A quest for knowledge - Ep. 7: Lessons

The lessons succeeded. I was feeling once again like one of those students of mine, moving from class to class, from master to master, from the farthest theory to the closest practice.

Some lessons were about new subjects, each one providing a diverse perspective upon the same world, and starting almost from the very beginning, new principles, terms and concepts, the most basic of things. Poking around, testing, experimenting, widening the base. Not always immediately understanding the what and the why. Sometimes seeking, far too soon, for a usefulness to this knowledge.

In many others, I felt increasingly venturing along a narrow path, focusing, entering the domain of experts. Ascending one level. Understanding the complexity that, after all, makes things simpler. Participating in sessions that a few years ago, or even a mere few months ago, would be totally incomprehensible for me, as if spoken in a foreign language.

But even more than extending horizontal lines or progressing along the vertical scale, I was becoming increasingly interested in the oblique paths, those that allow you to cross over multiple domains and various levels, hence blending knowledge. Looking at the natural in an abstract way, and to the abstract with the eyes of nature, adding a dash of art, here and there, questioning, jumping barriers, circumventing or confronting those acting as landlords of some of such domains.

However, it was only in the Newtonian era that this new cohabitation [between Physics and Mathematics] led to a genuine marriage. Newton's "Principia", needless to say it, were a mathematical work par excellence (...). A physics student needed, at the very least, to be well prepared in conical section geometry and preferably also in calculus. As a result, from the moment Newton's Cosmology began to be taken seriously at the universities of continental Europe, the physics course had to be prefaced by the detailed teaching of Mathematics (*)

So much to know, so much to learn, so much to teach, so much to discover. And so little time for all that! A permanent tension between learning something different, something new, or deepening an already ongoing path. Torn between the whole and small parts. Between listening to many masters or arguing with only one or two, almost as equals.

I realize that these are not only dilemmas of mine, but also of the masters themselves. They debate what to teach, how to do it, in what sequence. What is most relevant and what might be accessory. They have different opinions on the foundations and methods, on the role of each discipline, on the use of time.

I do not know if these questions will have an answer during the century to come, the nineteenth, that is already around the corner ...

(to be continued)


On a journey, riding with Newton, a game of Nestore Mangone and Simone Luciani, Ediciones Mas que Oca (2018) under license of Cranio Creations. 
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(*) Free translation from Uma História da Universidade na Europa [A History of the University in Europe], Vol. II – As Universidades na Europa Moderna (1500-1800), Coordenação de Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda (2002).