Random Collisions with Knowledge

In my previous post, I told the story of picking up a book on urban legends and quickly devouring it. That made me reflect on how frequently I have picked up an odd book lying around and how that habit has given me a breadth of knowledge. I doubt it would happen today.

One constant resource for me as a kid was the World Book Encyclopedia. We had a set on our shelves, and I was constantly running to it to look up some information. But the important thing is that I never went straight to the article I was interested in. If I was interested in something beginning with S, I would pull out the S volume and open it to a random page. I would then need to move forward or backward in the book depending on where my word was alphabetically. But first, I would look at the page and usually find something interesting and read up on it. I would then move closer to my article, but stop again, and read something again. It would typically take me at least 30 minutes before I actually got to the topic I was originally looking for, and on the way I would learn about a dozen unrelated topics. I think paging through those volumes was more critical for my education than anything I ever got in school. I learned lots of useless trivia that I still know to this day, but I also got a background in almost every field of knowledge, so that I could make sense of any more information that came my way. If I have one major intellectual strength, it is breadth of knowledge. I may not be an expert on much, but I know something about almost everything.

I was at the younger end of a large family of readers. That means there were always books lying around, from casual reading to college textbooks. I don't know how many times I would find some book, pick it up, and start reading. For almost all of the books I can remember, I have no idea whose they were. They were just sitting around and I read them. Chariots of the Gods by Van Danniken was one such book. I was fascinated and started to believe we were visited by ancient astronauts and became fascinated with the Mayans. There were other books on ESP and other kinds of pseudoscience, which I generally read uncritically. I don't know exactly when I started to become critical of these, but I eventually did. I remember looking for things on Mayans at a later age and finding none of it seemed as cool or mysterious as I remembered. Of course, that is because I was finding facts, not fantasies.

I also picked up higher quality material. One that I remember best was a college textbook that dealt with logical fallacies. I devoured that and was fascinated with it. I would start to look for logical fallacies in my life. By the time I was in high school, I already had a decent understanding of how our logic can go wrong. I was disappointed when I went to college and logical fallacies were not covered in any class I had. I assume there is some philosophy class that I could have taken that would have covered it. A day spent reading that section of a book was one of the most important readings I had in my life. I still think logical fallacies should be part of the general education requirements of every student.

One day I saw The Stranger, by Albert Camus lying around, and I picked it up and read it in one sitting. I had no idea who Camus was and was only vaguely familiar with existentialism. I appreciated the book and had that background when I was exposed to some of these ideas later.

I could go on with many examples of random books in a other areas--history, literature, psychology (actually very little natural science--I got that at the library). That was my education. Formal education only became helpful when I reached college. I learned little of use before that. I guess I learned a lot about the constitution while in high school, but that is because I actually read the constitution in the appendix of the history book when I was supposed to be doing something else. We never actually covered or read the constitution in class. It was fascinating, I don't know why it isn't read by everyone.

That doesn't happen as much now. Of course, I no longer have random books from other people lying around. The books are my books now. I get books I like and enjoy, but they are books I chose, not random collisions with knowledge. When I look things up now, I go directly to what I want. I do love the internet. There is more information at your fingertips than ever before, and I like that if I want to know what other movies I saw that actor in, I can find out in 30 seconds. But in the past, it might have taken me 30 minutes and I would find out 20 other interesting things on the way. There is something lost there. It is reflected in how the internet allows us to only find what we already agree with or already know and associate with people who think like us. It has its advantages, but it also cuts into that breadth and wider associations. I am glad I read both Van Danniken and Camus.