Well... "some philosophy author" sounds rather inappropriate for such a discussion, ey? Who was that "some philosophy author", when was the experiment done, who analysed the results, what scientific publication was that in (and I don't mean the nonsense of book stores but strictly and exclusively universitarian press!!!), which year, which institute, etc, etc, etc. Either these data is present or *there is no scientific discusssion*. Period! BTW, do you know how many books I could publish with imaginary resulst from imaginary experiments that "were carried out by famous scientists"? The *names* please, and the year, and everything else. I don't waste my time Erich von Däniken publications.
About the rapid change in the world, considering technology but also society itself, we have a problem. The rate of change went so high that we can hardly follow. It is not the same when you have to cope with changes that are still perceivable to you as such and when the changes are so fast that you can't even grasp them in the sense of *what* is changing at all. But this is not the subject of this dispute.
The subject is that an "average" humanum of our days is much mire stupidified by the educational system itself, and this you can already notice when you see people that can readily tell you about something they saw in their last vacations on some tropical island, but nothing about the relation of their own everyday actions with the poverty onn such islands. To not be able to comprehend that turning the light on here *does* influence the life of somebody else somewhere else is really getting less and less mentally.
Exactly as it is to say that the quality of analog vs digital is solely matter of preference. Any idea of physics, Saad?
Now, get your books, solve some equations, and be sure that physics and maths are not matter of "preference" at all. Or else your digital camera won't be there too.
Dear Nick, once upon a time ,may be some thirty years ago,I have read a book by some philosophy author,about a child who kept isolated in an island ,and at some forty years later they found that he was matured to man of full knowledge and wisdom, I am not trying to contradict you,but to tell in short that every concept at the present time have some two sides of approving and contradicting opinions, the time is changing so vastly at the present days ,and the ways of getting knowledge is also changing with it,whether we approve that o not, now some kids have their knowledge from a device called MP3,which evolved in so short time to MP4,and I have heard that there is some MP6,which I do not even know what it is. in short ,we are sticking to our methods of learning ,because we know for sure it is the best,but we can do nothing for drifting new generations,they have to fine their own way, exactly as you sticks to the analogue cameras because you know it is superiors to others,while me with the same knowledge that you have,but I prefer to use the Digital one, cheers, be well and fine, BTW,some types of peoples are getting less and less with the passing days, Saad.
And to tell you the truth Saad, I have the impression that this responsibility gets more and more forgotten. The parents expect from the schools to grow the children into good adults, the schools expect that from parents, the so important social service of the teacher gets downgraded more and more into a usual job... Unfortunately it seems to me that we replace the cultivating of our young people to the citizens of the world of tomorrow more and more into buying them technological gadgets, and telling them that there is only money, profit, material success, etc. Especially in the well situated societies one can really notice that though for example there are the means for making libraries and for making knowledge available to everybody... the libraries remain more and more empty as the time passes by. We evolve to societies that know only of eating, drinking, consuming... Sad thing to watch.
Anyway, thank you very much for the always good exchange and perhaps we get more of this in UF - just to not let this place convert to some kind of visual consumation site. ;-)
They invented calculus both and at the same time independently of each other, Saad. This is something that is much more common in sciences than one would think. Even chemical compounds get synthesized by several people independently of each other and pretty much at the same time. It may be that one of these scientists gets more widely know to public but in the scientofic community they are all equally well known. The wide public somehow chooses its favorites but this never had counted anything in science. We don't care about "likings" or "sympathies" from the side the wide public since they are irrelevant. So, in mathematics it is quite usual to refer to Newton *and* to Leibniz with the same credits for their work. (No matter if they also had some argueing and controversies about the question to whom the credits belong.)
About the value of such documentaries.. I will only tell you one thing: You don't get your diploma or your PhD by referring and learing from such documentaries. You get it by studying real sources and they are not on TV. They are in libraries. The documentaries of media try to be "a little bit of information" but they can´t be used as sources for scientific discussion. It would be like giving somebody the title of a surgeon just because he/she saw some documentaries about medicine and surgery.
As about "endogenic" factor, they have been completely overestimated. In the meanwhile there is both experimental as also theoretical (mathematical!!!!) evidense that it is not as clear as biology has stated about genes being the "definers" of our beings. The mathematical prooof dies exist about the fact that no mechanism like that can claim a one-way relation of reasons and results. It *has* to be a two-way relation in which not only the genes define us but also we define our genes.
