A Word of Warning: World War I

Title: World War I

Date: 1914-1918

Nationality: Continental Europe, United States

Creator: Man

Medium: Death

Title: Dulce Et Decorum Est

Date: 1920

Nationality: United Kingdom

Creator: Wilfred Owen

Medium: Print

British 55th Division gas casualties 10 April 1918

A Canadian soldier with mustard gas burns, ca. 1917–1918.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

World War I takes an important place among the artifacts of learning.  It shows that learning is not a moral activity, as some have suggested.  Learning flowers and it cares not which way it grows—toward life and progress or death and destruction.  Within this war all learning is encompassed, encapsulated, and sealed in the muddy tombs of the dead.  I have included Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est as a profound expression of the war itself: created in the form of a broken and chaotic version of the French ballad—the beauty replaced by the stark nakedness of death in war, a nightmare that haunts the living in place of the sweet dream that accompanies life.  It is a warning call to those who would forget or retell the “old lie”: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—“How sweet and right it is to die for one's country” (“Dulce”).  Learning is not moral, and for that morality must ever accompany it.  They are bound together; for if they separate, the one will slay the other.

"Dulce Et Decorum Est," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est

Images and captions taken from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_55th_Division_gas_casualties_10_April_1918.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mustard_gas_burns.jpg

Total Learning: The French Revolution

Title: The French Revolution

Date: 1789-1799

Nationality: France

Creator: French Revolutionaries

Medium: Ideas, Words, and Violence

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions.  When they are over, this fact is recognized—that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.” 

–Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

The French revolution and the quotation referring to it by Victor Hugo are included as artifacts to demonstrate that learning is not an abstraction.  The French revolution, every aspect of it, was one constant application of the principles of learning.  Discernment of the horrid living conditions of the poor, the judging and reevaluation of circumstances at home and abroad, the synthesis of ideas fomenting in the minds of the people, the expression in violent revolution—all of these are just small pieces of the ever-weaving tapestry of learning manifesting itself in the world.   Learning is not confined to schools and papers and intellectual debates between scholars and philosophers—it happens everywhere at once in every person and society.  It is a messy process that can be brutal and terrifying in the same moment that it is beautiful and joyous.  The reality of learning must impinge itself on the mind of every person, lest we learn things we do not expect, without knowing it, leading us to paths we otherwise wouldn't tread.

Images taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People

Expression: Symphony No. 5

Title: Symphony No. 5

Date: 1804-1808

Nationality: Austria

Creator: Ludwig Van Beethoven

Medium: Print; Symphony Orchestra

Symphony No. 5 represents an expression of learning both unique and remarkable.  Beethoven, both extremely popular and successful, a prodigy of his day, a master of his craft, learned at age thirty that he was going deaf.  What followed was period of deep anguish and melancholy.  Fortunately, with some help and some time, Beethoven was able to break out of his tormented state renewed: “I am resolved to rise superior to every obstacle.  With whom need I be afraid of measuring my strength?  I will take Fate by the throat.  It shall not overcome me.  O how beautiful it is to be alive—would that I could live a thousand times!” (Strong and Davis 457).  Deaf but undefeated, Beethoven went on to create some of his greatest works, including the Fifth Symphony, ushering in the Romantic period of music.  His music changed as began to break the rules that he mastered—he synthesized the art and form of classical music with the lessons born from the emotional upheaval he had undergone.  Music did not express enough and he saw what he might do to change that—not only are Beethoven’s Romantic style symphonies an expression of musical learning, but it is also an expression of his emotional development and eventual triumph.  His music expresses the certainty that emotional learning is just as viable and important as intellectual development—an aspect that must not be ignored in any healthy civilization.

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._5_(Beethoven)

Expression: The Power Loom

Title: The Power Loom

Date: 1785

Nationality: United Kingdom

Creator: Edmund Cartwright

Medium: Metal, wood, etc.

