Learning to Learn: A General Method for Lifelong Learning

1. “Thoughts can be stimulated and fertilized, like a field is fertilized by sunshine and rain. […They] however cannot be rushed out nor drilled out, certainly not through recipes, by amassing subject matter and lessons. They want to grow voluntarily. […] I know nothing more terrible than the poor humans, who have learned too much. Instead of the healthy sound judgment, which might have come about had they learned nothing, their thoughts now turn fearfully and hypnotically around some words, sentences and formula, always in the same tracks. What they have is a spider web of thoughts, too weak to be supported by it, but complicated enough to confuse.“ (Ernst Mach) Learning to Learn: A General Method for Lifelong Learning hayo.siemsen@gmail.comVienna 14/09/2013

2. Introduction Myself Lifelonglearningandlearningtolearn • Observeyourownlearning (erkenntnis-theory) • Lots ofempiricalevidence • You will not believeme Why? • Gestalt, rigidity (exampleLuchins; see Mach quote) • Extreme learning (Chinese learnfromthemaster; learnfromtheverybest; reproduce) • seemingly easy and simple, but do not trustyour gut feelingalone

3. Meta-Analyses and “Hatties d” • Overview: John Hattie‘s “d“ (>60.000 studies; >900 meta-studies) -> not ideal, but useful • d for learners (0.2), teachers (0.4), effective methods (not efficiency): 0.5-0.8 • d for genetic-adaptative learning: 1.0 for Finland, more possible • Problem of linear statistical • models

4. The Origin of the VHS and the Schwarzwald School • Eugenie Schwarzwald -> Schwarzwald School (Robert) • Women (writers, photographers, etc.) • Peter Drucker, Karl Popper • The originofthe VHS (initialidea) • Personalityeducation (openingoptions/choices in life)

5. Ernst Mach and the Art of Popularization "Once a part of science belongs to the literature, a second task remains, which is to popularize it, if possible. This second task also has its importance, but it is a difficult one. It has its importance, because – regardless of the distribution of knowledge that increases its value – it is not unimportant either for the further development of science itself how much knowledge has been disseminated into the public. The difficulty is to know the soil very well in which one wants to plant the knowledge. It is a prevalent but wrong opinion that children are not able to form sharp concepts and come to the right conclusions. The child is often more sensible than the teacher. The child is very well able to comprehend, if one does not offer too much new at a time, but properly connects the new to the old. The adult is a child when facing the completely new. Even the scholar is a child when confronted with a foreign subject. The child is a child everywhere, as everything is new to him. The art of popularization lies in avoiding too much of the new at one time.”

6. Mach’ Influence Einstein: All physicist‘s of my generation have sucked-in Mach with their mother‘s milk (Physics’ books; current article); Hume and Mach’s influence William James (Radical Emiricism, US), Alfred Binet (Intelligence Scale, Orthopaedie Mentale, France), Henry E. Armstrong (Nuffield, UK) Bogdanov, Vygotsky, Shedrovitzsky (RU) Piaget, Dewey, Montessori, Steiner, Russell, etc. About 20% of Nobel Laureates Einstein, Pauli, Bohr, Planck, von Laue, Raman, Heisenberg, Rabi, Bridgman, Ostwald, Arrhenius, de Broglie, Landau, Ramsey, Polanyi, Wilczek, Eigen, Lorenz, Musil, Bergson, Hayek, Samuelson, Simon, Coase, etc. Founders of new scientific disciplines

7. Linear vs. Exponential Learning Model I 7

8. “What Remains?” – Wagenschein’s Razor The idea of quality (muda) A simple empirical test: What remains in memory after 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, a lifetime? => Lighthouse/fireworks problem

9. The Genesis of “Knowledge” – The historical background Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν."We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.“ (Heraclitos) • Greek • Plato/Aristotle (forms: signet ring in wax) • vs. Heraclitos (space-time) • Darwin/Mach • Transformation of worldview and of central concepts: knowledge, empiry, metaphysics “With a “Sense” is meant what has the power to absorb the sensual forms of things without the matter. This one has to imagine like a piece of wax, which takes the imprint of a signet ring without the iron or gold.” (Aristotle)

