I offer this article in my continued search on Cognitive Warfare, as I explore the way we perceive reality, how we think, how we learn. This is part of that.
If you look at the people of our past, it is incredible how wide their expertise was. Leonardo da Vinci is the famous model of such ‘Uomo Universale’, with considerable and top level contributions in painting, drawing, sculpting, science, engineering, architecture, anatomy, …
This Renaissance ideal is succinctly captured by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72): “a man can do all things if he will.”
Many of history’s greats are such ‘Renaissance Men’ (or Women). Look at Thomas Jefferson, for example.
(Jefferson’s library recreated for the Thomas Jefferson Exhibition, Library of Congress)
In his library at Villa Monticello he had not only books in English, but in French, Italian, German, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, even Anglo-Saxon,… And he read, knew and quoted them, too!
We look at such people in awe, as so few people today seem to be able to reach such all-encompassing level of skill.
Why is that?
I have come up with 2 main reasons. The first is the type of education received. For the extreme position: in our current day and age, too often people forget themselves in their specializations, and lose all necessary context.
My uncle, on my mother’s side, was in the Belgian Navy (specialized in frigates for general use and submarine hunting, and mine sweepers, currently in special cooperation with the Dutch Navy, under single command). He started with a degree in Civil Engineering at the Belgian Military Academy, and rose to the rank of Captain-at-Sea, roughly equivalent to colonel.
He was involved in several development missions under NATO flag, and he would be the one to lead large international teams of experts. Why him? Coming from the Belgian education system, he had received a thorough schooling in at least the basics of many different fields: math, physics, chemistry, and many of their respective subfields, such as materials science and such.
As the head overseeing the development of plastic mine sweepers and other technologies, he was uniquely well placed to deal with problems his engineers encountered: if part of his design team ran into a snag, he could direct them to the chemistry team with a very specific issue to inquire about, for example, to solve their own issue.
Instead of having a very deep, but narrow, understanding, he had a broad but still considerably deep multidisciplinary understanding. American education, from what I can tell, is increasingly specialized. My first years of college consisted of the basics for Literacy, Art and Philosophy, not optional, even though my chosen subject was archaeology.
Only later on did I get the chance to choose my path in more specialized fields in archaeology, while the general fields never disappeared (literature, history of arts, history of architecture, history of ethnic art, music history, apart from general history, classical history, modern history, historical criticism, etc.)
Why teach archaeology students about music history? From a strict utilitarian point of view, useless: we never dig up music. Instruments, perhaps, albeit rarely, but music history did not cover instruments, the chronology of different types and subtypes, nor the material and craftsmanship used to make them. Why then?
To offer a full picture of history and civilization.
This is absolutely crucial, and something people with a utilitarian outlook cannot grasp.
That is a first reason I see: proper educational emphasis on a broader range of subjects. Including, importantly, those that teach the building blocks of our civilization.
But such educations are not that rare. There are many Eton style schools, teaching a classic curriculum. What else, is missing, then?
This is my second proposed reason.
In order to be able to understand the world around us, we need not just the right facts, which we can learn through proper education and from properly sifted sources, we also need the right framework to place those facts in.
If we don’t have such framework, we will miss the obvious relationships. It is important to notice that I am not proposing a single framework, but a structure of understanding that is comprised of many frameworks, larger ones, containing smaller ones, each containing even smaller ones. And as is the case with many things, it isn’t that difficult, but so simple many overlook it.
Here is the key: to understand the problems in any given field, one needs to go one step higher, and often the problems will melt away like snow in the sun.
Case in point, taxonomy. How do you classify the living organisms? People got lost in small systems, or ordered plants by use or medicinal property and strength, like the Divine Husbandman's Materia Medica, by Shen Nung, Emperor of China around 3000 BC.
He divided several hundred plants in 3 broad groups, the Noble/Upper Herbs, the Human/Commoner/Middle Herbs, and the Lower Herbs, according to their medicinal qualities: plants with only positive and no harmful effects on humans, those with both positive and negative effects, and finally the poisonous ones with only negative effects.
It would be very woke to point out that no system of classification is wrong, and that all such systems are equivalent. To a point: true. Each system will answer specific questions, and offer specific answers. Still, each will have their limitations, in various degrees, and will have various and at times little general use outside a very specific and limited set of parameters.
It wasn’t until Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish researcher (1707–1778) that a universal system was set up. His Species Plantarum (1753) and Systema Naturae (1758) provided a framework for plants and animals, with clear and strict rules, that allowed not just a description of the world, but also a classification.
One of Linnaeus’ strongest early critics was Georges-Luise Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788). He thought it wrong to impose an artificial order on the disorderly natural world. But a framework as de Buffon proposed, would impede proper understanding, by burying one under descriptions, without any way to classify, relate, and understand the reality they describe.
Of course, Linnaeus’ system has since been amended and improved upon, but the core remains. It allows us to deduce a lot about a previously unknown animal or plant, just by being able to place it in its approximate place in that classification. From a proper understanding of the taxonomy of dogs, I can know a lot about dogs, even if I am no expert.
If I place that framework of Linnaeus within that of genetics, I can now talk about degeneration/hyperspecialization among modern dog breeds, and some of the dangers and pitfalls that breeders have fallen in, and suggest solutions that will make me look like an expert, while in reality, I am nothing but an amateur. But an amateur armed with the proper frameworks to look through.
If one finds the correct set of frames that both describe and classify reality, in it’s different parts, one can know a lot, even without many of the specifics, and can understand the work of actual experts, as that framework it falls within offers a powerful explanatory view.
Important to note: the key feature is having overarching frameworks of understanding: while a friend of mine is no geologist, he has an understanding of the overarching principles, which allowed him to correct or point at a flaw in an article by an actual top expert he was in correspondence with. He does not know the smaller frameworks, with all the details, that is true. But to a degree, that is not necessary to detect flaws in the general direction or overview of what that expert wrote about.
Ad this offers a tantalizing possibility: what are those correct frameworks, that allow to add and understand previously unknown information without a hitch, opening up new correlations with even seemingly unrelated events/facts?
Just as the naturalists before Linnaeus each had their own views, all valid to a point, there was a single, comprehensive and coherent way to look at that part of reality. I believe it is the same when it comes to politics, philosophy, history, humanity.
Once you find the right general understanding, a lot falls in place, even if the details remain unknown, until you become an actual expert.
And when I look at how Trump has managed to be a military school cadet, multilingual, business man, a reality TV star, a real estate mogul, and now a politician and world leader able to solve Gordian knots without pulling out his sword, it seems he has found the right set of frameworks through which he has a very powerful lens and tool to view and understand the world around him, enabling him to adapt quickly to new information and situations.
What are those proper frameworks, then? I could suggest at least some answers, but, just as in Linnaeus’ day, that’ll be debated and rejected, just the same.
What is important, is to understand that such frameworks exist, that possible frameworks are not necessarily equivalent to each other. And that they form a hierarchy of smaller to larger frameworks that allow us to place and understand the information around us.
Thank you so much for your contributions here. Incidentally, I happened to be in Washington during the time that Library of Congress exhibit was showing. Seeing that was a major highlight of my 80 year life, I can tell you!
What a perfect way to express the genius of Trump and others. They look at their environment, everybody, actions, all things to use them to coalesce and mold into a better world. With them seeing all different possibilities, it is as if they are time traveling since they realize the potential outcomes of so many endings.