The Big Think

Hysterical little Star Wars/Monty Python lego stop action film. See more at Brickfilms.

“There is always a connection, but if the link has never been made before, nobody knows its there.”
James Burke
I’m fascinated by the interrelatedness of seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge. I like to think of learning a new skill or subject as building a spider web. In the beginning, the web is diaphanous and wispy and only a few threads connect to a few others. When first learning a skill or subject, we often have to learn seemingly unrelated facts, and most of what we hear goes over our heads. But as the web comes together and we learn more information, we are better equipped to catch new stuff that comes our way; things that we would have previously missed get picked up as our web of knowledge starts sieving out new information more efficiently. Have you ever had an “aha!” moment? That’s when your knowledge web is telling you it’s become intricate enough to snag facts you wouldn’t have caught earlier. I believe the trick to learning new things is to master the ability to weave this knowledge web dense enough and quick enough so that you’re able to catch new information early.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4
feet 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in
England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Moreover, I’ve found that once you start trying to assemble all your knowledge into a bigger picture- a meta-web- relationships between otherwise disparate subjects start to emerge. Now THIS is where the really fascinating stuff appears-in the cracks “between” fields.
I’ve come to understand that the world of knowledge is so incredibly specialized that there are vanishingly few opportunities for a new participant to contribute something of substance. Newton and Einstein, Niels Bohr and Feynman, Ansel Adams and Picasso were able to make great strides in their fields simply because so much remained unknown. Like Lewis and Clark, everywhere they trod was virgin territory. Our post-modern world of knowledge has been so thoroughly mapped out that there are very few place you can journey that haven’t been analyzed, criticized, tagged, filed and categorized. In order to make a significant contribution today, to significantly “push back the envelope” in any field, one needs to spend years -decades- learning what has come before, what has already been discovered, what needs to be dismissed. Only THEN can you start the trip. Only then can you begin the long process of new discovery.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail
lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad
tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Add to this the fact that all fields have become so incredibly narrow in the last 50 years, with so many people working to describe so many different aspects of the metaphorical elephant, and it’s easy to become discouraged into thinking that one person can’t make a meaningful contribution. “Doctor” begat “Oncologist” begat “Necrotic Oncology” begat…. begat… begat… You get the idea. Specialization.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would
break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because
that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

This is all useful and necessary and I, for one, am very glad that there are people out there who are studying “Zeolites and mesoporus silicates as rigid matrices in asynmetryc induction. Photochemical reactions of organic compounds in presence of chiral inductors and chiral Schiff bases metalic complexes“… if for no other reason than I don’t have to study it, but like I said, those of us who don’t want to go to school for the better part of our professional lives will probably not be in the pantheon of Great Thinkers of our time.
But there is another way.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads
in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their
legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman
war chariots first made the initial ruts, which everyone else had to
match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels and wagons. Since
the chariots were made for, or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike
in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the
original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

There are still plenty of dark corners of the world-of-knowledge that haven’t been plumbed. Plenty of Mariana Trenches of information that have never seen humankind. These areas exist in the intersections of subjects, where computer chip design meets chaos theory, where virology and urban design intersect, or where architecture converges with biological design. Where loosely related fields come close to meeting is where I contend the frontiers of future knowledge lie. This is why I firmly believe that there is still a place in the world for the Renaissance Man (or Woman). The person with a respectable level of knowledge in many fields will see the web-thin connections between disciplines where the deep specialist would not.
Like the PBS show “Connections“, we never know when beer distilling in Denmark will lead to the space shuttle program.

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets
attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
Thiokol makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah.
The SRBs have to be shipped by train from the factory to the
launch site. The railroad line from the factory runs through a
tunnel in the mountains and the SRBs must fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track…
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world’s most
advanced transportation system was determined two thousand years ago
by the width of a horse’s behind.

(special thanks to Marcia H)

I spent a couple of hours tonight trying to tune and sharpen my new Stanley low angle block plain on a japanese waterstone. I’ve been reading a book on sharpening as well as posts on rec.woodworking and couldn’t quite get the correct technique into the gray matter. Then, after viewing a single FineWoodworking video online, I was able to grasp the technique. I’ll have another go at it tomorrow and this time I’m very confident. Right now I’m getting respectable performance out of the tool, but my woodworking friend Mark would be aghast at my clumsy tuning and use of the plane. Yeah, he’s a tool snob (kidding Mark), but he turns out better work than me. For now. Coincidentally, I was talking to Erin yesterday about how I’m a strong visual/tactile learner, but a weak audible learner. I can read about something all day (tuning a plane or flying a plane) and still not fully understand the kinesthetics involved. But you only have to show me how to do something once and it’s there forever- that’s just the way my mind works.