10. Vivid mental representation (Anschauung) is the basis of all knowledge (Pestalozzi) Throughout his life, Pestalozzi fought against „mouth-using“ (Maulbrauchen). By this he understood all talking, which is not carried by clear concepts and is not filled with truth and experience. He thought that the schools of his time were misteaching as they taught the child reading and writing, but not speaking before that. As soon as he was able to do practical school work, he immediately put away all books and led the children to the things. The students should first acquire stable concepts based on clear mental representations. The chattering about everything and nothing often used in schools, but not based on mental representations, he called 'Lirilariwesen‘ (Lirilaristuff). He understood this as „everything, which gives the children a way of doing something long and wide with their mouths, but which for them does not have any meaning behind, which they do not understand and do not carry in their hearts, but with which one fills their imagination and their memory in such a way that common sense is killed-off in their lives.“ (6, 116 f.). Pestalozzi took the Lirilaristuff not only as not helpful, but actually detrimental. „Where words and judgments precede thinking and representing mentally, thinking and impartial observation becomes double difficult." (Br. 3, 142), he wrote in a letter in 1782 to his house teacher Petersen.(www.bruehlmeier.info/Anschauung.htm)Gestalts are the empirical foundation of all knowledge (SiemsenKH)(Gestalts are mental representations, which have been carved out further by scientific methods)

11. A necessary shift in Worldview • At the time of Heraclitos and Aristotle: a question of consistency (philosophy) • They could not have read Darwin • After Darwin it becomes an empirical/natural science question (no linear alternative model of evolution existing) • Human knowledge (and scientific knowledge) part of evolution • => Can I change your world view in 3 minutes?

12. Self portrait: View from the left eye Hayo Siemsen, Prince2, Düsseldorf 03.11.2011

13. What do we really know? relation “the world” & “I” Existing intuition: Hamlet

14. Transformation of empiry and metaphysics: Facts and Artefacts in Education “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.” (Heraclitos) • Artifacts in Medicine • The “signet ring in wax“: a linear model of learning • Model of growth in nature: • Water lily example (1, 2, …) • Applicable also to human leaning?

15. Linear vs. Exponential Learning Model II 15

16. Finnish science education in the OECD PISA study Low proficiency high

17. Mathematics education experiment by K. Siemsen (1981) control group K experimental group E

18. Transfer Phenomena successful (light grey) and failed (dark grey) students of the control group in the basic subjects (electrical engineering and computer science. successful (light grey) and failed (dark grey) students of the project study (experimental group) in the same subjects.

19. Binet’s Tangents

20. The Case of Russia: Social Action Games for Adults • Transform political system • Transform society • Find solutions to unsolvable problems • Shschedrovitzky: Methodology can do everything • Soviet Olympia team • Nuclear power plants out of control • Mafia/Werwolf game

21. Does it work for adults? Yes, but needsmore time • Examples: Finnland teachers, Soviet Union socialactiongames, students (Cernohorsky, myfather), teachersSwitzerland (Bruehlmeier), ourworkshops, exploratorium (Robert Oppenheimer) Howlong: • 5 daysworkshop (5 hourseachday) ortwohoursforspecifictopics • if 2 days, about 40%, if 3 daysabout 60% ofparticipants, 5 daysfornearly 100% • exception: peoplewithtoomuch (obscuring) knowledge

22. The Phenomena of Machian Teaching • Intensive (transformative) experience • Inspiring eminent new ideas in multiple areas (Nobel Laureates) • Teaching is mostly intuitive • Teaching becomes mostly independent of age and “stages” • “Bad” students suddenly become “good” or “very good” • Learning happens without outside pressure • Time perception changes in learning • Learning takes place in genetic “loops” • Long-term and transfer effects Can this be replicated? Yes, but it needs a theory (all areas by everybody any time); not just observing the master

23. The Corollaries of Integrating Evolution into Knowledge: Science/Pedagogy • Sensualism /perception as basis • Thought economy (Gestalts) • Worldview / erkenntnis-theory (background, meta-consistency and process)

24. 1. Sensualism • Intuitive basis for everybody (using existing intuitions Students -> no single Urbild, rake works statistically; use several Urbilder so that one will work, use them repetitively in order to form the gestalt, limits and conterexamples introduced only when gestalt is stable

25. 2. Gestalt as Economy of Thought Auguste Rodin: The mostdifficultistocapture 20 ideasintoonestatue (Gestalt – shapepattern) • Economy ofthought (Mach) • Processandproduct (like Darwin‘sspecies), not holistic Which 20 ideasforyourtopic? ->One Gestalt!

