I'm often startled anew by how pre-Newtonian learning remains. You just made a new lesson / activity / explanation. Is it effective? Is it engaging? What parts work best/worst? Getting high-signal answers is very slow—and evaluation is often many times as expensive as creation.
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Does “pre-Newtonian” just mean “primitive” in this case, or is there something pedagogical associated with Newton?
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Ah, specifically: we lack something akin to F=ma; our theories are mostly Aristotelean, driven more by philosophy than explanatory systematicity.
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Feel free to move past Aristotle into the word of Karl Popper, who’s ideas are ripe for application by anybody interested in learning, or sharing their ideas.
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Replying to @nicholasbs
Popper argued the mind is a searchlight. Unlike a vessel, it can’t be filled by things outside itself. It can’t passively receive wisdom.
Instead, it guesses at things and sends narrow, inquisitive beams out in the world to test its ideas.
See ‘The Bucket and the Searchlight’.