Andrew Brown (2007) Figure. Ink and oil pastel on paper.

HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet: Act 1, Scene V.

Although we are oblivious to phenomena that fall entirely outside our sensory range or experience, we should acknowledge that the human animal has always been far more than a solitary beast on the hoof. Indeed, at this stage of human evolution, our technology provides instruments that extend our natural, biologically endowed, sensory range to encompass some fifty orders of magnitude! Similarly, technology has elevated us beyond tribal word of mouth, enabling at least partial, vicarious access to the entire edifice of recorded human knowledge. Nevertheless, despite all the collective human experience and accumulated wisdom that has gone before, every human newborn is a new beginning. None of us encounter the exigencies of the human condition in isolation, or need to somehow rediscover all that we need to know, entirely from first principles; but our first hand experiences remain ours alone.

Learning can only begin if new or dissonant situations are able to address us directly. This can only occur against the backdrop of the conceptual grids that we have previously constructed in order to make sense of the world. Despite all our linguistic, cultural and intellectual advantages, the disconcerting fact remains that we cannot recognize truly alien phenomena. This realization is not just a truism or sterile tautology. It brings with it some enduring and compelling philosophical questions:

How can we look for something if we have no idea what it is and where to start? How, then, did we ever learn anything new? Were we simply recollecting? To what extent do we have a genetic endowment of innate knowledge?

Recent advances in neuroscience reveal that our senses constantly seek features of interest and pattern. Active perception on the hoof involves selecting, simplifying and sharpening blurred, noisy, or otherwise messy information. Is this biological ability to deal with “looseness of fit” the key to moving beyond paradoxes inherent in the problem of recognition?

We have the innate ability to perceive coarse-grained imperfections, approximations or ambiguities. We can recognize new phenomena precisely because they loosely resemble things previously encountered; but this biological attribute still fails to resolve the problem of the truly alien. Must we concede that there really are “more things in heaven and earth” than we might encounter or imagine? What does this imply? Does it make sense to deny the existence of what seems inherently unknowable? Are we condemned to silence on this matter?

Learning moments are essentially interpretive, predicated on who we are and what we have already experienced and learned. Since we cannot encounter the purely alien, learning must reside on the boundary between familiarity and strangeness.

INCOMMENSURABILITY

The notion of incommensurability applies whenever the phenomena that address us, and the projections of our current fore-structure, seem at odds. Incommensurable phenomena are not entirely alien in relation to one another. Incommensurability implies some degree of overlap even if congruent, point-by-point comparisons cannot be made.

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN…

To learn is to reconfigure a fore-structure of understanding in the glare of something new. Before this can occur, any incommensurability must somehow be worked through. For non-trivial learning this amounts, at least partially, to demolishing the existing paradigm and reconstructing a new one. The term “paradigm” is a philosophy of science term. It refers to a robust, overarching theoretical framework that provides coherence and explanatory power. For a new understanding underpinned by a new paradigm to be gained, the old must be lost. This implies an initial period of letting go, or disengagement, from previously fixed notions.

“Liminality” is a useful term for the prelude of disengagement that allows us to address incommensurable phenomena. Liminality is a concept borrowed from anthropology. In the field it refers to the transition from childhood to adulthood during rites of passage. On the liminal plane we are betwixt and between, neither here nor there, in a state that is necessarily ambiguous.

A newly emerged paradigm forces us, all at once, to inhabit a different world with alternative terms of reference with their own internal consistency. Paradigmatic change involves losses as well as gains. We think of learning as progressive, but it can be negative in the sense that we can learn phenomena—even entire paradigms—that are harmful or just plain wrong. When this is the case there may be much to unlearn.

Andrew Brown (2006) Figure. Ink, oil pastel and charcoal on paper.

Other Sources for Learning as Boundary Phenomenon: Kuhn. Feyerabend, Bernstein, Turner and Gadamer

Kierkegaard on Meno's Paradox

Homo agnoscens: ......... The Problem of Recognition

Learning resides on the Boundary Between Boredom and Anxiety