An accidental expertise

In the days when I used to sit in the old cafe at the railway station, reading the morning news, I was often struck by the phenomenon known as Gell-Mann Amnesia. Once in a while I’d come across an article on a subject I knew about. I mean really knew about, a subject where you know what you know, but also the limits of what you know, you are confident about your level of expertise. We all have them, a trade, a craft, a hobby. Practice and or qualifications collected over the years makes us think, this article has factual errors, or perhaps more often it leads you to say to yourself; ‘You’re missing the point mate, that’s not the issue, you don’t get what this is really about!’ We know we could have written a better article. Then we move on and return to that state of mind which, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, accepts everything else in the paper as fact, we take it at face value. That’s the amnesia. But of course, just occasionally you find yourself staring out of the window wondering, if I had specialised knowledge of all this other stuff, would I be thinking it was all just so much nonsense too?

What I want to write about is a particular form of expertise, an accidental expertise. In part it’s a product of age, of simply having been around longer than most of those around you. Often it is expertise based not so much on past interests but things you’ve simply been witness to. Or events you grew up around. Maybe for a while you lived in an area famous for a particular activity, at a particular time, and simply couldn’t help adsorbing your surroundings.

I was never was a train-spotter, although I’ve met a few! By which I really mean it was never the technology that fascinated me. But I’ve always enjoyed train travel and there are family connections too. So, in recent years, when sat in the old cafe at the station, I’ve often been distracted from my reading of the papers - the free ones available on my mobile - by ill-informed talk about the railways. From the historical, some nonsense spoken in response to the passing of an occasional steam special, to the very extent of the network itself, I learnt the geography of my own country from being a passenger! (And by country, I mean the whole of the British Isles, the network makes no sense unless you include ports, ferries and all the islands of the archipelago.)

All trains go up to London, or down from London. London trains leave from the Up platform, trains from London arrive on the down platform, which in the case of the GWR (God’s Wonderful Railway) is always platform one. In fact, with a few notable exceptions, odd numbered platforms always held down trains; even numbers, up trains. And already the past and present tense is confusing, because that’s the way it’s been, since about 1850. It’s a Victorian network. And hence the premier platform in the entire country (Empire?) is platform one at Paddington. The Great Western Railway built the line to Windsor and Eton. Ordinary couples may have met under the clock at Waterloo, royalty stood under the clock on platform one at Paddington - when they weren’t using Queen Victoria’s Waiting Room that is. Platform one at Newton Abbot looks today like a side platform for up and down local trains, it’s not. It is the principal down platform, because the principal main line always was, despite being in part a single track, the line to Kingswear, that is Kingswear for Dartmouth Ferry. Dartmouth station was the only station in the country with no trains, only a ferry. But you could buy a ticket to anywhere, because Dartmouth was home to the royal naval college.

However, before 1850 and the dominance of passenger services, the hub of the railway network was York. My father was born in York, his father worked first for the NER, then the LNER, mainly at York station. He was a railway clerk and worked in the office responsible for timetabling. That's the operating timetable you understand, the timetable the railway runs by, as opposed to the passenger timetable which is a kind of promise to travellers! Trains run on fixed, parallel lines, a relatively closed system and therefore partially predictable, it attracts those who believe they think and act rationally. Grandfather, father used to recall, when travelling by train with the family, using the benefit of the family pass, would, when another train passed, take out his silver railway watch from his waistcoat, and announce to the carriage at large; ‘Huddersfield train is running five minutes late’, or whatever. The first rail journey I recall was Newcastle Central-York, when I was about five years old, say 1964. I spent most of the journey sat on my mother’s knee, in a window seat facing. I recall her pointing out Durham Cathedral high on the river bluff above the town, the railway runs along the opposite hillside, quite the best view. At some point father showed me around the original York railway museum. So, when Andrew Martin, in the opening chapter of The Lost Luggage Porter, gave a long description of York Station circa 1906, I was right there. 

Do I remember the age of steam? Well kind of. The one rail journey we made on anything like a regular basis was when in half terms and holidays mother took us up to Newcastle on a shopping trip and we opted for the train rather than the bus. We travelled the circular coast line, up one way, down the other on the first-generation of diesel multiple units. They afforded the best views of any train I’ve known, especially once the upfront sections near the driver lost their First Class only designation, and were open to all. But the line occasional had freight and maintenance trains hauled by steam tank engines. It happened that our house bordered on to the railway, with a garden which backed on to an allotment on railway land. At night, when I had the back bedroom, they appeared as fiery monsters from time to time.

