“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the
world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the
sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an
Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the
atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally
depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the
important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is
the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it is always
here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or
whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
-Carl Sagan from an introduction to A Brief History of Time By Stephen Hawking
After
hearing and reading your peer's reactions during class about the listed
quotation, what new insight can you add to this quotation analysis?
Please respond during your first class on Wed., Aug. 18th
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Metacognition?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
39 comments:
Kids just don't know as much and don't learn and they have enough time and curiosity and want to know if the people who they look up to and are supposed to know everything can answer or agree.
I think it's because adults don't have time to worry about the things they cant change or affect at all and kids do so they ask every question possible.
Children can't comprehend what stuff actually does and that's why school is a thing for children to appreciate such things as gravity or nature.
Children ask a lot of questions because they're constantly learning about the world and everything about it / within it. When we get older our imagination and that curiosity decreases usually because of other things in life we have to focus on. In some sense when we're older we still have that curiosity because we try to make sense of things and their meaning.
Our brains are always going a million miles an hour and so it's hard for us to stop and slow down qt times because we need to be able to keep up with the very busy world that we live in. From the moment we are brought into this world, we're taught to focus on certain things and think about certain topics and so we don't usually have time to think about all of the things that are around us. Although yes we are taught things in school and do look at many things, we don't inherently think about them on a daily basis.
I believe that the author is using his comparison to children to highlight the importance for wanting to grow past your childhood. I believe the author strives to make a point to demand growth in knowledge no matter how young or old you are.
Kid's are born knowing almost nothing about the world and all their knowledge is either experienced or learned. So for more abstract concepts such as the universe, they rely on thur own imagination and adults around them to teach them about it. So as you get older and are tight/ learn of differentt beliefs or knowledge, you question the world around you less and less.
I think that the point is that as we grow up we don't just stop and take a breath to think about what our world is and what it means to live in it. We tend to speed up as we grow up and only worry about what matters to us instead of pondering on what the rest of the world is doing and what makes it work. We stop thinking about what has happened what is happening and what will happen and just focus on what's happening for me and my life and needs.
Kids don't and/or can't understand the complexity of things like gravity or how the sun can provide energy to plants and other organisms, and so easier to understand stories are made in order to explain those very complex ideas (mythology). It may not have been known how fire was made or how echo's worked, but the kids were still curious about them so they were given stories to explain how they worked until they might be old enough to ask the right questions and then they would get a more complex answer.
Children compared to adults are so much more wonderous and really have the free time to think about things that exist in this brand new world they've been living in for only around a decade. Adults, on the other hand, have grasped knowledge on what the reality of life is like and therefore question less frequently.
people just want explanations for everything around them because not knowing scares most people or they just are curios in the world around them, for instance there was no need to find out if the earth was flat or round but Pythagoras was curious and he wanted to know why it was that way
Ellen H
People know a lot about little things but don't know a lot about the big picture. A lot of us will see things in one perspective and won't see it in another way. This makes subjects that are really big hard to fully understand and that leaves a lot of us not thinking about the daily things.
I enjoy how the it says except for children, because children see the world much differently. They see only what they have know for a few years. Their eyes haven’t opened as wide as adults because it is safe for them to view the world in just small quantities. As they get older they can get more pieces of the wold so that they can understand more of a real world life experience.
As you go through life your eyes broaden to the world letting you see all the disasters that it holds, But as a child your eyes are only meant to see the beauty of the world. As we get older we start to stray away from the beauty of the world and we forget to ask the important question of how we are here and what we need to focus on.
- Josh K
I believe that the author is using his comparison to children to highlight the importance for wanting to grow past your childhood. I believe the author strives to make a point to demand growth in knowledge no matter how young or old you are.
Skyler E
I feel this means that when we are younger we have a lot more questions about the world and we have a lot more time to sit and wonder. But as we get older we start to learn more. Although no one knows the answers to everything. And adults start to worry about about things that are "more important" like paying the bills, getting a good job, and what they are going to do with the rest of their life.
Something I found interesting about this quote is the final part where Sagan considers the fact that there might be limits to the things we can understand and that there may be things we can never understand. I am reminded of saying I have heard from time to time about how the more we understand, the more we realize we don't understand anything. I think it is important to be humbled by the universe and its complexity and to accept that we may never know the true reality of it all.
Life is so complicated and sometimes we choose not to think about everything that takes place to make our daily lives possible because the sheer amount of different processes that occur are too many and too much to comprehend. On the other hand, some people can't let go of the curiosity of why the world and universe are the way they are, so we have scientists to help figure those out. Science is the study of what is, so scientists merely observe and study what happens and attempt to understand why. These scientists give the information to us so that our lives may be more complete with this new understanding of how the world works. Similarly, whatever science can't answer, religion can for those who believe.
I believe that it is because children have a desire to know what is going on and they want to know everything, but as you get older you realize that not everything has an answer yet and you don't need to know everything.
Children are very curious creatures who desire answers. Yes, they are not educated enough to feel the hesitation to ask those questions that make us think and feel, however, I think that's good. Children push us to become better beings, whether we notice it or not. They have crazy minds that are not filtered in the way that a teenage or adult brain is. With kids asking questions about gravity or the sun or nature it pulls us back into our childish mindset. Our filter disappears for a split second allowing us to think on a more broad scale and analyze the world for what it is instead of how we are programed to view it.
