Evolution of Homo discens
The project was conceived in the spirit of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Homo humilis and Homo contingens pages of the Homo discens museum were inspired by Bryson's book.
It’s all in the name. The Homo discens project addresses enduring questions pertaining to the nature of learning moments, problems of knowledge acquistion and how we build understanding.
The content is aimed at students, educators and other curious non-specialists.
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This site contains little original thinking from the author. The challenge has been in the synthesis. The author’s task has been to gather, distil and present the work of others in a coherent, perusable fashion. Ideas otherwise scattered in a myriad of specialized texts are introduced, cited and made generally assimilable for the general reader in a single, convenient location. The author’s intention is that visitors to the museum site—once intrigued—will delve further into the original sources.
Transcending Disciplines
Early inspiration for Homo discens came from authors whose work bridged the sciences and the arts. Jacob Bronowski (physics and poetry), Jonathan Miller (medicine and opera) and John Steinbeck (marine biology and the novel) are famous examples.
As a trained zoologist, educator and figurative artist the Homo discens author has long recognized family resemblances between the scientific method, the creative process and embodied learning. The problems encountered in attempting to draw the human figure for several decades are a leit-motif of the Homo discens project.
Figure drawing boils down to sequential marks on a page that have traced an individual artist’s encounter and connection with a fellow human being. Rendering the model as a physical object is a vehicle for something more profound than copying pastterns of light and shade. Problems of Figure drawing mirror problems of perception, understanding and identity; in this sense, the artist is, quite literally, attempting to draw the human condition.
The Homo discens project takes the position that a consilience of knowledge seems possible in an interconnected uni-verse, though not in a strictly reductionist, hierarchical sense. Philosophy, neuroscience and the arts are by no means parallel, incommensurable discourses.
Homo discens (like the International Baccalaureate TOK course that, in general structure, it resembles) is apt and timely. A relevant education for the 21st century must address the buzzing confusion caused by the escalating fragmentation and specialization of knowledge. In addition, if young people are to be encouraged to ask difficult questions, and to think for themselves; they should be allowed at least a glimpse of themselves as capable and fallible, individual learners in the larger context of human knowledge as a whole.
Especially in this digital era, the ability to ask the right questions, recognize good sources and discern worthwhile avenues for further exploration has become an indispensable skill for students both and teachers. Less may be more. To these ends we must to some extent all become generalists, even as we obtain mastery in one or more disciplines.