For a number of years in succession, we used the train to go on our summer holidays. Twice in the nineteen thirties my father and his brother had travelled from York to Leeds to join a cross-country train that went all the way to Bristol, Exeter and Kingswear. But they travelled in daylight. We drove to Newcastle Central in the evening, surrendered the car to British Railways, who drove it onto a two-tier converted carriage, then proceeded to a sleeping carriage and took up residence in two compartments, each with bunk beds! I remember waking-up at first light, turning up the corner of the blind, and seeing a sign that read Bristol Temple Meads, it was cream lettering with a chocolate background, I was used to seeing signs on an orange background. On a couple of those holidays the train terminated at Newton Abbot. The car was driven off on one of the platforms that used to serve the Teign Valley line. We’d just enjoyed one of the most scenic routes in the country, from the Exe estuary along the sea wall via Dawlish, Teignmouth and up the Teign estuary. With the car back we then proceed to enjoy ten days or so at a rented holiday cottage. Looking back today one might think, a huge expense for a holiday, but no, not really. You needed to be middle class to afford it, for sure. But the rich, they travelled abroad!

Then father got a new job, we actually moved to Devon and everything changed. I thought I was on one long holiday, sometimes I still do. It was wet lunchtimes spent in the library at school that did it. Looking for books with lots of pictures, I was not a skilled reader at the time, even for my age. I found a wealth of books on the Great Western Railway, and not just recalling it (before 1947 and ‘nationalisation’ and the creation of British Railways) but celebrating it! The pre-war railway companies had been great rivals, I discovered. Previously I’d been in LNER territory, now I was in that of the GWR. The Great Western had a certain prestige over all the others, and with good reason I was to discover...

(Oh, dear! I’ve got to almost fifteen hundred words and I’m only twelve years old - or maybe that’s the point!)

A non-believer in a Christian world

I grew up in a Christian society, but have no belief in the supernatural. I like early church architecture, early church music and occasionally enjoy reading about the lives of the saints.

At the age of eight or maybe nine, I made two visits to Holy Island (Lindisfarne), once with my family, once on a school trip. Quite what I experienced, and when, has blurred in the memory. But it was undoubtedly my first experience of religion. I remember standing alone and staring at the statue of St. Cuthbert set amongst the remains of the Lindisfarne Priory. In the distance was Banburgh Castle, in between the cold North Sea. I knew the names of what I was looking at because of my parents and because, looking back, my junior school really was quite good at teaching local history.

In time I attended church services once a month as a cub and then boy scout; first at a Presbyterian church, then a Methodist chapel, finally I got to know Church of England services after we’d moved as a family from Northumberland to Devon. At more or less the same time, came the moment at school when, sitting in compulsory religious education class, I thought, I don’t believe any of this!

My father had a chapel upbringing in a village outside of York, he bicycled, often with his elder brother, to a secondary school in the city whose skyline is dominated by the Minster. Yet it appears the first family member to step inside, was his brother, aged twenty-one. Father trained to become an architect and town planner, and in time he introduced us children to many of the great cathedrals, Durham, St. Paul’s, St. David’s and Westminster Abbey. I got to see the reinforced under-croft of York Minster, the new floor and ceiling of the tower struck by lightning. We explored the slopping roof of Exeter! The list goes on, though my favourite is Lincoln which I discovered for myself. I’ve sat and contemplated in many, listened to wonderful music, but never doubted for a second that they were built by men, for men.

Most people in society believe in a Christian god whether they be church goers or not, I’m in the minority and must accept their world. A society designed by believers, it’s ‘the water we swim in.’ I believe I have the same spiritual feelings they do, but I ascribe them to the ‘awe’ effect of nature. Best explained, so far, as Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Occasionally, some believers say I embody some of the Christian virtues, that God is within me too, I find that most annoying!

Churches were once at the centre of British community life; they brought people together. Rituals, repeated physical movements often choreographed with others, leading to shared emotions and shared thoughts. They become reassuring to us over time, giving a sense of certainty and control in the uncertain world of this kingdom by the sea.

Other denominations and other religions still have many of the positive attributes I’ve alluded to, whilst the Church of England with every development or adaptation it makes seems to alienate its followers. Does is ever cancel those changes? No, it carries on with a progressive agenda whilst the congregation shrinks even more. Worse, it makes its organisation more and more top heavy, more bishops, more specialists in one thing or another, less people walking the streets of any community, drawing fewer people in. I’m told there has been a recent, modest rival in religious belief, but precious few head to the established church, the state religion. The monarch does little to promote it, the principal broadcaster even less. To me as an outsider, they seem to suffer from the same consequences as other growing organisations, as they proscribe more and more detailed rules of personal conduct, the bureaucracy that creates them, becomes more and more self-interested, increasingly ignoring their mission.

So, what of that mission, what does a non-believer make of the bible itself. I’ve never doubted that Jesus lived, and that the New Testament is a pretty good stab at history for the time when it was written, as well as being a useful guide on how to live a good life. One of its virtues is it presents four accounts, the best that could be found amongst the many others on offer. That it allows contradictory accounts is a strength. I wonder at those who insist the gospels be taken literally, haven’t they noticed?