The power loom may be the ultimate expression of the industrial revolution that took place in Britain in the late 18^th century.  Beginning with the hand loom, the power loom grew out of the repeated applications of discernment, judgment, and synthesis.  With each progression people saw possibilities, demands, wants, room for improvement.  They analyzed and processed different methods and means by which to improve.  Whenever new concepts were introduced—interchangeable parts, external power sources such as water or coal, these concepts were synthesized and incorporated into future discernment and judgment.  Steadily, progress was made until large scale industrial warehouses running on coal powered machines was possible.  This small passage in Davis and Strong’s History of Creativity demonstrates this process and the resulting expression perfectly:

Edmund Cartwright visited one of Arkwright’s factories and commented to his friends that what was needed was a mechanized weaving machine.  His friends scoffed, but by 1785 Cartwright had invented a power loom, and by 1787 he had established a factory using power looms to make cloth…The power looms were usually made of metal, thus requiring knowledge of metallurgy, another contribution from science for the burgeoning textile industry (540).

Learning can be judged by its fruits—it can take us from peasant farmers to industrial tycoons.

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_loom

Synthesis: Darwin's Finches

Title: Darwin’s Finches

Date: 1835

Nationality: Galapagos Islands

Creator: Sketches created by Charles Darwin

Medium: Print sketches of birds

Title: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

Date: 1859

Nationality: United Kingdom

Creator: Charles Darwin

Medium: Print

  

Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure  

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Strong and Davis 650).

As artifacts of learning, Darwin’s finches represent the beginning point of his general theory of evolution that eventually culminated in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. In order to develop his theory of evolution and natural selection, Darwin had to combine knowledge of several fields (including population dynamics, geology, botany, and physiology) (Strong and Davis ,.  He had to gather relevant data (discernment), analyze it, and reevaluating preexisting paradigms (judgment) in order to synthesize a functional theory.  What is most striking about this particular synthesis is that the initial integration of something very small and simple—the difference of physical characteristics of related birds—sparked a whole new realm of scientific theory and understanding.  Small and simple things should never be underestimated in their impact, not only for a single person, but for the whole world.

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_finches

Synthesis: The Critique of Pure Reason

Title: Critique of Pure Reason

Date: 1781

Nationality: Germany

Creator: Immanuel Kant

Medium: Print

The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding. 

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

The critique of pure reason comes from of a long process of learning and multi-lateral application of both philosophical reasoning and scientific methodology.  Kant initiated a “Copernican revolution” in metaphysical (and moral) thought that redirected almost all philosophical thought after him.  In attempting to establish a firm groundwork for scientific knowledge against Humean empiricism, Kant learned and expressed a new methodology for defining and application of knowledge and perception.  He also established the limitations of pure reason and clamped down on spurious metaphysical and moral philosophies that threatened to jeopardize the worth and validity of both—thus, unbeknownst to many, Kant effectively saved both natural science and moral philosophy, and preserved them for further scrutiny after his time. 

Kant’s First Critique demonstrates the paradigm changing force of the application of synthesis—as his mind adjusted for new concepts in science, religion, epistemology, and metaphysics, he was forced to reorient his entire world view until those concepts could fit together into a cohesive body of knowledge with as few contradictions as possible, thereby producing a landmark monument in the history of learning.  Kant, then, demonstrates what might be called the closest thing to a “full synthesis” a complete and thoroughgoing process where all possible connections for an integrated body of knowledge is pursued to their ultimate ends, so far as they can be perceived.  The personal integrity and discipline of this full synthesis is worthy of praise and ought to be emulated at all levels where possible.

Image taken from: www.beingandtim.com

Synthesis: Il Duomo

Title: Il Duomo, winches, and scaffolding

Date: 1418-1436

Nationality: Italy (Florence)

Creator: Brunelleschi

Medium: Architecture, engineering

Having lost to Lorenzo Ghiberti for the privilege of completing the doors to the baptistery of Saint John the Baptist in Florence, Italy, Filippo Brunelleschi, left for Rome where he studied architecture and clockwork.  His profession and study resulted in an incredible influx of knowledge (or rather, of concepts) that he was able to synthesize into a solution for one of Florence’s biggest problems: the incompletion of the central cathedral.  The cathedral was so big that almost two decades after it was built, no one had been able to construct a suitable dome to crown it.  In order to solve this problem, Brunelleschi was able to utilize architectural concepts that resulted from the synthesis of his body of knowledge.  As he worked and learned, the concepts gained from clock making connected with concepts about aesthetics, architecture, and engineering (Strong and Davis 17).  These combined and interwoven concepts gave him the inspiration he needed to envision and create Il Duomo, as well as create the ingenious tools that would facilitate its production.  This lateral thinking, made possible by the synthesis of concepts made possible architectural and engineering feats that were previously thought of as nigh impossible.

Image taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Cathedral