The changing nature of education and civilization

The concepts called access and barrier have fundamentally defined the concept called civilization (or progress).

A new class of Universities is being conceived of as you are reading this post. Today we have classifications such as Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Universities. What shall be the next category that the classification needs to include? What shall we call it? I shall just call it Liberal Universities just to suggest that the very fabric of the knowledge organization shall become increasingly more liberal without the usual snobbishness that the dominant image of an average professor/teacher is attributed with. And, thus, the Paradigm of Education shall change.

Many of us may not be aware of the tectonic civilizational shifts that the Internet is inducing. An exciting tectonic shift has started happening in the Education sector. If trends such as those in the web-links provided below are successful, affordable access to high quality education may be like buying cars or washing machines. The effect shall be that we shall not value possession of certificates more than possession of ability to collaborate, formalize problems, solve things, or be creative. You need not go to Stanford University to gain access to the knowledge there.

The strategic and intellectual advantage that Stanford University or MIT, for examples, shall gain globally shall be unparalleled in human history. Now access to education is being democratized and I believe that education itself shall be democratized when any worthy individual can set up a reputed university or school without meteoric capital or operational expenditure like Khan Academy or the Athabasca University. And anybody can access knowledge of their choosing without having to prove that they indeed can. Thus, the process of knowledge generation, dissemination, and consumption shall be democratized.
The impact shall be that possession of certificates or knowledge shall not be a differentiator. The individual's ability to collaborate, formalized problems, solve problems, or be creative shall be the sole differentiation -- as it should be the case ideally. Thus, the Internet would have provided its true value to humanity.

For example: most Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, South Africans, or Indonesians, this would mean that the first immediate need for emigration need not be access to high quality education. What will the new first immediate need for emigration be? I guess that it would be to meet people that we like or wish to meet, which may have been the case originally -- thus taking us through a full civilization circle of access barriers.

https://www.coursera.org/
http://mitx.mit.edu/
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.athabascau.ca/

Observation, experimentation, inference, and hypothesis

This has been an interesting day for many reasons. One of the reasons was that my friends, Krishnan and Yogesh, and I had an interesting conversation around the concept called observations. We talked about Law of Thermodynamics, entropy in closed systems, and so on. If our universe were to be a closed system, then eventually every particle in it must become either equally cold or equally hot -- this is a current thought. This was an interesting revelation for me. But, I had a doubt. How do we know that we are in a universe and that it is closed? The general feeling within us is that that may be the collective observation of humanity for 500 years or so.

I continued by saying that I believe that science is about statements on observations or possible observations. I boldly went a step further and asserted that science is not about statements on unobservables -- things that cannot be perceived or that are never cognizable to humans. To this, Yogesh, suggested an interesting conversation that he had with another friend of ours, who was not present during this conversation. His name is Shekar. Shekar is supposed to have said that it is incorrect to say that no matter can travel at a speed greater than light. The correct statement -- according to Shekar -- would be that matter cannot travel faster than light and still be observable. Yogesh feels that the term observation may not be a clear term in science and modern society and that this may be the reason why Shekar's version of correct statement used the world "observable."

This conversation was interesting because we are now contemplating on things beyond observation and on observation itself. In other words, we are operating in complete darkness using senses. So I started searching and reading about observation from the following two articles. I liked the first article than the second because it was more embodied -- it brought the observer into the conversation as an equal entity to the observed and the observation.
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/pelli/pubs/pelli2005turrell.pdf
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observation/
I liked the following quotation from the first article.

The goal of this class is for the students to learn what science is by
doing it. For this purpose it is no good doing canned experiments,
demonstrating what we already know. We must explore a topic that is
not well understood, to formulate and answer new questions.

While reading the article, Krishnan came back to me and shared the article at the following URL and claimed that it provide a new insight into why humans crave for sweet food: http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=349.
The article described an experiment in a laboratory on lab mice -- both genetically engineered and naturally existing. The following are statements from the experiment.

1. Mice naturally prefer sugar-sweetened water to plain water. 
2. Genetically engineered mice that could not taste sweetness preferred sugar-sweetened water over plain water and artificially sweetened water. 
3. Sugar intake is known to increase dopamine levels in brain. More dopamine is sensed as a good state. 
4. So, the reason why mice (and, therefore, humans!) prefer sugar is because the brain likes it!

