2003 May 1

Canon

The question of "what an educated person needs to know" is currently running around the blogosphere. For instance, Matthew Yglesias writes

But then I stop and think about it and realize that I know lots and lots of very intelligent people who simply don't know where the countries of the world are located, and they all seem fine. It just so happens that for whatever reason (a strange love of maps, I suppose) I know a lot of geography and so it seems to me that everyone ought to know a lot of geography. [+]
(To which I have to say: There's nothing strange about a love of maps. Maps are one of the greatest inventions of humankind. Maps rule.)

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum worries:

Still, from a "cultural literacy" point of view you could argue that there are certain key aspects of science that everyone should know about. But which ones? [+]

It seems to me that arguing about what belongs in a canon is beside the point, or possibly actively counterproductive. Logic and analysis are tools; facts are lumber. You can't build a durned thing without having a good supply of both, but practically speaking, nobody has a big enough garage to keep everything on hand.

Am I arguing that squoshy underachiever's defence, then, that there's no point in memorizing facts because you can just go look them up when you need them? Hell, no, not least because you need facts on hand to tell you when you've run across a new one that doesn't seem to fit.

What the world needs, then, is an army of inquisitors all armed with different facts and different tools. To first order, it doesn't matter that much what you know, so long as you're doing your part in knowing stuff, and in fact, it seems to me it's a positive advantage if what you know is different from what your neighbour knows. The thing you have to have in common, I think, is a means of reconciling points of view, which means basic literacy, numeracy, and logic.

Beyond that, there's only one other thing that I think any educated person worth anything ought to know: that he or she does not know nearly enough about anything, and needs to learn more.

Maps, though, still rule. There are only 193 countries in the world. How hard is it to know where they all are?

Comments

Hi, I liked your comment that there is an advantage to knowning something different than your neighbor knows. I recently wrote up a nice story problem that shows how two people can both benefit and have more by trading than they would alone:

http://kantz.com/jason/trade-advantage.html

Posted by: Jason Kantz on May 2, 2003 07:36 AM
Post a comment
Yes   No   (like the Turing Test, but easier)

TrackBack Links
If you run a blog that supports TrackBack, you can link to this article with this TrackBack key.