By profession, I’m a research professor in the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. My background is physics, but my expertise and field of specialty is physics education research: what it means to “know” physics (or science or anything), how people learn it, and how we can teach it more effectively. As a consequence, I spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. And that has profoundly influenced the way I think about, well, everything.
The world of educational research has long since figured out that although information can be transmitted and memorized, knowledge must be constructed by each individual. Learning (in the knowledge sense) is an ongoing process of sense-making as new ideas are integrated into the individual’s existing mental models of the world. And — here’s the kicker — how a person goes about that process, how she interprets new information and evidence, and even what she pays attention to in the first place are governed by the models she already holds. In other words, what you think you know largely determines what you see and what you will learn from it. (This perspective is called constructivism.)
In fact, humans are flat-out incapable of knowing “the truth”. From before birth we observe, model, observe more (filtered by the model), interpret (from the perspective of the model), and, when backed into a corner, revise the model. Our cerebral machinery processes and reprocesses the data of our limited senses before even the most rudimentary awareness intrudes on our conscious mind. We have no direct access to the raw stuff of reality. The best we can hope for is a collection of mental constructs that are not too fragmented, not to inconsistent, and close enough to “reality” that we can function without doing anything too stupid. If you talk to a physicist who is careful with his language, he won’t tell you about nature. He’ll tell you about models that explain, as completely and economically as possible, the observations we can make about nature.
(Are you religious? If you object to the previous paragraph on the grounds that it contradicts the notion of “divinely revealed truth”, please reconsider. Do you really believe the infinite deity and the wonders beyond this mortal coil can be perfectly, accurately, completely captured by any finite human mental constructs? We’ve been told as much about the divine as we need and can handle, no more or less.)
So it’s no wonder that people who feel President Bush is the devil incarnate can find copious evidence to strengthen their opinion, whereas those who believe he is protecting us against fanatical enemies from without and moral decay from within see many reasons to fortify theirs. We all filter, we all interpret, and our models are all self-reinforcing. We can’t help it. That’s just human nature.
Hmm… Sounds like a problem, eh? Aside from wallowing in existential angst, what can we do about this damnably inconvenient limitation?
Well, that’s why I named this blog Think Twice.
- Everybody’s world view makes sense to them, and very very few people are deliberately evil. If someone’s thinking seems obviously flawed or ill-intentioned, it’s a safe bet I don’t really understand it. And until I do, it behooves me to be very, very cautious about criticizing it. So when someone says something I disagree with and I’m inclined to condemn or ignore it, I should think twice.
- Alas, I am just as human as the rest of you (despite what my fourth college roommate said about physics majors). People I passionately disagree with are just as sure of themselves as I am of myself. Annoyingly, many of them are just as bright, well-educated, and well-informed as I. Perhaps more so. It would be hubris to think that my confidence is better founded than theirs simply because I’m me. I filter and interpret, too. So, when I think I’m right about something, I’d better think twice.
- What we know is merely an approximation of what really is, and reality is infinitely richer and more subtle than we’ll ever appreciate. When I think I understand something, I’d be wise to think twice.
- The most powerful tool we have for pushing back the limitations of the mind is awareness of those limitations. So I think, and then think about my thinking. People who like big words call this metacognition. (Once in a while, just to be careful, I think about how I think about my thinking.) Think twice! (Or three times, or…)
That’s the primary reason I named this blog as I did, but not the only one. I’m an oddball. People who get to know me in a limited context and try to place me in a convenient box — liberal, conservative, religious, rationalist, hyper-intellectual, impulsive, compulsively organized German, moody Celt, whatever — are invariably wrong. Or rather, they’re 10% right and 90% wrong. For that reason I very much dislike labels. Even labels that are technically correct, because I fit the strict definition, tend to be so encrusted with inaccurate connotations and assumptions that they rankle. So if you think you’ve got me pegged, think twice.
I wonder how many of us really do fit into nice neat boxes. Next time I stick a label on someone, perhaps I should heed my own advice. The problem is, labels are so darned convenient…