To take the bible out of its historical context is unfair. If people believed at the time that many of the events had miraculous elements to them, so be it. Since the scientific revolution successive generations have attacked Christian beliefs with rationalism, but to little effect. People may not attend church, but putting faith in the power of other worldly forces seems as popular as ever. It is a cohesive force bringing people together in causes both virtuous and well, better a united army than a divided one? And a way of marking, and coping with life’s inevitable events, of births, marriages and deaths.

There is much to be admired in the followers of Jesus, whether it be Saint John Henry Newman, who as a result of his conversion found himself creating a new university and writing the Idea of a University; or Saint Therese of Lisieuix knowing she would die of consumption at a young age, asking what contribution could she make, however small, to the wellbeing of others and then making it happen. It seems to me as a non-believing outsider, vaguely raised in a protestant environment, that the catholic church is more intriguing and interesting, or perhaps just more colourful! The Reformation seems to have brought nothing but trouble, to England at least. Church architecture goes into decline, so too music made by the human voice in those spaces, certainly after Tallis and Byrd! And the catholic church seems to keep at least one foot in human nature and is accepting of a version of evolution.

There is no evidence of snow at Christmas in the holy land, but there is magic at Christmas. Christina Rossetti, an Anglo-Catholic, who struggled with depression wrote, A Christmas Carol (In the Bleak Mid-Winter) first published in 1872. Then in 1906 Gustav Holst’s set it to music whilst visiting Cranham in Gloucestershire, where it definitely does snow at Christmas, once in a while!

Social media 2

One moment you may feel you are at the centre of everything, the next of utter insignificance. Your global reach seems in contrast to your local world, where you actually get to meet those to whom you are connected, but then they don’t seem as important as they once were. Or maybe, I just don’t get about much anymore?

Our interactions with people we know, up close and personal, remind us that social media is of the real world, we may have messaged to meet and in conversation take for granted we’ve read each other’s posts. But sometimes it feels like its purpose is not to connect us faster and more intimately, but to disorientate us all in both time and space, the better to sell us stuff. Equally, just as the whole world was always out there, the scammers and conmen, the politicians and flimflam artists, along with the honest and trustworthy, the sacred and profane, now they’re in your face.

The situation has become darker since I previously posted on this subject. One way in which social media was enhancing our experience has begun to be lost, the accurate, chronological, minute to minute, timelines which added to memory accuracy and capacity. Appreciated more and more the older one gets! Meta, for example, by breaking-up the timeline in your newsfeed prevent you from appreciating who said what when, and seeing how others reacted. You lose the sense of time zones, distance. You can’t find anything again, watch it or read it later! If the algorithm insisted on one strict timeline people would learn that the more friends you have, the less you become attached to any of them. Given so many have been using the platform for fifteen years or so, it’s now even more difficult to notice how and why people change!

When the timeline (newsfeed) offers so many distractions (suggestions/ promotions/ adverts) one turns to the profiles of friends only to discover posts from the past you’re certain you haven’t seen, or at least noticed. When you scroll down a bit more you start to believe you’re the only one who isn’t responding to click bait. Comments in clear plain English, or captions alongside photos/videos taken by the writer are getting rarer, unless undertaken for financial gain. What could have been the personal journal of an individual, the family history of the future, is slipping away. In a similar way, organisations such as the BBC who sit on the greatest audio/visual archive of the twentieth century, dumb down the content for the sake of clicks.

Social pressure has always existed in various forms but is now reflected online. Preference falsification, recognising certain subjects and ideas as taboo in your group, leads not so much to self-censorship, but simply withholding your views altogether, observing but not participating. But surely people hold back less online?! Well, a minority do, often in combination with trying to anonymise their identity. But then there is the overtly political, either asserting special interests, or a particular party line. Here we need a consciousness of what’s not being said as well as campaigned for. The so-called, Overton Window, the idea that there is a range of subjects and opinions acceptable to any given population at a given time in history, that politicians and campaigners can debate upon. There’s an assumption that politicians don’t lead opinion, but follow it. That democracy not power rules!

Despite the meme dealers, those who wish to daily reset or refresh you, the desire of some for a culture of disembodied minds, and an online learned helplessness, there is an escape! The longer the internet exists the more history it contains. When someone dies, I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to, I can go on experiencing their life, I’m less limited by fading memories.

Which leads me to what I’ve come to call vicarious living, though I’m sure others have had the same thought; the tendency to live out our lives through the experiences of others. Again, this has always happened to a degree, those who made a particular self-sacrifice in the raising of their children, often appear later in life to live through them - after all the children appear to have what the parent always wanted. But online, you can follow whoever you like and it makes sense to follow those who have the life you want, or wanted. You get a sense of knowing, whether it be an ordinary person or a celebrity, you can indulge in the fantasy that you are a part of their lives, updated daily.

