The title and central link in this post are allusions to John Keats, specifically his idea of negative capability. The image is another take on Leliel, borrowed with thanks from this artist.
Content with Half-Knowledge
While writing that last post, I got distracted by etymology (as one does). I wanted to link you to the origin of quixotic, a word that means “exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical,” both to teach you the term and give you the allusion to Don Quixote, which also gave us an interesting idiom about windmills.
Anyway, I discovered two things to share with you. The first is the Chrome extension for the Online Etymological Dictionary:
Install that on your school Chromebook, if nowhere else, so that you can quickly look up the etymology of new and interesting words you encounter. The more you learn to recognize roots, the more easily you’ll intuit the meaning of unfamiliar words. (Note: The extension seems to be blocked right now. I’ll apply to get it unblocked. Bookmark the address for later.)
Remember what Paul Graham wrote: “[T]he more you learn, the more hooks you have for new facts to stick onto — which means you accumulate knowledge at what’s colloquially called an exponential rate.”
The second thing is this bit of writing by the author of the Online Etymological Dictionary:
I think the title should be “Cloud of Unknowing,” but ignore that — this fits our space perfectly. One of our goals is to “get the feel of things in fog or dusk,” which means trusting that the search is more important than any final answer. It’s again the idea that “the most important thing one learns is something about how one learns,” which is part of the Neil Postman quotation at the top of this website1
I want you to take a moment this weekend to think about your own relationship to uncertainty. To what extent are you comfortable with not knowing? Write about that, and will you have a better sense of what it really means to study the Humanities. After all, there are very few things as human as being a little bit lost and trying to find a way forward.
That’s lofty stuff, so here’s the bathetic bit: If you write about your relationship to uncertainty, you’ll also generate evidence of (1) doing more than just what is required, and (2) a precocious strength in metacognition, which are two of the criteria for the top tier of GAP scoring.
By the way, “bathetic” is another of those words that stuck in my head when I read Perdido Street Station, which first came up here. “Bathetic” is the term for a sudden drop in conversation, writing, etc., from the elevated to the commonplace. So we go from discussing the philosophical heights of the Humanities to motivating you through grades. The root of the word is bathos, which is fun to say, if nothing else.
How we access and process knowledge is changing in the hypertextual era, which is the era of immediate access to the Internet. It’s a commonplace question, although that doesn’t make it any less important. Here is Pete Holmes talking about uncertainty in a stand-up act:
You have Chromebooks, smartphones, and desktops that give you immediate answers to any questions you have, from how to complete homework to the meaning of life. That’s an important and mostly unexplored part of your learning. ↩