I would like to introduce, in this brief article, my fascination for the human ability to learn and especially the different fields of intelligence that gets stronger such as a muscle when trained. Please notice that I am not a neuro-scientist and do not have any legitimity to say whether this whole article is true or false; this is just a theory from a lot of observations I would like to share, to be able to discuss about it and get other points of views :-)
Anyway let's dive into the subject, let's talk about human intelligence.
We all have seen one day this kind of chart:
And even if, as usual when trying to wrap concepts in boxes, it's just a coarse representation, it does show many of our brains ability and the field linked to it.
Considering this, we can understand how it's important for a person (a child especially) to practise music, maths, go for nature walks, interract with people, read books, etc... to develop his intelligence in these fields.
But I think the most interesting phenomenon in our ability to constantly learn is how learning A can help understand B.
In other words, how music can help understanding the beauty of an alexandrine, how maths helps when it comes to express and idea or explain a concept, etc ...
These interractions could bring more to our knowledge than an intensive lesson in one field, and as we create more and more bonds, we create a "knowledge net".
This "knowledge net" brings a lot of advantages when it comes to learn new things:
- Improves memory for every concept linked to this net
Creating a bond between two concepts improves their memorisation, especially when the link is weird (mnemotechnics) or when the bridge is used in both direction; which is the case here. - Provide a stable knowledge basis rooted in memory
Learnings in a specific field are rooted in memory (thanks to above point), enabling a better understanding of new concepts in this field. Understanding is the best way to remember - Strengthen the understanding and memory by relating bonds; creating links between look-alike bonds.
If the link A between A1 and A2 is the same than the link B between B1 and B2, our brain will relate these 2 bonds and the 4 elements composing these bonds
And of course, the more bonds you create, the more strong this "knowledge net" is.
The important thing here, is that to learn more, you need to create more bonds and the more weird this bond will be, the more it's going to be rooted in our memory, increasing the global "knowledge net" strengh.
Then, what is the best strategy to create such bonds ?
This is where the chaos makes its entrance.
Doing multiple things, without any order, without any logic; this will allow our brain to notice these links and to bind them to severall other fields, depending on your activities, your thoughts, the situation, etc...
In other words,
stay in a room and do the same thing for a day, you will create few bonds in one field;
move a lot and do a lot of various activities, you will create a lot of bonds in a lot of fields. (Yeah that's a lot of a lot.)
Again, this is just a theory coming from observation, and I will experiment it next year during a trip; feel free to express your point of vue on it ! :-) (Sorry for my bad english)