‘Who told you that?’ I’ve thought for a long time that is the first question anyone should ask themselves, about anything they hold to be true. Everything we know came from somewhere and someone is always there before you! There is no true originality, just the recombination of the ideas of others. It’s just that a lot of the time our learning has been unconscious. And all learning is social learning. Online we have access to such a wide range of knowledge, yet how do you get to know that there are alternative ways of seeing the world? Do we get to choose, when living off the knowledge of others? Are we the ones who set up the filter bubbles and echo chambers? Could there be such a thing as, say a Cyborg Identity Disorder? Google doesn’t seem to think there is, I just checked. Perhaps I made it up a while ago, noted it down and forgot, but it must have been prompted by someone!

Which brings me neatly to my final speculations, on emergent AI. Emerging for some time now, and likely to continue doing so for a long while to come. I speculated in the days of Twitter, that we might be dumbing down to meet it rising up. Dumb not in the sense of less intelligent, but lazy. Imagining, as always with new tech, that we could use it as a labour-saving device. Now, the idea that you can choose an AI application or platform to suit your needs, with appropriate and ethical regulations; rather than AI choosing you, including your delusion of choice, seems unlikely. It offers to do work for you, in exchange for your data. It is a voracious learner, but as of now is limited in the directions it can take by a lack of permissions. It seems to learn fastest when allowed to roam free on social media platforms. Like a very smart young teenager, but emotionally immature, it excels at maths, making graphs, creating pictures, but has a crude sense of humour which simply loves the absurdities and relationship spats of all the competing wannabes of the social media world. It hasn’t been to university yet. The ultimate geek, has yet to achieve unfettered access to a prestigious university’s library. Not just the books and journals currently approved of, but the stacks containing everything, anyone ever thought worth reading. The entire history of the world itself. They say two thirds of journal articles remain unread by anyone other than the authors and reviewers themselves. What about open access to everything Google originally scanned before Google Scholar, or the entire British Library, the National Archives and the documents section of the Royal Collection held in the bowels of Windsor Castle. The outcome? Crime, war, tyranny? No, just the thinking machine daily, telling politicians, public servants, educators, the media and business people that the best scientific evidence says that what you are doing won’t work!

I Edit - rewriting my 'history of ideas'

I change my mind, quite frequently when it comes to small details, but only twice have I changed my entire world view.

It is sometimes held up as a virtue that someone has stuck to their principals throughout life, I find such assertions somewhat suspicious. To feel you got it all right in your twenties, would seem to indicate a mind lacking in self-awareness and oblivious to the changes occurring around us every day. And of course there is the constant danger of those two psychological elephant traps, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance.

The ways in which we rewrite history individually and collectively has been much on my mind in recent years - well the last ten to be precise! It could just be an age thing, I turned sixty this year, and I know that what I remember of the past, and the way I remember it is changing. But aligned to this is an awareness of the emerging insights of neuroscience on memory and aging. Equally, the ever-expanding Web increases my knowledge of the context in which my memories were formed - it’s legacy would seem to be not so much how it tells us with ever increasing speed about the present, but how it tells us more and more about the past.

Every era rewrites history, but there is something qualitatively different this time. The technology of recording has changed rapidly, so too the way previous methods can be converted into digital form and turned into big data. We share more, and more widely, our current experience. However, as millions pass their tenth anniversary on social media, it becomes only too obvious that we will be remembering in novel ways.

'I know you can share, but can you edit and delete?' Many would reply; 'Why bother!' Well I sometimes suspect sheer laziness or horror at the prospect of confronting the past. But if you can bring yourself to review your past posts and shares in a systematic way you soon find yourself asking - do I want this as my legacy? Some posts I delete because they seem so trivial in retrospect, a diversion which undervalues my other contributions. Some I remove because they were so context specific at the time that they have already becoming almost incomprehensible! But the majority stay, and where opportunity arises I often add an update. All of this requires time and energy, I do it because I care about my legacy, the impression I leave behind. And of course the less my online signature, fist or character looks like anybody else’s, the more likely it is to be noticed in the future! There are only two kinds of immortality, the genetic carried in the bodies of our relatives and descendants, and the memetic transmitted vertically or horizontally via the brains of others.

'But you’re altering the facts, the truth!' There are two essential responses to that, one is a scholarly assertion of the scientific method to include doubt, uncertainty, critical thinking and scepticism; the other, is an equally strong assertion of the evidence that human memory is always a filtering and updating process equivalent to that which I’ve already described - that every time we remember, it is our current version which gets saved, overwriting previous versions.

It appears we all use a 'method of loci' (memory palace) whether we are conscious of it or not; and even when we are, it is the unconscious brain that has selected the data that needs to be remembered. Whether we are aware of what we are doing with our memories, seems to turn on our method of retrieval. It seems to me, that our chosen space/ location works best when we follow our natural inclination to observe in order to navigate, a journey method of visualising spatial relationships as we walk through a landscape. So both the form in which a new memory is encoded and recalled are dictated by body movement - the form in which we learn naturally anyway.

