Me: How was your day? 8yo: I just worry they are doing it wrong. Me: Doing what wrong? 8yo: They separate everything so we can’t understand anything. Who says music isn’t really math or math isn’t science really? Someone made categories but the world is a mushier than that.
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Replying to @RanaAwdish
Actually, separation into categories is meant to aid understanding: a divide-and-conquer strategy. Understanding everything all at once -- everything as connected to everything -- is too hard for humans. Science succeeds by isolating small pieces of reality for detailed study.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @RanaAwdish
The intrinsic complexity of even just small pieces of reality means that grasping them fully requires us to isolate them from the whole. But your 8-year-old is certainly right that we aim, in the end, to integrate those small pieces back together. The whole is indeed the goal.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @RanaAwdish
It's a little bit like climbing Mount Everest. You need to establish various camps on the way up the face, and think of the climb in stages. Of course this doesn't mean that the mountain is itself broken up into pieces. But if you want to get to the top as a human, that's how.
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By the way, parenting a kid like yours is surely one of the greatest (and most fascinating) challenges known to our species. It's best, I think, when confronting this challenge, to have in mind some inspiring examples of successful strategies. E.g.:http://bit.ly/1Pn1UEN
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