Samuel Arbesman reports for Wired with excitement about a year-old article in PLoS ONE (“Variable Cultural Acquisition Costs Constrain Cumulative Cultural Evolution” by Alex Mesoudi) that presents a dire scenario for the continued progress of human civilization. Apparently, we are getting full. According to the study, human knowledge is becoming so complex that it will eventually take so much time and energy to learn what we already know that there will be no time to discover anything else. Graduate students know this feeling.
I will tell you not to worry. The study proceeds from a specific set of assumptions that we have no reason to accept. One of these assumptions is the knowledge equivalent of the falsified evolutionary development aphorism, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.
This assumption is presented in such a way that it could look like a finding to some readers using this figure:
This figure shows that UK students learn math concepts in the same order that they were discovered throughout history. It appears that individuals learn concepts in the same order that culture discovered those concepts. It is as if each individual’s learning experience is a microcosm of the entire experience of humanity. Continue reading “‘May I be excused? My brain is full.’”
On our way to visit family in Central Illinois, we used to always pass a sign for 
The Finch and Pea 