Mental Models of Purpose of College
2 years ago
Posts
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Mason, Ch. 3
Like a few other people have mentioned, the only thing I could think while reading this chapter was, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". To be honest, I don't really get what the point of this chapter is. It seems like Mason spent the entire chapter three explaining why knowledge was more important in history and that it pushed understanding to the back burner. Then he explains why it shouldn't be this way because there needs to be some kind of understanding of understanding. But then he ends the chapter saying that anything like a "general theory of understanding" would surely be a fantasy (49). So I'm left wondering why we read this chapter. I feel like the argument at the beginning of the chapter was the same at the end. You can't have understanding without knowledge and you can't have knowledge without understanding.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I feel like this was question worth asking, even if there was no real answer. But I agree that the conclusion he makes at the end is very important, and does kind of redefine what we were thinking the issue was during the chapter.
ReplyDeleteLater on in page 49, he says "Instead of looking for a fundamental, reductionist theory of understanding, we could simply try to understand it, in its manifold forms." There is no such thing as capital-U, comprehensive Understanding or capital-K, comprehensive Knowledge. We grow our understanding and knowledge at the same time, building off each other--more understanding helps us acquire more knowledge, and more knowledge helps us realize we have more understanding. So it's unrealistic to say we have Knowledge before Understanding, or Understanding before Knowledge--as if it was possible to have all of one and none of the other at any time.