BTW, in matters of experimentaö biology, take some babies with a good statistical representative mixture of gene-sets and put them somewhere with no influence whatsoever from any culture. You can be sure that despite genes they will not fully develop their potential. Second experiment, take the same set of genes and put it in many different cultures/influences. One of the individuals might become a mass murderer and the other exactly the opposite. The latter also shows the responsibility of parents and schools, doesn't it?
Muy buena idea, simple, directa, de claro mensaje, muy bien por el recorte y la inclinación de las líneas de la foto, nuevamente un excelente uso de las diagonales. Felicitaciones!
I am very aware of media exaggerations and shifting of some facts for a purpose, and I am also a believer in experimental science,and fully aware of how to to prove a fact,and putting hypothesis, and very well conscious to all the facts that you have stated about learning skills and practicing talents,. cleverness or say high IQ,arts ,skills and talents are not only exogenous,they are endogenous too,parts of it comes vertically through genetics and the other parts comes horizontally from the environment,and all what you are saying and I have agree with you totally is that each one could compensate the missing ratio at any part by learning and practicing,but due to our lack in the knowledge of how the brain and genetics works,we can not explain yet the genius power or the artistic abilities of some very few rare persons on the basis of learning or practice, Saad.
At the end it seems to me that it is a question of.. love. I don't mean the trivial word as meant in pseudo-romantic B-movies. I mean care, I mean to embrace what you do with interest, sincere dedication, full of questions and fill of joy for each and every little answer that you might get. This is for me the best engine that sets study and practice in motion, in order to develop skills little by little. The "supernatural automatism" out of which arts are meant to be produced is at the end a hollow promise, simply because you may have the best ideas in your mind, about music, photography, science, etc. But the tools you use do not know about that. You'll have to learn to use them in such a way that you can produce what you carried in mind. (Here we also see why it took so long from the very first artificially produced tone until music!)
Or take the example of your last upload with the woman in the deadend. You tried ince, twice, three times. Perhaps you try also a fourth and a fifth time. If there has been not such a dedication to this subjected you could as well have said that the first try was enough for you. But no, you cared about it, you wanted to make a further step, to understand better the technique, to make an even better image. In other words to treasure your art as something that deserves the highest dedication. And so you succeeded, and you succeeded unbelievably well.
See? All that work and study you did, all those cumbersome talks and checks and tries and thoughts were the fertile soil to let the small plant of photography grow. Without them it would probably either live in misery or perhaps even die. I think we should do everything to let it grow beautiful, not quick and dirty but really beautiful.
I turn now to your reference to Aborigines and other cultures which developed arts, traditions, anything. Do you think that the individuals of them didn't work and study just because there has been no school (in the modern sense of the world) at those times? Not only they exercised and worked but sometimes they also accepted to expose themselves to dangers that would be unnecessary otherwise. The prehistoric homo something that first noticed that a tubular bone with a hole produces a sound when air is blown through it, had to try another hole. He/She developed techniques for piercing the bone without splitting it. He/She had to try different holes at different distances from the lips, put the fingers over the holes, try this and that. All that knowledge was not gained and gathered with the methods of today, but this doesn't count. What counts is that it was gathered, it was given to the next generation, enriched by further knowledge, given to the next generation, and so on. This is also work. It took work of thousands of years to develop music. It was not developed on a single day out of some kind of "sudden inspiration" of a prodigy. Alone the fact that it took sich a long time is enough to show that talent without work leads to nothing. The same goes for all other arts from any individual, in the wide meaning of our previous messages. (I.e. anything a human being does.)
Perhaps one could state that for example the Aborigines' approach doesn't have to do with conscious study and practice, but I would disagree here very very sharply! To study something doesn't mean only to go to some school or to read books about it, etc. One can also apply the direct experimental method, provided (and *this* is *the* interesting thing) that a consious mind condensates the findings into a consistent understanding of what is happening. Let's stay on the example of music, traditional music as played from people in the Amazon territory. In order top play music you one must have understood first, that different tones come from different holes on the above mentioned tubular bone. One has to somehow find out that holes nearer the lips produce higher tones than those more far away. All this is.. study and work too. (And this is also why I say that experimenting without examining and understanding the results is useless. No progress is made this way.) It is clear that those people around Amazon also studied and practised, or isn't it?
OK, now I understand. Sigh! How often am I goind to repeat that...
