20020513.00

     Betreffs der Erkenntnis, bis ich zu folgenden Schluessen
gekommen: 1) the acquisition of knowledge is unconscious, 2)
knowledge itself is in large part a social phenomenon, dependent
on and an expression of the society to which an individual
belongs.  3) the basis of the valdity of knowledge is the
unconscious modification of the nervous system which occurs
variusly when the individual is exposed to various stimuli.
rimitive example is the tanning of the skin when subjected to
ultraviolet radiation; the growth of musculature and of bones in
consequence of exercise; the acquisition of visual capacty when
the eye is exposed to images; failure of such visual capacity to
develop when te eye is masked; the qcquisition of language from
being exposed to the sounds of it; dumbness as consequence of
deafness.  the acquisition of all manner of manual skills and of
all manner of intellectual skills simply by practice.

     It is because so much learning is planned, is deliberate, is
conscious that we interpret learning as a deliberate conveyance
of facts, of data, a memorization of propositions, of vocabulary,
of grammar.  But, of course, there is no contradiction between
the conventional view and my own. The mind which has memorized a
passage from King Lear is a different mind, has thereby become a
different mind. And one may nproperly postulate some sort of
physical modification of the meurons, of the brain substance, of
the gray matter, analogous to the modifications of the madnetic
disc...  Although one customarily consciously and deliberately
memorizes a Shakespeare text, yet the conscious quality of the
acquisition of data is not only not essential, insistence on it
is redundant and misleading.  For there are many things which one
deliberately tries to learn but unsuccessfully, and many things,
in point of fact, all actual learning is unconscious.

     The harmony of which Leibniz postulated that is was pre-
established, is not in fact antecedent, does not exist prior to
its occurrence.  This harmony between the subjective and the
objective, between the soul and the world, between the inside and
the outside, between mind and body is created when the human
person, the personality is modified by its environment, by the
objects and infkuences to which it is exposed.  The exposure to
ideas generates in the mind or brain of the human being the
symbolic forms with which it is understood, just as the exposure
to ultraviolet light generates melanin in the skin.

     This theory is quite in accord with and explains the
Platonic paradox of the Meno, that one cannot learn what one does
not already know: the answer being of course that the acquisition
of knowledge is an unconscious adaptation and assimilation of the
mind to the reality which it puports to "learn". Learning is
something passive which happens to a person when he is exposed to
the histerto unknown and ununderstood.

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