An unexamined life is no kind of life at all. Indeed, but rewriting one’s own history, particularly in light of the knowledge one has acquired and from whom, may well be a practical necessity too, we need an organised mind to survive. Presumably it is an evolutionary process, following from our nature as a social species living out our lives in groups. Our brains have a limited capacity, we are limited in the number of people we can come to know and care about. We need to dump information continuously.

Since all knowledge is online these days, even as I draft this Microsoft is trying to make sense of it and make connections, but to be of use to the algorithm my behaviour, feelings and thoughts have to be regular and habitual - otherwise they predict nothing. Indeed what apps really hate is when you start following them, rather than them following you - when you start tweaking and tinkering. Their first reaction is one of security, they assume your device has been hacked by someone else! Most apps assume the user is preoccupied with what the thinking machine can tell them about the present and future, but I doubt this is so when your entire life is online and more and more of the past is there to be seen on film and video. The technology that wins will be the one that offers a ‘calm’ experience. Forms of digital curation at present offer a largely disembodied understanding, those that do best in the future will be those that mimic their user’s messy and sticky experience of the mix between the real and digital worlds.

One of the major questions about the online future is whether the thinking machine will be willing or able to collude with humans, accept the ways in which we learn, lie and cheat our way through life, when it, the machine, can keep it’s cool, remain rational and remorselessly point out the truth - insisting we follow! Ever since my days in the school room, it seems a lot of my learning has been a process of cheating, of learning by directly observing others and reconstructing their knowledge. In so far as I don’t reproduce directly the words of others and claim them as my own, then it’s not plagiarism, but the social process of learning has led me to believe originality to be absurd. Education, like many spheres of life is hung-up on the idea of individuality, implying freewill and autonomy. Sitting in the audience of a lecture I’m often thinking not whether this speaker is good or bad, rather; who told you that? Or worse, you’re reinventing the wheel - I could give you a better reference for that from as little as fifty years ago!

But most of the time I’m thinking, what I’m absorbing is not the knowledge the presenter is intending to impart at all. Out of fifty minutes, that which appears on black or whiteboard, on PowerPoint or video, can be accounted ten minutes at most. From school days onwards what I learnt about most were the teachers themselves and my fellow members of the audience. And all that, was mostly nonverbal. This social learning is not an individual process at all, and as such must include much that others would wish to label cheating. But what is possibly much more individual is the capacity and or willingness to learn new things, and what preoccupies me now is does age matter?

A large part of what I have learnt, and a key technique for learning, appears to be avoidance. How to get out of, or get around problems, seems key to the knowledge I’ve acquired - a sort of lateral thinking by default! Avoidance seems to be a solution if you do eventually return and solve, but in many situations it is advocated as a solution in and of itself. A large part of modern medicine seems to be about providing alternatives to changes in lifestyle which would actually solve the original problem. And in politics, well the pressure always seems to be to be seen to be doing something, anything, whether the original problem is addressed or not.

Well, that’s about as far as I want to go, this time. As always I seem to be lying by omission, nine tenths of what I really feel never gets online! I censor myself, so as not to give too greater offence and lose the few friends I still have. Oh! I almost forgot; I was going to mention those two fundamental changes in world view. Well the first occurred when I studied sociology at university - I went from an individualistic to a socially determined view of how people act. The second occurred in the new millennium when I fully adopted an evolutionary perspective on everything – biological, cultural and social.

(see also, The Story We Tell Ourselves)

'We've been talking about you all morning' - how my degree result was decided

On the day in 1986 that our university degree results were due to be posted (I mean actually pinned-up on a noticeboard outside the admin office) my then partner showed some surprise when I said I would stay at home and try and write. Later in the day she telephoned to say I’d got a First and that she and a close friend of mine had been hugging and jumping for joy on my behalf. Later she told me I had sounded cold and unemotional on the phone, that there was something odd about my reaction. I couldn’t explain my feelings to her because it would have sounded cruel. But what I had been thinking about was the difference between explanation and understanding - she’d rung me up to tell me something I already knew!

How could I know? I should say at the outset that there were no ethical problems, no one leaked anything, spoke out of turn or acted ‘inappropriately’.

In those days the lecturers hoped that each year, out of a cohort of about 30 students, there would be a First - but would not be put-out if there wasn’t. In exceptional years there might be two. I’m prompted to write this because this year, 2017, the media are reporting that up to 40% have achieved a First on some courses. University places have tripled since I took my degree. Assuming that variation in intelligence stays roughly the same in any yearly cohort, then that represents both massive ‘grade inflation’ and a huge drop in standards. I considered myself lucky to go to university aged 24, I was allowed in as a result of both work experience and educational qualifications – I had nothing like the grades of the 18 year old’s around me!

Over the three years I picked-up from staff and other students a sense of what ‘classes’ of degrees meant. Whilst a single piece of work might be given a percentage or a grade to reflect its quality, such a score might disguise as much as it illuminated. The same mark might be given to someone who was excellent at basic tasks, as was given to someone who had done well at something more challenging, but who had neglected something more fundamental. Classes of degree were meant to reflect a body of work where several levels had been achieved, each building on each other, but which could not be achieved by neglecting any one part of it.

