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creativity

Learning How To Learn, and why It Is Important

July 10, 2018

creativity, education, knowledge, reason, society

“I grow old ever learning many things,” Solon said. Learning as you grow old is very rewarding, as well as essential for maintaining your well-being. But there is something more important than learning about science, history, the arts, or anything else. And that is learning how to learn.

But what does it mean, to learn how to learn? Moreover, how can one learn how to learn, and is this sort of learning accessible to everyone? Let’s try to unwrap this with a little personal story.

A relative of mine worked all her life behind a computer. That was in the 80s, long before graphic desktops, and there was significant complexity. If you wanted the computer to do something as simple as filling in a form or printing out a table, you had to enter a series of complex strings and commands. This relative of mine had mastered the entire system and performed efficiently and accurately.

learning how to learn — You are never too old to learn something new, provided you have learned how to learn!

And then she retired, and Windows came along. And it took her years to learn how to use the mouse, and only recently did she understand (sort of) how an Internet browser works. Concepts like “the cloud,” “signing in to Google to save YouTube videos you like,” or even “organize your bookmarks” are entirely alien to her.

Why is all this important? Because it’s a great example of how someone can be an excellent learner of any particular method, concept, or discipline, and yet a very poor learner of learning.

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Knowledge in Frankenstein

April 11, 2018

Criticism

academia, creativity, criticism, Gothic, knowledge

Note: the following article on the element of knowledge in Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 168-169) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the Tampere University Press pages. For a list of my other academic publications, see the related page of my website.

Knowledge in Frankenstein: a Central Element

One of the central themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the element of knowledge. Particularly, the novel is preoccupied with the connection between knowledge and quality of life. There are direct, dire consequences for all the characters of Frankenstein who seek knowledge, and the creature is explicit in regard to that: “Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was” (Shelley 1999, 101).

Indeed, in Frankenstein knowledge is clearly seen as a burden. This is particularly true for the creature, who describes how his sorrow increased along with knowledge. He adds that he wished to “shake off all thought and feeling”. He also pessimistically adds that the only escape to overcome pain was death (Shelley 1999, 93). It is a noteworthy detail that Paradise Lost is one of the books the creature reads that lead to his increase of knowledge (Shelley 1999, 100) – a subtle hint at the complex metatextual dynamics involved in Frankenstein.

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Over-Explaining in Writing and How to Avoid It

March 14, 2018

Literature

creativity, literature, over-explaining, patience, writing

Besides a linear narrative progression and not optimal narrative endings, another problem area for authors of fiction is over-explaining. By over-explaining in writing, we mean the tendency of a writer to provide too much factual information. This is usually detrimental to the overall pace of the novel, but it’s not the only repercussion, as we will see further below.

In today’s article I’ll show you where over-explaining in writing comes from (in other words, why fiction writers tend to over-explain), as well as how to avoid it. As a sneak preview, I could reveal that over-explaining in writing is very much related to an author’s relationship with their audience. In more detail, fiction authors who over-explain do so out of fear that their readers will not understand the story.

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