26. Process and Product: Ideas/Gestalts as Species The adaptation of the thoughts to the facts and the thoughts to each other“ (Mach) • adaptation, transformation & plasticity: Example Shubin‘s „Inner Fish“ (the origin of push-ups) Not all senses the same (memory)

27. 2. Gestalt Piano player metaphor from Mach

28. Ernst Mach‘s psychology and concept of knowledge “In his essay Transformation and Adaptation in Scientific Thought, [Mach describes] one of the most characteristic ideas of modern science. […] Knowledge is an expression of organic nature. The law of evolution, which is that of transformation and adaptation, applies to thoughts just as well as to individuals or any living organisms. A conflict between our customary train of thought and new events produces what is called the problem. By a subsequent adaptation of our thought to the enlarged field of observation, the problem disappears and through this extension of our sphere of experience, the growth of thought is possible. Thus the happiest ideas do not fall from heaven, they spring rather from notions already existing.”

29. 3. Erkenntnis-theory Heraclitos: “This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.” “For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding.” => Why do you probably still disbelieve me?

30. 3. Erkenntnis-theory • Erkenntnis-theory for forming consistent world view • But also for distinguishing metaphysics from empiry (there necessarily is much of metaphysics in physics, if not taken as psychophysical relation (perception as first approach) • Find anthropomorphisms/artifacts • Put Gestalts on a sensual basis (identify and reduce artifactual gestalts) and find out what is actually sensual (never absolute, but genetical) • Include erkenntnis-psychology and psychology of research

31. Examples • Games • Learning for mental health (plasticity, new neurons) • Zero calculation mistakes • Learn any language in half a year • 5 semesters of electrical engineering in 10 minutes • Learn how to write understandably (Schwarzwald) • Woodworking for concept formation • Enculturating basic concepts (courses for people with migration background) • Intuitive courses on abstract topics (maths, etc.) • Introductory courses to culturally difficult topics (opera, classical music, etc.) • Learning how to play musical instruments • Pestalozzi’s magical eye

32. Conclusion Empirically best-practice in education Consistently replicable Training of 5 days (5 hours each) Change 5% of teaching Independent of culture, age, topic, etc. Does not require more resources in the medium-term => Do you believe me?

33. Ernst Mach‘s genetic view on education • "Nobody who concerned himself with scientific thinking will state [suggestions based on a "subject matter model"]. Thoughts can be stimulated and fertilized, like a field is fertilized by sunshine and rain. • Thoughts however cannot be rushed out and not drilled out, certainly not through recipes, by amassing subject matter and lessons. They want to grow voluntarily. Thoughts can just as little be accumulated above a certain measure in a head, as the yield of a field can be increased unlimitedly. […]. • “I know nothing more terrible than the poor humans, who have learned too much. Instead of the healthy sound judgment, which might have come about had they learned nothing, their thoughts now turn fearfully and hypnotically around some words, sentences and formula, always in the same tracks. What they have is a spider web of thoughts, too weak to be supported by it, but complicated enough to confuse.“ (Mach)

34. Why improve learning/teaching? Russell (Principia Mathematica): “When I first became acquainted with Clifford, it was only three years I had been struggling with Euclid’s theory of proportion – a subject which is now considered too difficult for schoolboys, but which in those days had to be mastered by every budding mathematician. As Euclid treats it, it is a puzzling subject, not only because it is inherently complicated, but Euclid never mentions his perfectly adequate reasons for not adopting the much simpler arithmetical procedure, of which the fallacies are not obvious until they are pointed out. Clifford, by telling just what is necessary and no more, makes the whole theory as clear as noonday.

35. 1. Sensualism “Instinctive actions [of the suckling] are not excluded because the child does the imitational actions only rudimentary, namely laboriously, cumbersome and incompletely. Also other actions regarded as instinctual, such as the sucking, are initially produced laboriously and in conjunction with excess, wrong or even hindering co-actions.” (Charlotte Bühler 1934) => Neotony (humans are „always young“ apes; human reflexes are only rudimentary)

36. Cases of Machian Teaching • Finland (Kurki-Suonio) • Czech Republic (Cernohorsky, half of current cabinet & prime minister) • France (Alfred Binet, lowest 5-10% of intelligence test) • USA (Luchins), Robert Oppenheimer (Exploratorium, LA) • Austria (Schwarzwald School, Peter Drucker) • Switzerland (Laemmel) • Russia (Shedrovitzky) • India (C. V. Raman: Indian Institutes of Science & Technology) • Germany (Karl Hayo Siemsen, maths education for engineers, dyslexia, autism) • etc. (Opera, Maths, Physics, Literature, Visual Arts, Language, Philosophy, History, Economics, Management, Anthropology, Biology, …) => Example: Psychomathematics; Board games for children (commercial product of Mach’s pedagogy); Catherine Stern “Structural Arithmetics”