I tried reasoning with Krishnan about the validity of the above four statements when at one point he informed me that the study was performed by reputed scientists. I informed him that I really do not mind the reputation of the people who conducted the experiment but only about the statements emanating from it.

I said that my problem with Statement 4 is that it makes unwarranted leaps towards inference. I would liked to see statements on the behavior about another class of genetically modified mice: (a) mice without ability to taste sweetness and dopamine saturated; (b) mice without ability to taste sweetness and dopamine unsaturated; (c) mice with ability to taste sweetness and dopamine saturated; and (d) mice with ability to taste sweetness and dopamine unsaturated. The implicit assumption behind this experiment is that dopamine saturated mice would not detect any change in dopamine due to intake of sugar. Without observations from experiments (a), (b), (c) and (d), it is difficult to say that increased dopamine may be the reason for craving sugar by mice.

Further more, even if it were to be shown that increase in dopamine is the only reason for craving for sugar by mice, there is no reason to believe why that should be true for humans as well. Unless, of course, we wish to perform a similar experiment on humans, if our natural laws permit!

At this stage, Krishnan quipped that the article should not be dissected like we did but only read, accepted, and get a kick out of the suggested hypothesis. At this stage, I realized that science is but a part of a greater activity that preoccupies modern society and its humans -- entertainment. Our universities, scientists, administrators, students, and everybody exist but for one reason -- to amuse us!

The previous statement is meant to be for amusement -- so please do not dissect it! :-)

Copernican Principle (or Mediocrity Principle)

Thanks to my friend Yogesh, I was introduced to a very important concept in the Philosophy of Science (Copernican Principle or the Mediocrity Principle).

The following sentence in the Wiki link caught my eyes.

Michael Rowan-Robinson emphasizes the importance of the Copernican principle: "It is evident that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe."

Although this is a powerful philosophical thought, I feel that its limitation may be its obsession with the concept of uniqueness, which is precisely what it may be trying to sublimate! For example, it cannot answer questions like: can this universe be imagined to be unique by the same token that the Earth cannot be imagined to be unique? The mechanical answer has to be no. And for this answer to be correct, we are forced to imagine a multi-verse within which the universe can lose its uniqueness. Then we are forced to ask the question: can this multi-verse be imagined.....by the same token....that the universe cannot...? This questioning will proceed  ad infinitum. It reminds me of Zeno's Paradox. This is where, I feel that, the philosophical constructs of the west meet those of the east like Maya and Koan.

I think that you may like the following story within the context of this discussion on the Copernican Principle and its possibly intended intent, which is to reduce arrogance in human thought.

Indra (Sakra), the king of Devas (gods), is known for his arrogance. One day, he decides that he wants a grand palace to be built for him to befit his stature. So he orders Vishwakarma, the architect of gods and son of Brahma, to build a great palace for him. Vishwakarma builds a wonderful palace with all possible amnities for Indra. But Indra is not happy. He wants the grandest palace for himself. Poor Vishwakarma breaks down the first one and builds an even grander palace, one of his best creations.

Indra, however, is still not satisfied. He wants a palace like no other - like the one never built before and like the one that will never be built later. He is, after all, the ruler of the three worlds! There is no one like him. How can he have an ordinary palace? ...

He orders Vishwakarma to rebuild the palace - the third time. An exasperated Vishwakarma goes to his father Brahma and asks for help. Brahma asks him to take Vishnu's refuge. Vishnu hears the whole story and laughs out. He tells Vishwakarma not to worry and that he will take care of it.

He goes to Indra in the form of a boy. Indra welcomes his guest and asks his purpose of visit. The boy says "to see if your palace is better than OTHER Indras"!

Indra is dumb-folded. What does the boy mean by 'Other Indras'? The boy tells him "yes, other Indras. Those who existed before you. Those who will come after you. And also those who are currently existing in parallel worlds" ...

... Can you imagine Indra's situation when he hears this? ... Countless Indras in the past, countless now, and countless in the future. Each Indra is a ruler of the sky of his world and a king of Devas. Each one wants his Vishwakarma to build a grand palace. The boy goes on to tell him how he has met with them all and seen their palaces.

Indra is humbled by this insight, knows that the boy is really Narayana (Vishnu) and stops making his place grander.

So, should Indra have believed the small boy and stopped making his place grander? Well, this may be a question that cannot be answered uniquely!