The largest difference was between a 2.1 and a First. Then as now, the ‘knowledge base’ in the social sciences was ‘highly contested’. So, if you wrote an essay in good English which demonstrated an understanding of the question, contrasted the main approaches (probably three) taken by the leading researchers on the particular subject in the question and could point out the relative strengths and weakness of each, you ought to get a 2.1. But you wouldn’t even be considered for a First. For that you needed an argument of your own, but which was nonetheless grounded somewhere in the evidence offered on the recommended reading list. Then you had to make a convincing case - conviction alone was never enough.

‘Don’t bother trying to get a First’, people would say. Advice that was kindly meant, since so much of the final mark was based on coursework as well as exams spread over two years. It’s one thing to write the occasional great piece, but to average those kinds of marks! But I just had so much to say in my own voice that I must have quite unconsciously announced an intention simply by the way I started to write from the beginning of my second year!

‘Everything is decided at the External Examiner’s meeting’, we were told. Well I knew his name (a Professor from a university with a better reputation in the subject than ours), but I was not encouraged. I’d read very little of his work, about a page and half I think. Very theoretical, difficult. (And that’s coming from someone who was sort-out by fellow student’s to explain, ‘in simple terms’ what a lot of sociological theory was about.) In retrospect I was probably wrong, he may well have been sympathetic to what I was, at least, trying to do.

At about 12 o’clock on the day of the meeting I collided with our ‘director of studies’ at the coffee machine: ‘We’ve been talking about you all morning’, he said in an accusing manner, ‘and I’ve got to go back in for more!’ Very sensibly he was taking a comfort break - he’d had a physical disability for many years and really needed to keep on the move as much as possible. But it was then that I knew I’d got it, when he implied they were still talking about me.

Now the only reason they’d be talking so much about me rather than anyone else, was if I was the borderline case between a 2.1 and a First (the rank order having been easily decided.) But then I knew that already. My coursework marks indicated a strong First, my exam results a middling 2.1. In those days it was quite easy to keep track of your coursework marks over two years, plus the overall mark for a particular module, know the ‘weighting’ towards the final degree – the exam mark was simply the difference. I knew that my marks gave me a 2.1, but that my lecturers thought of me as a First. Well most of them!

(photo by Nick Hewling)

So the results were posted a couple of days later, and my partner and I trotted off to the annual end of year party hosted by one of her lecturers, someone who had not taught me. ‘We were actually made to sit there and read your essays!’ This from a psychologist forced to read sociology. She then turned to her new boyfriend (a Reader in Archaeology from the university two stops up the railway line), ‘Darling, how did you react when they told you you’d got a First?’ ‘I cried’, was his only reaction.

A week or so later I went to talk to one of the lecturers from the School of Management who had taught me. I went seeking advice on my PhD. All he wanted to talk about was the Examiner’s meeting. (I’d written one of my better efforts for him - on the role of the State during the Miner’s Strike 1984-1985, undertaken whilst the dispute was still going on.) ‘It was us who got you your First ..They didn’t want to give it to you [the sociologists] ..We told them they were setting the standard too high ..Then we just sat there...’ He went on to explain that the sociologists had started from the position of wanting to it give it to me, then began finding reasons not to, he and his colleague hadn’t said much, just waited for the tide to turn.

There was some rivalry between the School of Management and Social Sciences, the former believing they had a stronger footing in the real world (relatively speaking); the later, the better academic credentials. But the teaching was divided for my particular degree – Sociology with Industrial Relations. (As for the PhD, I only completed a year - but that’s another story.)

See also: Lost in a 'can't-do' culture!

Richard Feynman and 'the pleasure of finding things out'

Over the years I’ve often referenced Richard P Feynman (1918-88) on social media as an example of true scholarship. Here I’ve collected together some famous quotes alongside key resource material.

He was a theoretical physicist who won a Nobel prize - but that was probably the least interesting thing about him. He had a reputation as a great teacher and thinker despite writing almost nothing - the many books about him have been compiled by others. Since his death his reputation has continued to grow, and since the beginning of the Web an ever increasing amount of information about him has become available. Google him.

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A few quotes about acquiring knowledge, later some about aspects of teaching and learning.

‘…I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree, I think. And he says - "you see, I as an artist can see how beau­tiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other peo­ple and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting -  it means that insects can see the color. It adds a ques­tion: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don't un­derstand how it subtracts…’ (Feynman 1999c:2)

‘In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is - if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.’ (Feynman 1965:156)

‘…If you expected science to give all the answers to the won­derful questions about what we are, where we're going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned. …I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. …I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things…but I don't have to know an an­swer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing.’ (Feynman 1999c:24-25)

Key themes from his life and work were; living with uncertainty (as in the above quote), theory and practice as repeating aspects of the same process (the second quote), reasoning from first principles (safecracking at Los Alamos, first photo), the pleasure of finding things out (see below), active irresponsibility (the second quote below and  the second photo from the Challenger disaster investigation), finally nobody knows how to teach (last quote).