I think it's crazy how people know gravity is a thing but don't know why it's a thing, or how heat makes light through energy and stuff like that. Also, kids are always asking questions that people don't know the answers to, but by the time you are an adult you run out of time to think of questions like that.
Nikola D
Sometimes people just want to know things. It doesn't need to be justified. being a living thing is having curiosity, nothing would have evolved without some little creatures curiosity. Anyways, we all know the earlier you are in life the more curious you will be. This is because you are not told useless facts for years of your life yet. Of course a lot of things are useless, but we don't care about it being useless until later. But alas no one can know everything, no matter your hunger for knowledge. Everyone is clueless.
The child-like sense of wonder is definitely dulled down by the growing restraints of everyday life and as we get older it is harder to as the questions are not worth asking but sometimes it is necessary to gain a better understanding. Asking the basics can be embarrassing but it can open up the world depending on which thought path it falls under. The "impressive" questions are ones of hard-to-understand jargon that half of us won't understand, what is the point if we don't understand it. Brining up the point that we go through life not understanding but accepting things. that is why we need to ask silly questions to gain an understanding of the world around us even beyond it.
Children's job is to learn and explore. People don't lose their curiosity, their curiosity is just redirected. As we get older we find specific subjects and ideas that intrigue us. Instead of asking questions of what in front of us we can dive deeper into our interests to ask more complex questions. With each question asked more questions will arise.
I feel like time isn't what we are worried about when asking questions we are more worried about being judged whereas kids or children don't have to worry about that when asking those questions because they are treated differently by people. So we don't ask questions because we feel like we can't be judged by people. So when children ask questions like how does this work or how does that work they can ask those and not be judged because they are new to how things work so when older people ask those questions people think they are weird because the older you get the more you have learned about the earth and how stuff is the way it is so we technically can ask those questions it's just we are afraid to be judged by our peers or people around us.
Children, but especially young children are so inquizitive, and are constantly asking questions. Sometimes we hear all of these questions and dismiss them as being "stupid little kid questions". In my opinion, this can be really harmful to their development. Kids are a lot more perceptive than we may give them credit for. If they see that these people they look up to are being dismissive of their curiosity, they won't want to ask those questions anymore.
After hearing my peers thoughts about the listed quote i think this means that as we grow up we get less and less time to ourselves and because of that we dont have time to think about things like that and honestly it's kinda scary to think about anyway because your imagination keeps going. Where as kids think about that all the time because they have the time too.
Children don't know much about the world so they ask a lot of questions about everything around them, and I think as most people get older they don't think as much about things like that because it's been around them for a lot longer and they're used to it, but it's a new thing for children and they want to learn about it. Children also don't have very many things to do or responsibilities so they notice the little things more than older people who have less time and focus more on the important things to them.
as we get older, we have learned things in class that when we were younger we imagined but as we learn we ask less questions because we have the answers or we have a general idea, we have a job to learn and work on projects giving us less time to imagine, and sometimes our minds get less imaginative as we look at the world more realistic and blunt.
Ryn H
I think that the Naive nature in children is really what makes them ask such questions. As you develop you begin to have responsibilities, this takes away the fun no worry aspect of life pretty quickly. Therefore you stop asking questions like, "Why is the sky Blue?" and start thinking about actions you take in your daily life to help you achieve goals that can actually benefit you in your near or far future.
I think that there are a lot of questions that we ask ourselves everyday, because we feel like we know so much about how we live and our environment but we also don't know a lot of things. When we are little we aren’t educated enough to really ask those important questions. As you go throughout life you start learning and growing and realize some things you haven’t ever thought about because as a kid you are supposed to have no worries and think life is picture perfect.
Children, but especially young children are so inquizitive, and are constantly asking questions. Sometimes we hear all of these questions and dismiss them as being "stupid little kid questions". In my opinion, this can be really harmful to their development. Kids are a lot more perceptive than we may give them credit for. If they see that these people they look up to are being dismissive of their curiosity, they won't want to ask those questions anymore.
-use-
People are very knowledgeable and yes there is a lot that is still unknown to us but there is a lot that we do know. We do not give attention to the little things like gravity because it is a known thing to everyone and we don't need to always be talking about it when it is the same everyday. Children's minds are always wandering. Their freedom gives them a chance to question the things around them. As you get older you learn more and you experience more leaving you with less questions everyday.
As I read more at this writing the more I recognize that we really do not understand our own concepts and design of our culture and our lives. In reality we know nothing about the real world, such as what it holds and what it can give to us. Thinking about it in more depth, I wanna understand a fraction of what is happening in our universe, but I know that will not be in my lifetime, probably not for many lifetimes. maybe not even ever, maybe we will just sit on earth until our extinction. all people can do at this point of time is be religious and pray there's a higher power, but in definition that just a visual and reconstructive concept people made up to make them feel better and not think about what higher power there is back then.
I think that the point is that we don't stop to take a breath and think about what the world is and what makes it work and what it means to live in it. As we get older we don't have time to think about what was what is and what will be we only care about what is happening to us. We need to take time to think about the world and ponder what it means to live and how the world works.
I love the analogy of how he tells us about how kids have more imagination and have time on their hands to think and come up with things. They want to know more but don't have the words to describe it. while us as we grow older we don't have time to think we just know, its fed to you not taught. Logic is made up in kids imagination.
Post a Comment