The Tree - The Mystery of Learning

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

There are three and only three ways to learn: 

First, from books, magazines, video's, Internet, etc., any data source and its process to our senses.

Second, our prior experiences in life.

Third, from another persons communicating his or her experiences and understanding to us. 

Can you imagine, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound?" Try to resist your urge to spurt out the canned answer because it may surprise you. The answer I will present came from a book.

In short, no. A falling tree itself makes no sound. Its descent merely creates vibrations in the air and the ground. These vibrations become sound only if something special is present to receive and translate them: say, an ear connected to a brain. The outer ear gathers changes in air pressure and focuses them on the eardrum, producing vibrations in the middle ear. These vibrations move fluid in the inner ear over little hairs that translate the pressure changes into electrical signals that are received by the brain. Without this special machinery, there is no sound, only air movement. 

Our brains first need a concept of a tree and what trees can do, such as fall in the woods. This concept can come from prior experience with trees, or from learning about trees in a book, or from another person's description of a tree falling in the woods. Without the concept, there is no crashing timber, only the meaningless noise of experiential blindness. 

The sound is not an event that is detected in the world, it is an experience constructed when the world interacts with a body that detects changes in air pressure, and a brain that can make those changes meaningful. 

Without our brains, our bodies and the world itself there is no sound, only a physical reality. It comes down to how we learn from life through experiences and our studies from sources of data in whatever form that comes and from other human beings who came before us and experienced life in the same fashion thus passing down to the next person and generation worldly experiences, studies and understanding from all three sources. 

Think of this when studying and learning our martial disciplines, we learn in three ways as given through example above. The more you can take in be it words; be it video’s; be it recordings of voices; be it through books, periodicals, etc.; be it through the exchange of information by listening and talking; be it through our own experiences in the physical and psychological world around us and how we process that data dump in our…brains. 

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