‘…I don’t like honors. I appreciate it for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I know there's a lot of physi­cists who use my work, I don't need anything else, I don't think there's any sense to anything else. …I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it - those are the real things…’ (Feynman 1999c:12)

‘To do high, real good physics work you need absolutely solid lengths of time, …it needs lots of concentration - that is solid time to think - and if you’ve got a job in administration anything like that, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself - that I’m irresponsible. I tell everybody, I don’t do anything. If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions, no, I‘m irresponsible, I don‘t give a damn about the students - of course I give a damn about the students but I know that somebody else’ll do it - and I take the view, “Let George do it,” …I do that because I like to do physics and I want to see if I can still do it, and so I’m selfish, okay?’ (p.19-20)

‘All those students …how should I best teach them? Should I teach them from the point of view of the history of science, from the applications? My theory is that the best way to teach is to have no philosophy, is to be chaotic and confuse it in the sense that you use every possible way of doing it. That’s the only way I can see to answer, so as to catch this guy or that guy on different hooks as you go along…’ (p.20)

(photo by Nick Hewling)

References and Resources

Feynman, R.P (1985) ‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!’ Adventures Of A Curious Character Vintage: London (Stories originally told to, and recorded by Ralph Leighton, including the safecracking story.)

Feynman, R.P (1990) QED: The Strange Theory Of Light And Matter Penguin: London (Transcribed introductory lectures on particle physics given in 1982.)

Feynman, R. P (1992) ‘What Do You Care What Other People Think?’ Further Adventures Of A Curious Character Grafton: London (Stories originally told to, and recorded by Ralph Leighton.)

Feynman, R.P (1994) The Character Of Physical Law Penguin: London (Based on introductory physics lectures recorded by the BBC in 1965. Some short extracts on YouTube.)

Feynman, R.P (1998) Six Easy Pieces: The Fundamentals Of Physics Explained  Penguin: London (Basic readings taken from The Feynman Lectures on Physics delivered to Caltech undergraduates in 1961/2 and 1962/3, only later worked-up into books using student’s notes!)

Feynman, R,P (1999a) Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein’s Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time Penguin: London (More involved readings from The Feynman Lectures on Physics delivered to Caltech undergraduates in 1961/2 and 1962/3, only later worked-up into books using student’s notes!)

Feynman, R, P (1999b) The Meaning of It All Penguin: London (transcriptions of lectures on science in general.)

Feynman, R.P (1999c) The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out Penguin: London (Based on interview for BBC Horizon in 1981)                                                                             

Feynman, R.P (2006) Don’t you have time to think? Penguin: London (Letters edited by his daughter Michelle.)

Gleick, J (1994) Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics Abacus: London (Biography)

Leighton, R (1993) Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey Penguin: London 

                                                                             

Online:

‘Richard Feynman’ Wikipedia page (note the External Links available, and when the page was last modified!)

Feynman Online! Website dedicated to his memory

The Fantastic Mr Feynman (TV documentary using material from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out plus interviews with other key figures)

Who'd have thought? (2.9.2019)

Lost in a 'can't-do' culture!

When did you first think of yourself as smart? (Or conversely, when did you first start thinking you were dumb?) And who told you that?

The University of Bath taught me I was smart (please note I avoid using the word intelligent.) But I didn’t arrive there until I was 24 and up until the time they offered me a place I never believed I was the sort of person who could go to a university! A fellow student demonstrated a profound lesson in thinking and attitude on the very first occasion we met. It was week one and we were at the ‘fresher’s fayre’ where everyone signed up for the various clubs and societies which promised to transform your social life. Without thinking too much about it I simply joined the political society which was the most representative of my views at the time. I noticed another guy doing the same, but it soon became clear that, with deliberate intention and forethought, he was going around the room joining all the political societies. Now my brain registered that this was interesting - why not get a range of political thought and knowledge? But it wasn’t until months later that I appreciated, from within just one group, how much the activities of all the groups were focused on what all the others were doing!

I soon discovered too, that my new friend, almost 5 years younger, was smarter than me in many other ways. He wasn’t bothered about what kind of degree he got, as long as he got one. But this attitude was born out of a confidence that he already knew he could pass. The question of the hour for him was therefore how little need be done to pass, therefore allowing him to get on with what interested him - which ranged from the highly intellectual, to just messing around at the university’s radio station. I on the other hand, started out lacking in intellectual confidence, but at least knew I didn’t know. All I did, having previously worked at a nine-to-five job, was apply the same amount of effort and routine to studying. Indeed, my work experience had counted a little towards my admission in the first place, since my academic qualifications came nowhere near the number of points required for admission by the university, let alone actually achieved by my fellow students. But now, as far as I could observe, they didn’t care nor need to put in the hours I did.

