I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge. Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it.
I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application. I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. Self-learning is one way of interacting with the world. Through the process of reading we apprehend the world and in this interaction a dialectic process develops. As I experience, through reading, I attempt to 'make sense' of the world and thus develop ever-richer and more sophisticated concepts. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my journey. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge. Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it.
I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application. I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. Self-learning is one way of interacting with the world. Through the process of reading we apprehend the world and in this interaction a dialectic process develops. As I experience, through reading, I attempt to 'make sense' of the world and thus develop ever-richer and more sophisticated concepts. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my journey. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.
