Have you ever felt that you could comprehend the world better after learning, for example, thermodynamics, even in totally unrelated topics such as philosophy?
Have you ever noticed that patterns “of factual relationships” and the structures “of ideas/thought” seem to repeat themselves, at some fundamental level in science, philosophy, and even literature?
Have you encountered books or lectures that were substantial enough to affect your life by making “reality” more accessible, especially after thinking and applying its ideas? I’m talking about such an effect that it inserts “context” and “purpose” into your worldview, grounding yourself where one was formerly lost and inspiring yourself to investigate further with this new-found understanding.
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I think there’s something underlying, unifying factor in all of these observations, and I think it would be an interesting project for Veeky Forums to tackle, for the sake of developing our own wisdom.
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I hold the belief that there are certain fundamental “relationships”, for the lack of a better word, that unites concepts within disciplines and across all disciplines. This refers to both 1) the self-evident facts and the raison d’etre that grounds a discipline; and 2) the understanding that certain fundamental patterns—of logic, syntax, information, philosophy, mathematics, or whatever you want to call it—repeat themselves across all disciplines.
All investigations are a form of problem-solving, which means that unrelated disciplines such as psychology and literary theory share the same endgame of wresting some understanding from the world, with perhaps the possibility of some analogous relationships, though the building blocks may be of different qualities. I think that it’s plausible that there exists some basic, atomistic “units of understanding”, though I find it hard to define beyond intuitions.
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Now, what if there were a curriculum, or even a list of books, that could help somebody become acquainted with the various units of understanding, the fundamental ways that these units can form relationships to build concepts, and the relationships between different fields of study that can aid us in developing a deeper appreciation of the world?