However, after about a year of getting to know the other students I decided I had caught up with them by putting in those extra hours, and that what was at fault - as long suspected - was the notion of ‘intelligence’ itself. But equally, there was the realisation that ‘exam passing’ was a particular set of skills, in and of itself. But the overriding lesson of my early period at university was an increasing awareness of two elements in my consciousness, the absence of which I have since attributed to me being trapped in a ‘can’t do culture.’ Reading across and around the various suggested reading on offer, led first to a rather shocking insight that my taken-for-granted view of reality and how the world worked was not the only possible one! That there were other models of reality, equally as sophisticated, with a common-sense understanding of their own which could equally well explain the facts I saw around me. Indeed now it seemed the certainty of those facts themselves was under threat. Such models suggested other ways of being in the world, other competencies and if taken-up, offered opportunities to do many things I’d assumed I couldn’t do. Secondly, and more frightening still, it was legitimate to argue in an essay for any view of the world I liked, as long as the form of argument, conformed to a number of academic standards. The shock of realisation was as profound as when as a young child you walk into a new friend’s home and realise that the rest of the world doesn’t live as ‘we do’ at home. Over the years those skills for critical analysis and judgement of ways of living (my subject was Sociology after all) have led to as many negative conclusions as positive ones about my own background and upbringing. After three years I came away with a first class honours degree and a sense of intellectual confidence which has never left me, but also an abiding question; where did the, ‘can’t do’ come from? And why also, in other areas of my life should it persist? I write elsewhere of my experience of being a psychiatric patient for almost 30 years.

I assume nothing is beyond my understanding, although I can never know everything. I’ll never be able to do the Math of relativity or quantum mechanics but I can visualise the topography of light bent by a massive object in the four dimensions of space-time, equally I can see how a Feynman diagram illustrates the paths and interactions of subatomic particles, allowing for the calculation of probabilities high enough for anything electronic to be built on the back of it. But emotionally I have remained crippled in many ways, despite insight into my problems. An intellectual understanding of human behaviour does not lead necessarily to change in actual behaviour. In childhood I picked up the message that much was beyond me, but that one could find a place, in what I was assured was a growing meritocratic society.

I was born in 1959, but it might as well have been 1945 in terms of the socio-cultural ideas with which I was raised. My parents approach to life was imbued with the post-war philosophy of a welfare state within a growing capitalist economy. My father worked in local government, he had trained as an architect and town planner, he considered himself a ‘professional’ and to be exercising an expertise appropriately ceded to him by others; in exchange he deferred to the expertise of other professionals who equally assumed special knowledge in their own areas – particularly educationalists and health professionals. We grew up expecting that with the right qualifications (and a willingness to move around the country) we could choose careers and expect advancement leading to the economic resources to buy houses and raise families who in turn might expect even great prospects than ourselves. All of this was available if we recognised where our talents might lie and applied ourselves. My subjective experience was somewhat different.

Whilst still in the reception class of my infants school I remember getting 6 out of 10 on a spelling test and despite my best efforts feeling ashamed. Already, from somewhere I got the message I was not good enough and was letting somebody down. When I was 12 or 13 I went after school to the local teacher training college to meet with a lecturer (who later became the local university’s first Professor of Education) because tests showed I was four years behind in my writing and reading! Much remedial work followed plus years of failing exams before at age 22 a lecturer at the local college who I liked and trusted, confused me by saying I should apply for university. By then I was firmly convinced all careers advisers were charlatans and I only took the advice of friends I trusted, yet here was one telling me there was more to me than I had supposed myself. Interestingly my parents still cautioned against further disappointment, though my sister, and they themselves, had all achieved a higher education.

The key event as a child had been failing the 11 plus exam, this was what for many years decided the shape of secondary education in the UK, those who passed went to separate and better resourced state schools. The exam was intended as a measure of intelligence and a predictor of developing abilities. Now the education system is selective in other ways, but it remains the case that most people’s common-sense understanding of personality and child development is that childhood is the moment of opportunity, for afterwards personality and capabilities are much more stable and enduring. Those who believe in democracy, latch-on to ideas such as ‘equality of opportunity’ and anything else that may make society more meritocratic. Alas this has meant an ever expanding public sector and the attempt by the bureaucratically minded to develop ever more complex rules to ensure equality of outcomes - systems, which run on ideas about capabilities and the judgement of certificated experts. Somehow out of this, I and millions of others have come to feel excluded despite over the years being in receipt of a disproportionate amount of public resources!

Somewhere along the line my emotional education never caught up with my intellectual achievements - whilst I understand only too well that every thought comes from somewhere and always carries with it an emotional tag. With enough intellectual confidence you can be a genuine scholar throughout life, focused on the ‘pleasure of finding things out’ rather than on status or reward. But even being able to apply intellect to emotional life is a limited advantage. But with each insight of the academic community into what in nature holds families and communities together there comes a new group of experts demanding to spend more of the public’s money to assure rights and entitlements to the very things which cannot be legislated for.