《超越学科的认知基础》2015秋颜峻学习报告

[1] I had the class on Wednesday, to be honest, it made me confused, for I had no idea what I shall do and how. The name of the course is appealing and the central concept is novel from my perspective, thus I determined to be fully engaged in this course and figure out what I might get from it. At the very beginning of the class, some terms were intricate, as it puzzled me how these distinct subjects or territories got correlated, some having nothing to do with others intuitively. It is the process of coping with the task that really capacitate me to get gradually understand the essence of the course which is designed to facilitate the formation of learning patterns. What is the pattern? Of course, it is the methodology of study and can be roughly attributed to three aspects: (1) Multidimensional study (2) Collaboration (3) Contrast Multidimensional study means to integrate diverse learning sources. The sources are generalized, which comprises of learning materials, technology applied and platforms etc. Take learning quantum mechanism as an example, learning itself may be dull without interests. However when accompanied by videos and experiments, things starting get quite different. Not only the learning process becoming more absorbing, but the comprehension of the entire territory rises to an unprecedented level which is absolutely beyond my expectation. Besides, collaboration plays critic part in learning process because students from different department varies from their knowledge network to their approaches to cognize, thus we can get complemented by working together. Finally, it is contrast that really contributes to the improvement of your learning skills. Take the homework as an example. It requires us to read two literatures and list names of persons, institutions and key technologies. I read two chapters from two books, one chapter each, the first being Ecorithm (Probably approximately correct) and the second being The Route to Normal Science (the Structure of Scientific Revolution). The two chapters are designated as 1 and 2 respectively and here is the comparison.

Persons 1. John Von Neumann, Einstein, Newton, Alan Turing, Johannes Kepler. 2. Aristotle, Ptolemy, Newton, Franklin, Lavoisier, Lyell, Planck, Einstein, Hauksbee, Gray, Desaguliers, Du Fray, Nollett, Watson, Boyle, Boerhaave, Hutton, Cavendish, Coulombs and Volta.

Technologies 1. Computers, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Newton’s laws, Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Obits, Alan Turing’s calculation, Turing test, Ecorithm and PAC. 2. Aristotle’s Physica, Ptolmey’s Almagest, Newton’s Principia and Opticks, Franklin’s Electricity, Lovoisier’s Chemistry, Lyell’s Geology and quantum mechanism.

Content Both books describe the revolution of science. The 1st book refers to the terms of CS while the 2nd book describes it using variable examples and facts. However, both chapters are telling the same main point. The science evolves from experience and facts accumulated and gradually based on systematical learning.