But OK, let's start from the beginning. Saad, documentaries about exact sciences on TV or on any other media are nonsense. Rubbish! They oversimplify the extremely complex and most advanced proceedings of human beain. The reasons for that are simple, very simple: The people of BBC, or any other serious broadcast do take professionals for consulting, but unfortunately:
1) They are journalists and not mathematicians (or professionals in any similar subject). So this results into oversimplification simply because otherwise they (and the public) wouldn't understand a single thing. Some months ago there has been some documentaries about E8 (a Lie Group) as a model for cosmology and particle physics, and the statement has been made... that the universe is a crystal, which of course is nonsense! The E8 has such a "crystal-like" symmetry but it is not to be applied "directly visually" on the whole universe! For geavens sake, it represents a (possible but not proven) symmetry of elementary particles, and not in normal space but in spin-charge-parity space. This space is not what we see. But the documentary asserted in the typical quick and dirty way, that the universe is more or less a crystal. Humbug, completely humbug!
2) Such documentaries have to cover, say, one or two hours. This is a strict limitation of program production. Now, be sure that this amount of time is way not enough for really documenting such things. It is perhaps enough for a dicumentary about the animal of Afrika, but chemistry, and even more physics, and even even more mathematics need years to be explained in a correct way. This is not matter of some few comments and some few pictures on some screen.
If one wants to examine such things, then he/she goes to the libraries of universities or orders the relevant articles from universitary press publishing houses, like for example physica acta, or mathematical society, etc. TV is only fore being very very rawly informed about some proceedings. It is not for scientific argumentation, and even less for basing philosophy upon it.
BTW, *most* scientists were rather "good friends of drinking and parties", but this does *not* mean that they didn't work, as documentaries may imply. Have you seen the volume of Leibniz' published articles? Without work you don't publish such an amount of great mathematics articles.
the documentary movie I have seen about him,may be more than fifteen years ago,stated that while Newton spent all his life in teaching and studying,Leibniz spent all his times drinking wines in parties and dancing with women. the movie is not a cheap one,it is either from the BBC or Discovery Channel production,they stated that he just pick a pencil and wrote what took Newton 60 years to discover,
I can not give you names,but I could tell you that most of the great poets of our culture,they wrote the greatest poems in our history long before teaching is ever existed, I agree with you from the very first reply that the external environment (teaching and gaining skills) have its effect in revealing latent talents,no one could deny that,yet there are some so very rare Artist that does not affected by their environment,they are just born artists,we may find them in the deep jungles of the Amazon or Africa or even in some Austuralin aboriginan peoples.
Saad, either we discuss with a full consequence of what we say, or we leave it be! OK?
The point is that you implied in your last message that some people could develop their "arts" without excercise and study! The point is that you talked about somebody that hadn't studied and practiced his skills, and discivered what Newton also discovered. And this somebody is Leibniz? Leibniz is somebody that dodn't study and exercise his talents in mathematics? Are your still serious?? This is *wrong*? *False*! *Mistaken*!
Leibniz did no way discovered what Newton also discovered "just like that"! Leibniz is one of most prominent mathematicicians of all times and he worked very very hard for formulating and developing calculus, just like Newton did. The fact that he is not as well known in the wide public doesn't mean anything. In mathematics we work each and everyday with his findings, so don't tell me where you read about him. You don't tell me anything new about Leibniz!
Back to the point, and the point is, that these people didn't only have "talents" but worked both like insane in order to unleash the potential of their talents and turn them to skills! Much like all other masters of other subjects did. So, your conjecture of existence of "masters without practice" still needs verification of at least one example. Leibniz is no example that proves your hypothesis. He worked a *lifetime* on these subjects!! And that means, either you present me an example of somebody who excelled in some subject without working and cultivating his skills, or you accept that your statement was wrong! And please, no "buts", no "ifs", no second hand information that has to do nothing with the subject!
Hi Nick, this a simple photography story ,done upon your always enjoyable,reasonable and logical critiques. All what I hope you will like it. http://www.usefilm.com/image/1537285.html
Two mathematicians, Isaac Newton of England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz of Germany, share credit for having independently developed the calculus in the 17th century.
Late in 1675 Leibniz laid the foundations of both integral and differential calculus. With this discovery, he ceased to consider time and space as substances—another step closer to monadology. He began to develop the notion that the concepts of extension and motion contained an element of the imaginary, so that the basic laws of motion could not be discovered merely from a study of their nature.
and I deeply believed for unknown reason to me that he is the original founder of calculus,may be due to the fact that history is written by victorious side.
