December 13, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime Story
On Understanding
In logic, comprehension of an object is
defined as the totality of intentions that includes its attributes, characters,
marks, properties or qualities.
Reading comprehension is the ability of a
mind to process text, understand its meaning and integrate any new information
with the existing old one saved in its memory.
Of course, in reading comprehension the
most essential skill is the knowledge of the meaning of words which again is
not language specific.
Understanding is a psychological process of
the mind that is applicable both a physical object or to an abstract
concept.
It is quite hard to describe in words what
understanding means but for understanding to happen it needs a knower (not
necessarily human ape) and an object of understanding.
While we educated apes see understanding in
terms of ability to grasp the concepts specially the theory behind those
concepts for other intelligent “beings” this meaning of understanding may not
be applicable.
If for instance an intelligent “being” is
able to predict the behavior of an object through observation or more likely
through experience with it then in some way one can say that the intelligent
being has in some way understood the object.
This might not necessarily mean that that “being”
has understood the theory or the concept as we modern scientific apes would see
it.
It is possible or even likely that the
intelligent “being” has developed its own theory about the behavior of the
object that allows it to make predictions and inferences very much successfully
that is compatible to its existence and survival.
Hence understanding can be seen in terms of
ability to develop inference which allows the intelligence to make useful
predictions or even guesses.
Computer scientist and mathematician
Gregory Chaitin who originally is from Argentina but has done a lot of his work
in the United States is currently a professor at the University of Brazil in
Rio de Janeiro sees understanding as a kind of date compression.
Chaitin says that one would consider it
understanding when a complex intelligent system is able to figure out a simple
set of rules that explains a phenomenon or an object.
In other words, if a system can figure out
a simple model as an explanation of anything that is enough to label it as
understanding.
The example that he gives in support of it
in his essay ‘The Limits of Reason’ is our understanding of day and nights
through earth’s rotation.
This simple model of a spherical planet
rotating allows us apes in explaining tremendous lot of physical phenomena that
we experience besides the ever-recurring and uneventful day and night – such as
varying brightness at different times, diurnal temperature variations and
changes in atmospheric conditions.
Similarly when it comes to mathematics he
gives the example of real number 0.333…
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer
and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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