may have to use certain information, but you can never tell when you might need it. Especially in today’s economic world. After all, most people aren’t going to have the same job their whole lives, or even the same career their whole lives. A broad base of knowledge and skills means that you have flexibility when it comes to making a living.
Moreover, a broad base of knowledge is essential for real creativity and innovation. As Steven Dutch notes:
Memorization is not the antithesis of creativity; it is absolutely indispensable to creativity. Creative insights come at odd and unpredictable moments, not when you have all the references spread out on the table in front of you. You can’t possibly hope to have creative insights unless you have memorized all the relevant information. And you can’t hope to have really creative insights unless you have memorized a vast amount of information, because you have no way of knowing what might turn out to be useful.
Additionally, the more knowledge you have, and the more learning you accomplish, the deeper your understanding of the world becomes. I don’t understand people who study the great philosophers but ignore science. I don’t get why people might devote themselves to science but exhibit no interest in art. I don’t understand how someone can know everything about art but know precious little about math. All knowledge is, in some way, connected. Do you think it’s an accident that Leonardo da Vinci was both a great artist and a great engineer? Of course not. He was both hardworking and had a passion for learning and doing.
People are fond of saying that imagination is limitless. But this is nonsense. Our imagination is limited by our knowledge of the world around us. Without a basic understanding of a subject, our imagination about that subject is essentially closed off. We can’t make new connections or formulate new theories when we don’t know the basics. Knowledge matters there, too.
The Intrinsic Value of Knowledge
– William Shakespeare
Beyond mere practicality, though, is the intrinsic value of knowledge. As I have written before, human beings are compelled, as a consequence of consciousness, to seek out answers and find meaning in this world. And it’s the quest for knowledge–the constant advance of learning–that produces true understanding and meaning. As Richard Feynman wrote in his memoirs:
I have a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty. [...] There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
I don’t, either. When I’m out in nature, I love to think about the amazing complexity of photosynthesis, or pollinization, or cloud formations. When I was six years old, I did a research project on different kinds of clouds and how they interact. I still remember that stuff to this day, and to this day I have a better than decent chance of knowing whether it’s going to rain because of the shapes of the clouds. (Not 100%, alas, but meterologists aren’t 100% either). I love knowing the history of things, the working of things, and all of the parts that make this world full of wonder and awe. It’s emotionally and spiritually satisfying, and I can’t imagine taking comfort in ignorance. I can admit ignorance, sure. I don’t know everything–indeed, there’s lots of stuff I don’t know about. But to me those mysteries are delightful. The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know, which just makes me eager to learn more.
Knowledge in the Information Age
– Louis L’Amour
Ironically enough, in this information age, knowledge is actually becoming devalued–even amongst intellectuals. The prevalence of blogs and pundits has created a massive pent up demand for people to become “experts on everything”–except that people take shortcuts. I’m sorry, but a couple of Wikipedia articles and a quick Google search doesn’t make you an expert on health care. There are enormous data sets and facts that have to be understood in order to grasp it.
A few months ago, Peter Suderman made the claim that the Information Age makes knowledge of facts and principles less important, because your mind can instead act as an index for sets of information:
Reading on the web is almost certainly affecting the way we process information, but it’s not making us stupid. Instead, it’s changing the way we’re smart. Rather than storehouses of in-depth information, the web is turning our brains into indexes. These days, it’s not what you know — it’s what you know you can access, and cross reference.In other words, books taught us to think like they do — as tools for storing extensive knowledge. Now the web teaches us to think like it does — as a tool for recall and connection. We won’t be so good at memorizing everything there is to know about a particular small-bore topic, but we’ll be a lot better at knowing what there is to be known about the broader category the topic fits into, and what other information might provide insight and context.
This sounds lovely, but is in fact fallacious. It’s impossible to make true connections between fields of knowledge without having a good understanding of that field of knowledge. After all, if there’s one thing that the Internet has taught us, it’s that search engines are stupid. They’re fast at picking out things related to keywords, but if a website shares the concept but doesn’t use the same word, you’re stuck.
The same thing holds true for your mind. If all you have in your head is a barebones structure of information, you will never make real, deep connections between subjects because your knowledge of those subjects isn’t deep enough. Consider this: most of us are aware that salt makes water freeze at a lower temperature, right? That’s why they put it on the roads in winter. But if that’s all you knew, you would never know that when you add salt to water when you’re boiling pasta, that addition will actually increase the boiling point as well. But if you understood why salt lowers the freezing point on a physical level, it’s easy to make the connection to the boiling point elevation, as the concepts are interrelated to solution chemistry.
It’s not enough to just “know where to look stuff up” if you want to be able to understand a topic. Creative thinking and true understanding are dependent on basic knowledge. And more and better connections are made between different subjects the more you know about them. The depth of one’s knowledge is important.
Conclusion
Having written and trashed several paragraphs to conclude this essay, I decided that I was better off simply closing this with an excerpt from the great, great poem “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, because it sums up the ideas here better than I can:
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
[...]
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
I think when people ask when they are going to use something, what they are really asking is how they can use it to get paid. If practical knowledge is only that which gets you a job, then very little knowledge is needed. You can function adequately in the world without curiosity.
However, I think your point about using a variety of knowledge in other facets of life is a good one. Philosophy or literature may comfort you in times of distress. Studying mathematics may improve your logical thinking skills. An appreciation of art or nature may add wonder and beauty to the everyday. None of these things show up on a paycheck, but very little that matters does.
I saw a reputable poll somewhere that said that almost 90% of people watch network news. I think people feel somehow *accountable* to their peers for knowing what their peers are likely to know. I think when people complain that knowledge isn’t practical, they’re really saying that they don’t feel accountable to know it. I think this is a function of the way social groups organize, and that as social media offer us new ways to coordinate and collaborate with each other, many more people will feel accountable to understand new types of knowledge beyond the garden-variety, global memes. At that point, it’s a glorious arms-race towards both depth and breadth in the subject matter.