We will all have our strentghts and oir weaknesses in what we can do best, Saad. Even Darwin, Freud, Picasso, Dali and all the others would not be the masters of their art if they wouldn't work on it! Do you know for example how many works Picasso discarded because they weren't good (for him) and worked again and again on them until he got it right?
You remember a man, you say, who had "no skills" etc, and "discovered what Newton discovered. How do you know what he discovered and how he discivered that? - if this is true at all.
First of all: Do you think that Newton's idea was just that there is gravity? This can be imagined by pretty much everybody and alone it says... nothing at all! Absolutely nothing! The important thing is to work out the consequences in a consistent way, and this doesn't get done by "somebody that has no exercised skills". In order to do that at tha time one had first to develop the very tools which allowed the consistently correct work out of the theory, which then made predictions, explained phenomena, etc. *This* is the discovery and not the simple "imagination" from the sides of the unskilled about the existence of gravity. So, how did that Brosia did it without mathematic skills? And I don't mean the "fantasies" about which you keep on telling me, but rather the solid, definite, objectively provable work.
So, of course there are indivudual humans with a greater latent talent for something, be it arts or whatever. But you don't get that poetentail unleashed without cultivation of it. The latter can happen in school, colleges, academies or also with autodidactic methods, but skill doesn't come without it. Those who are given the chance to convert their latent talents to really existing skills are the lucky ones.
BTW, and just for the record, talent and skill are different things, ey? Talents you can have as many as one can imagine right out of the womp, but skill.. Skill is a different matter.
Cheers!
Nick
P.S.: As a side note here, in exact sciences if somebody is the originator of some discovery then he/she is well known in the corresponding academic crises, no matter of they are unknown in the rest of the world. All the references to "others who did the same" are nonsense, much like the "sensation" some months ago about the young iraqi-swedish guy who "solved Bernoulli". It is not the matter of the layman to decide who discovers what.
Hi Nick,thanks for the detailed response as your usual, if so then we are all the same,and our art is to be different from each others according to our study , skills and practice,exactly as a class room students and how they will differ from each other according to their As,Bs and Ds. I think this right for the majority of us,but we had to explains those real in the real terms artists ,scientists,geniuses,and extraordinary phenomenal peoples,who constitute less than one per country per hundred years,like for instances ,Darwin ,Freud ,Picasso,Dali,and many many more, and I remember a man for instance who do not have that skills and practice and yet he discovered what Newton discovered,that man was the ambassador of Brosia in England at Newton times, my whole point is that there are some who does not need what we needs to be an artists or scientists. be well and fine, Saad.
Artistic skills can be only gained by study and practice, Saad.
But let's take things from the start. Each and every one of us is born with certain latent talents, or better with a certain potential. But these latent talents will not evolve into real skills without their conscious cultivation. I.e. a young human being might be born with the latent talent for literature but it will never write a good poem if it will not be taken to school, tought the alphabet first, the words as carriers of material and abstract concepts, the way to grasp meanings and assimilate them into its mental activity.
The visually oriented arts are especially dangerous for a misconception, namely that doing something that can be "seen" and be "liked" is already artistic work. You can readily identify this inherent problem of visually oriented arts when you think about the parallel to literature or music. An unintentional random hiting of guitar strings is quite easy to recognize. The difference is that vision is a much more "forgiving" sense. It will accept much easier pretty much anything as "artistic" work since the witnesses of the intentions are less strong, much harder or even impossible to recognize. The first lemma here is that the absolute honesty of the artist is needed! There has to be the trusting in his/her words that he/she really meant it this way.
So, what we are, you ask? We are all artists since we do things that are *artificial*!! They wouldn't happen by themselves! Intentionally cooking a good dish is already arts and intentionally making a garden too. Such things would never happen alone by themselves. (At least I never saw a good dish as a result of the wish of the ingredients to fall into the pot in the right order and in the right quantity.) But we have to study what we do, and to practice it! There is no artist that fell from the sky.
In this sense even a computer programmer is an artist. Or a taxi driver, or a shop-keeper, or a doctor. But the latent talents have to be converted to skill with conscious dedication and love for the details and for doing what we do the best we can.
Hi Nick, if there are Natural born artists,and I believe they do exists, then what are the most of us ? did the art could be gained by study and practice ? your title have made this shot, my best wishes, Saad.
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