37. Mach’s Pedagogical Influences Who is Mach (1838-1916)? 1863 Mach‘s lectures on psychophysics, 4 years after Darwin‘s “Origin“ (1859) • Application to human knowledge (as part of evolution: Genesis (of ideas) Memory as general function of living matter -> adaptation, transformation, plasticity -> non-additivity (economy of thought, gestalt), sensualism (metaphysics), erkenntnis-theory (no epistemological cuts)

38. 2. Gestalt • like Darwinian species (not Goethe‘s holism) • by Mach recursively defined (Gestalt-background) • Economy of thought Taken by von Ehrenfels, then Wertheimer After a while intuitive, in memory (Semon‘s meme)

39. Sources of geometric knowledge “A blind man could scarcely have invented modern synthetic geometry. But the oldest and most powerful of the experiences lying at the basis of geometry are just as accessible to the blind man, through his sense of touch, as they are to the person who can see. […] Our geometrical knowledge is thus derived from various sources. We are physiologically acquainted, from direct visual and tactual contact, with many and various spatial forms. With these are associated physical (metrical) experiences (involving comparison of the space-sensations evoked by different bodies under the same circumstances), which experiences are in their turn also but the expressions of other relations obtaining between sensations. These diverse orders of experience are so intimately interwoven with one another that they can be separated only by the most thoroughgoing scrutiny and analysis. Hence originate the widely divergent views concerning geometry. Here it is based on pure visualization (Anschauung), there on physical experience, according as the one or the other factor is overrated or disregarded. But both factors entered into the development of geometry and are still active in it to-day; for, as we have seen, geometry by no means exclusively employs purely metrical concepts.” (Ernst Mach, Space & Geometry)

40. Intuition in mathematics Hadamard (1945, p. 87/88) describes Hilbert’s geometry as “[…] another rigorous treatment of the principles of geometry, which, logically speaking, has been fully freed from any appeal to intuition, has been developed on quite different basis by the celebrated mathematician Hilbert. His beginning, which is now classic among mathematicians, is “Let us consider three systems of things. The things composing the first system, we will call points; those of the second, we will call straight lines, and those of the third system, we will call planes,” clearly meaning that we ought by no means to inquire what those “things” may represent. Logically, of course – and this is all that is essential – the result announced is fully attained and every intervention of geometrical sense eliminated: that is, theoretically unnecessary to follow the reasoning from the beginning to the end. Is it the same from the psychological point of view? Certainly not. There is no doubt that Hilbert, in working out his Principles of Geometry, has been constantly guided by his geometrical sense. If anybody could doubt that (which no mathematician will), he ought simply to cast one glance at Hilbert’s book. Diagrams appear at practically every page. They do not hamper mathematical readers in ascertaining that, logically speaking, no concrete picture is needed.” From this, Hadamard (1945, p. 112) concludes: “This carries, in the first place, the consequence that, strictly speaking, there is hardly any completely logical discovery. Some intervention of intuition issuing from the unconscious is necessary at least to initiate the logical work.”

41. Psychophysical sense elements Physics - Somatosensorimotor Physiology – Psychology → no meaningful consistent “cut” possible relation (training at central council of church bell ringers)

42. Meta-Learning What have you learnt How have you learnt?

43. Conclusion • Sensualism, Gestalt and Erkenntnis-theory (and erkenntnis-psychology) are together (monistic) for Mach • Without, no consistent concept of Gestalt, no exponential learning possible • Gestalt result of psychophysics, i.e. psychophysics is the „background“ of the post-Darwinian Gestalt concept

44. 1. Sensualism Example III: Kaila & Theater: Nature answer me! (Research)

45. Erkenntnis-theory Mach (1905, pp. 281/282) states on the question of the inherent a priori “however, it became clear that the physiological space and the physiological time without the help of physiological experience can neither found a scientific geometry, nor a scientific mathematics. The question “How is pure mathematics (a priori) possible?” certainly engrained one of the most important seeds for research. It would though have been even more important, if it would not have contained the presuppositionthat the knowledge of mathematics is gained a priori. Because not philosophical decrees, but only the positive psycho-physiological research can find out, what is inherited. [… The philosopher Beneke states] "The [internally given] does indeed contain, as it were, knowledge of what is given within us prior to all experience. Yet attempts at defining this relation more closely have hitherto failed in that they presuppose the forms prominent in the fully educated soul as already prior to experience, or more specifically, as given for the development of the soul. This is wrong: The forms, which are at first given for knowledge, result from the development of the soul. They are only prior determined before by inherited dispositions and relations, which carry completely different forms in themselves."“