It is often assumed, in casual conversation, that everything which children know they were taught or learnt in some way (often by trial and error). However there is definitely not only an ‘instinct’ to learn...babies are smart enough to generalise and know complex things, without any instruction whatsoever.
-For example, a baby is pointed to a cup, taught that it is called a cup. They immediately recognise all distinct cup-shaped objects as cups, despite never having been taught this. Crucially, this behaviour continues in adulthood.
-Humans develop a knowledge of "physics" early on. Young infants are surprised by the tricks of magicians, because, watching them, they instinctively feel that some law has been violated. Due to their curiosity-imbibed fumblings, they've learnt to walk, talk, and to interact with objects, and they know what is not possible. As a physicist does, they've already built models of reality which they've adapted in line with their 'experiments'
-Body language!
I think a lot more of what humans do is instinct than is generally recognised. Walking, talking, thinking. Even without being taught mathematical operations, people would continually re-invent addition, multiplication, etc, as ways of solving real-life problems, such as how to share food amongst many people. {Mathematicians were once ethicists / "from the priest clan"!!!}.
Have a good, long think about what other learning mechanisms are hardwired in to you, and how they influence your behaviour, and your opinions. If you're not a lazy arsewipe and do this, you'll be absolutely intrigued by your findings.
**** "Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
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The instinct to learn has only one enemy: the modern notion of intelligence and curiosity as "uncool."
Sad to me are the numbers of people -- in developed nations, not some dusty forgotten dictatorship -- who will go to their graves never having read a serious book after leaving high school -- and never suffering a twinge of regret about it.
No Dante. No Dickens. No Carl Sagan, Shakespeare, Bertrand Russell or Aristotle.
Might as well just shove all those books, preserved through all the vicissitudes of history, into the trash can, as far as they're concerned.
But perhaps I am hijacking your topic.
The instinct to learn is fascinating. Think of the persistence of a baby, determined to master the technique of standing upon two feet, without a manual or a coach to assist him.
I'm interested to know when intellectual curiosity wasn't uncool at school? I'd sort of imagine Eton-style, aristocratic colleges of long ago might have produced this style of learning environment, but perhaps that is just my imagination?
I think a playground in which your coolness was roughly proportional to your intelligence would look...very...very interesting.
If it DID actually become uncool in a certain period, what forces produced this outcome?
Perhaps it's a form of the law of thermodynamics: learning is a sort of structuring, of order, of creating a system that takes energy to build and maintain.
The easier route is to be lazy, shun the work and survive while doing as little personal brain work as possible, letting others do the necessary thinking -- like an ivy vine or an intestinal parasite.
Some intelligence-seeking people are kept around as long as they can be generally ignored or ridiculed into submission, or as long as they help to maintain the existence of the rest of society.
When they are perceived to be a threat to the status quo, they are swiftly and harshly punished, "taken down a peg."
As were Socrates, Galileo, Jesus -- and the millions of victims of 20th century totalitarianism.
Pol Pot's Cambodian Khmer Rouge nightmare in the 1970s is the most overt example of attempting to eradicate such people -- any artisans, anyone who even wore glasses.
Less sinister has been the careful, decades-long effort in the West to mock and tear down the middlebrow -- the average guy who attempts to learn Latin or enjoy the opera.
Think of Hardy's "Jude the Obscure."
Haha I take your analogy with thermodynamics more than a little seriously.
And the stupid ARE parasites. Although many parasites deliver benefits to their hosts. It's the intelligent minority that keep society going, through their innovation, their civility and their tax dollars.
(Tax is...technically...theft, although I'm happy to pay it). Organisms have strategies to fight parasites, though! :)
It's estimated that Pol Pot and Mao Zedong both lowered the average IQ in their countries by 3-5 points through their efforts to eradicate intelligent opponents to their political ideologies.
Looked at the summary of "Jude the Obscure". Looks tragic, especially the part about the religious guilt-marriage at the end. That's something I dealt with on the transition to being an atheist too.
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